Adolescence

[heartsinvisiblefury]

What an amazing piece of television. Stephen Graham is exceptional. Highly recommend this - on Netflix.

Yes - and Eddie will think he’s a great guy and dad because he doesn’t hit his wife and kids. As if abuse only comes in that format. I bet he wouldn’t even remember the shed incident or would deny it

In this way they could look at the social influences that result in a 13 year old girl sending topless photos to a boy. Would her parents be getting blamed for this? I'm not victim blaming but I am looking at the other side of the coin. Everyday we are bombarded with social media dross of the Bonnie blue type.

Agree with this. I'm really glad they acknowledged the fact that the victims are often forgotten, but I do think, in this instance (unlike most!) it made sense to focus on Jamie and his family. Being blunt, the focus was "how does a seemingly normal kid end up doing this, and what is hiding under the surface that we don't see" and not "murder is awful" - we already know that the murder of a child (or anyone) deeply, deeply affects the family of the victim and has long lasting repercussions for many people, so I took it as they've assumed they don't need to hammer home that message and want to focus on the cause instead.

I think it would have muddied the message a bit and put more focus on Katie and her actions (in just one episode would have been hard to ignore the fact she was bullying him etc which they would have had to explore, making it easier to victim blame, and I think Katie's perspective deserves more than an episode) and if the target audience is boys and parents of boys, it needed to focus on them. Part of the issue with boys feeling disillusioned is that they feel like they don't see themselves as central in anything ("when you're privileged, equality feels like discrimination") so it seemed to me like a very deliberate choice to centre the men, their views, and the impact on them, which is why they acknowledged it in ep 2 whereas most dramas/reports don't centre the women and also don't acknowledge what they're doing.

A second series focusing on the impact of attitudes and ideologies like this on girls, which follows Katie, why she felt the need to send intimate photos, the impact on her of having them passed around, how her parents reacted to it (if they even knew), boys and how they interact with girls in and out of school etc could be really powerful, but I imagine would be aimed at girls and parents of girls (with the same sort of slant - what is going on that we don't know about and how can we stop it from happening).

x-posted!

An unsubtle but quite poignant moment to me was the parallel of 13 year old Eddie titting around in a pink wig at a school disco to woo the childhood sweetheart he went on to marry, and the world of nudes, knife crime and murder his son was embroiled in at the same age.

So insightful. Loved reading this and little snippets you pulled out to pull themes together!

The first episode was good. The switch from I didn’t do it to the cctv was full on.

I didn’t like the last episode as much. The psychiatrist one was good and I liked that each episode had a different focus.

'The fact you think a man smashing up sheds, dismissing his wife and children, instilling fear in his family, chasing and physically assaults teenagers, and trashing his own property is him being "a bit irritable" is genuinely concerning, and part of the problem. That kind of behaviour isn't being "a bit irritable". It's being abusive, and shouldn't be normalised.'

He was a broken man, of course he was going to chase kids who'd sprayed nonce on his van. The angst between him and his family was a symptom of the situation, he wasn't abusive. Someone upthread said the domestic violence and coercion was disturbing. There wasn't any!

'It isn't as black and white as "it's his dad's fault". It's society's fault, but suggesting his dad has nothing to do with it and Jamie is just "evil" is, frankly, laughable, and shows a complete failure to understand the influence of dysfunctional home dynamics on children.'

Of course it isn't black and whilte, it is a terrible over simplistic telly show and frankly there's nothing laughable about any of the points they were trying oh so very hard to make.

You are entirely missing (or ignoring) the fact that this is a bloke who is the result of a physically abusive home, that has torn down a shed in rage, whose son actively scoffs at the question "is your dad loving" but admits he is "angry", who has the natural inclination to resort to anger to express himself, and who has such entrenched ideas of what masculinity is that he is ashamed and turns away from his struggling child in sports. His behaviour isn't a symptom of the situation, it's an indication of how he manages emotion generally. You might only be seeing it expressed because of the situation but the whole of episodes 3 and 4 are pretty clearly designed to demonstrate that Jamie's view of manhood starts at home. His dad didn't have some sort of personality transplant. You seem to think that because Eddie doesn't actively hate his family, isn't beating them up, and is trying his best means his behaviour isn't abusive and doesn't have an extremely negative impact on his family, but both can be, and often are, true.

Incidentally, no, being "a broken man" does not mean "of course" he's going to chase down, threaten, and physically shove around a teenager or chuck paint over his van. He does it because he is the kind of man that resorts to physical displays when he is angry and stressed. Plenty of other men would not have done that.

I don't think the show or the points it is making are laughable. I think the fact you condensed it to "at best, he's just evil" is, whereas the fact you see the father's behaviour as acceptable and not in any way an indication of what contributed to the outcome is just depressing and a perfect demonstration of exactly why these conversations are so important.

'whereas the fact you see the father's behaviour as acceptable'

I didn't at any point say his behaviour was acceptable, rather it was understandable given the massive strain the whole family was under. People do snap in those circumstances. Of course many people would chase and physically challenge someone who had sprayed paint on their property.

Your very long posts with very long analysis are a bit like the programme, trying hard to find every single reason to excuse someone for their violence. Sometimes people are indeed just nasty and violent.

This show absolutely fails in demonstrating the reasons that would exacerbate an unstable person's behaviour. As if turning away at footie was a contributory factor. If so half the country's kids would be running round stabbing people.

Except that his behaviour isn't isolated to after the event, so can't be solely explained by the stress.

You're more than free to ignore my very longs posts with their very long analyses, and apologies if I've mischaracterised by saying you think his behaviour is acceptable - that is how it read to me, but nothing I'm saying is excusing violence. Understanding the route someone took to get there is not by means an "excuse" - everyone has the agency to decide whether to take the final step, but some people will be more likely than others because of their home environment and we need to know why so that it can be tackled at source.

You see it as "turning away at footie". I, and plenty of others, recognise it as damaging for a child to repeatedly see the man he idolises being to ashamed of him that he can't even look at him because he isn't sufficiently "masculine", and understand how such rigid gender roles at home and wider society can open the door to more radical views online, especially when the parents aren't keeping an eye on their children's online activities.

'Except that his behaviour isn't isolated to after the event, so can't be solely explained by the stress.'

Many people are short fused with DIY, many parents are disappointed by their dc's lack of sporting ability and would turn away disappointed, not great but not the underlying cause of such horrific violence. He has a stable home and Graham's attempts to say this could happen to you is clearly bollocks.

We all see the criminals in the news who stab people and there are usually multiple complex factors like mh issues, drug use, abuse, radicalisation and no knocking down a shed isn't any of those.

Ok, well we will agree to disagree. I don't see tearing down a shed "in an absolute rager" as a good model for how to deal with anger or a normal response to some frustration at DIY. If you think it is, that's your prerogative.

You see his home as stable - I don't particularly, although I do think it's probably the norm for a lot of families. I didn't say it was the cause of the violence, I said it made him more susceptible to radicalisation and would have damaged him. There is no single cause. That's the point. It's the culmination of his experiences.

We all see the criminals in the news who stab people and there are usually multiple complex factors like mh issues, drug use, abuse, radicalisation and no knocking down a shed isn't any of those.

The ones that go and murder random people, maybe. The men that murder women because they've rejected them or that left them after a relationship? Attitude to women is a huge part of why they do it, and that starts at home.

What was Chris Watts reason then?

Oh ask Stephen Graham. Maybe his dad destroyed a shed and didn't pay attention at football? Or, maybe he was a nasty violent man as many are and didn't need much provocation.

Which means you agree with the point, you don't have to come from a really abusive home, or need to have MH issues, or be a drug user - to be a misogynist, just like Jamie's character.

Jamie was influenced by toxic masculinity - it didn't need to be extreme to have an impact - which goes back to your point - maybe he was just a nasty man (boy) who didn't need much provocation. You just need to be 'vulnerable enough' to the influence to which is the whole point of the show.

Yes alot of naive parents here, sorry to say.

Really? Most of the criticism I’ve seen online of the school episode has been from (slightly defensive) teachers.

I felt like I could see what they were trying to do but we didn’t see enough of his social media interactions, we didn’t see enough of the dad as a role model and so it fell short for me. It felt like a massive over reaction by Jamie less like a radicalisation and more like a sudden psychotic break - even with the psychologist it felt like some sort of mental health/ personality disorder thing.

@JMSAno it wasn’t the fire alarm bit that irked me or the general school scenes. It was the assumption that school life would continue as normal and the young people and staff wouldn’t have been affected by the events. That is absolutely not realistic and as a teacher I felt that was doing teenagers a disservice. Whether they knew the victim or not an event like this would have shocked and saddened everyone in the school community.

What is life like for children going through long periods of incarceration for really serious crimes?

Who teaches them?

Do they maintain any relationships with the outside world or is it all saved up until the months or weeks before they’re released as adults?

I'm baffled by the clamour for this to be shown in schools. Like would-be murderous incels are going to be like 'ah well I was going to stab the girl who won't sleep with me, but now I've seen this show that's two 50-somethings' approximation of how teenagers speak to and interact with each other, I've realised that would be a bad thing to do'. I certainly can't think of anything that would have been more likely to get my back up as a teenager than the Netflix equivalent of those drama troupes that used to come into schools and do wacky plays about the dangers of smoking.

'Which means you agree with the point, you don't have to come from a really abusive home, or need to have MH issues, or be a drug user - to be a misogynist, just like Jamie's character.'

No, you don't have to come from an abusive home but there is usually a serious backstory of some kind and by that I don't mean a Dad knocking a shed down or looking away at footie.

It is quite interesting, the kid who plays Jamie is like Graham all over the internet promoting the show in interviews and with his cocky personality he'd have been better off playing himself, much more convincing.

Graham is apparently goign to speak with the PM about this. If he does he needs to focus on knife crime and the usual scenarios and leave his silly made up story out of it.

'I'm baffled by the clamour for this to be shown in schools.'

Completely agree. It's the usual kneejerk grandstanding. 'Something must be done' so let's pile even more responsibility on schools

They continue their education, have some access to therapy , get taught to cook, have gym access (if they behave) and get visits from family and friends, and can call family and friends regularly.

Unfortunately they will be in the company of other young males who have done similar crimes, so all the therapy in the world is probably not going to change the mindset they all already have.