We Need To Talk About Jamie
I just want to briefly mention that not only is this newsletter longer than usual, it also has nothing to do with me or my photography. I’ve had a few conversations about the Netflix show, Adolescence and my partner encouraged me to share some thoughts.
There is a particular scene in the recent overwhelmingly critically acclaimed limited series, Adolescence, that I’m curious about. I find it curious because It feels, to me at least, that it may have been written very late on and inserted to cover some blind spots in the story.
In episode 2, where DI Luke Bascombe, played by Ashley Walters and DS Misha Frank, portrayed by Faye Marsay, are skating around the school looking for a murder weapon, DI Bascombe notices that DS Frank is a little frazzled. They pause and have an exchange where two key things of note to me are mentioned. DS Frank seems exasperated that they are in the school in the first place. She states that in circumstances of fatal violence against women, the focus is usually on the perpetrator and not the woman or girl who is the victim of the crime. It gets to her that everybody will remember Jamie, portrayed by Owen Cooper but nobody will remember Katie, played by Emilia Holliday. She also doesn’t think finding the murder weapon is necessary when they have the act on CCTV. However, DI Bascombe states he is motivated by wanting to understand. Significantly, in response DS Frank states that “you can’t understand why, do you actually think you can?”
Women and girls are most likely to be killed by those closest to them. UN Women reported that globally in 2023, 140 women or girls were killed everyday by someone in their own family, with current or former intimate partners being by far the most likely perpetrators of femicide. In 2024, The Guardian reported that in recent years in the UK, a woman has been killed by a man every three days. According to the Office of National Statistics for England and Wales, when a woman is killed and someone is charged, 95% of the suspects are male. Femicide is a serious issue that needs to be engaged with both culturally and politically, this is why programmes like Adolescence are welcomed, but an important question to ask is how do we engage with this issue and what methods of engagement are most effective?
In 2022, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched the ‘Have a Word’ campaign followed by the ‘Say Maaate to a Mate’ campaign in 2023. The idea behind these campaigns were well intentioned. They presented scenarios where in a group of male friends spending time together, one may make a sexist remark, or lustfully ogle at a woman. In some scenarios there would just be full on sexual harassment. The videos would depict an inner dialogue where one heroic man would step in to stop the harassment, presenting a positive example of holding male aggression towards women to account, even if it is within your own friend group. The campaign was largely ignored by most and criticised by feminist groups for not adequately engaging with the issues seriously enough and being a waste of public funding.
Episode 3 of Adolescence has been lauded for its writing and acting. If it is the most impressive episode from a technical standpoint, episode 2 is probably the most important. In one of the most substantive scenes, we get a peek into the world of contemporary masculinity through the son of DI Bascombe. He tries to explain to his father, not without stress, terms such as the 80/20 rule, Red Pilling and the Manosphere. These are terms that are understood to varying degrees, but more widely known are many of the figureheads who embrace the thinking behind the terms. People like Andrew Tate or Myron Gaines and Walter Weekes of the Fresh and Fit podcast. At a time when everyone is praising Adolescence for wrestling with these challenging themes, It's a good thing that bell hooks was writing about these things with much more substantive and meaningful analysis in 2004. In ‘The Will to Change’, she writes:
“In the wake of feminist, antiracist, and postcolonial critiques of imperialist white-supremecist capitalist patriarchy, the backlash that aims to reinscribe patriarchy is fierce. While Feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist patriarchal men do not.”
It is important to note that the men who influence this thinking online make a lot of money doing so and use that money to create a perception that reinforces their positions. I recently came across a clip from the Politics Joe channel where two men discussing the programme are unsettled by how much empathy they had for Jamie. One notes that they can relate to the frustration of being a young boy going through puberty and dealing with rejection and disappointment. He questions whether if he had been sent the wrong article or watched the wrong video, whether he too could end up in an “incel state”. The influence of the web and social media shouldn’t be understated, but girls and women deal with rejection too and men killed women in great number before the internet was formed.
I find it concerning when a general takeaway from Adolescence could be one of sympathy for Jamie, not because there is none to be had, but because it’s superfluous to the fact that essentially a boy 13 years of age has brutally murdered a young girl. Adolescence in my view, paints the manosphere as some kind of amorphous, opaque and relentless virus sweeping away young boys in the night through an illuminated panel. In a world where boys grow up learning masculinity is performed as something oppositional to femininity, oftentimes to violent extremes, it is important that we understand that the manosphere is actually part of masculinity and how that element of masculinity is something to be wholly opposed, but also how wider socio-economic realities influence how perceptions of masculinity develop and evolve. Once again, I turn to bell hooks, who writes in ‘The Will to Change’:
“This is a patriarchal truism that most people in our society want to deny. Whenever women thinkers, especially advocates for feminism, speak about the widespread problem of male violence, folks are eager to stand up and make the point that most men are not violent. They refuse to acknowledge that masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men.”
Anthony Mackie of Marvel fame, recently appeared on The Pivot podcast where he claimed that “they have literally killed masculinity in our homes and our communities”. It’s difficult to glean how he knows or understands this because he gives no details regarding who “they” are or why masculinity is being killed. He goes on to list a litany of things his sons do, that indicate they will always be men. They will always be respectful, they will always say yes sir, yes ma'am and no sir, no ma'am. They will always say thank you and open a door for a lady as well as make sure their mother is taken care of and provided for. He goes on to say that he tells his 15 year old son that when he is away on an acting job, he is the man of the house. It is his responsibility to make sure the windows and doors are locked and that the alarm is on before he goes to sleep. Presumably his mother is in the house too, that much isn’t mentioned. He finally finishes by labouring about a specific kind of American masculinity that sets him apart from men globally, indicating that when he’s in Europe that he feels he could beat random men in a physical altercation just by the look of them, before ending on what seems to be a joke about skinny jeans. Nothing is mentioned about emotional intelligence or regulation, non-violent conflict resolution or articulation. It seems many men share similar sentiments but rarely have anything of note regarding why masculinity is so threatened or who is succeeding in destroying it and personally I’m not convinced that you can open enough doors for women in this clandestine war to save masculinity.
I want to make clear that I think Adolescence is really well written and performed. The single-take approach allows for some artful tension manipulation throughout the four episodes and all of this helps the programme create and maintain a convincing emotional gravity throughout. But I don't think it effectively engages with its key themes. I find it ironic that by the end of episode 4, when Eddie Miller, portrayed by Stephen Graham collapses into Jamie’s empty bed, that we have effectively watched them mourn their murdering son. My issues with Adolescence stem less from the conversation being had and more about how it is had. The programme is a largely sympathetic story about what happens to the family when a 13 year old boy ends up murdering a girl. This is not an illegitimate perspective and empathy is important, but its significance is strengthened through understanding. That is why DS Frank’s “you can’t understand why” in episode 2 is so unsettling to me and feels almost a self- acknowledgement of the shortcomings in the show.
In an exchange with a friend about Adolescence, he mentioned that he felt it was really about the widening gap between parents and their children and the difficulties in balancing making a living with the stresses of child-rearing. It’s a good point. In a cost of living crisis in which many young people are still dealing with the fallout from the missed years of Covid, there is a real tension not just with parents who maybe aren’t always able to make enough time for their children, but also with teachers who are overworked and underpaid. However these issues require deeper analysis. Schools are part of a capitalist structure and where young people essentially encounter early institutional oppression, particularly children of colour. Perhaps Adolescence cannot give all of these issues the amount of depth they deserve, but what I would hope for is that the conversations that stem from it, to go further than a general sympathy and a vague understanding that there are young boys with seriously concerning views of women.
Masculinity is clearly quite a varied and dense topic to engage with but it’s important to continue having the conversation. In 1999, author Robert Greene, released the New York Times bestseller, 48 Laws of Power. The book quickly became a cult classic and extremely popular among men. It is over subscribed in US Prisons, has sold over 1.3 million copies in the US, translated into 24 languages and referenced by celebrities such as Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Central Cee. I read it myself in my twenties. The contents of the book revolve around “laws” that are essentially various historical accounts of instances of power grabbing, manipulation or con-artistry, presented as resources of knowledge the reader can use to attain power and influence themselves. Its popularity amongst men, often confuses women who struggle to understand why men continue to gravitate towards a book that depicts cheating, lying and manipulation as ways to garner favour or fortune in their lives. In ‘The Will to Change’, bell hooks speaking about how men are conditioned to view relationships says:
“Patriarchal culture continues to control the hearts of men precisely because it socialises males to believe that without their role as patriarchs they will have no reason for being. Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but will frame all relationships as power struggles.”