‘Adolescence' shows us how we are all being tricked

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Netflix miniseries ‘Adolescence’ has received great reviews. It’s about Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, who is arrested for the murder of classmate Katie Leonard.

 

The police raid the Miller home while they are in bed asleep. Little 13-year-old Jamie is arrested and taken away.

This had to have been a mistake, they must have called to the wrong house. No, innocent-looking little Jamie did stab to death a little girl his own age.

He denied it for a long time but eventually owned up to the crime.

The film is about many aspects of our lives but that mobile phone that is either in your possession right now or just a hand’s length away plays a major role in the four-part miniseries.

Katie accuses Jamie of being an ‘incel’ after Jamie posted Instagram messages commenting on models. An incel is teenage lingo for an involuntary celibate. Isn’t it incredible that children know and use such terms? Or is it?

The children are using language and emojis that are almost exclusive to them.

The film is also about the relationship between Jamie and his father Eddie, who is annoyed, upset, even embarrassed that his son is no good at football. Jamie is more interested in drawing and sketching. Of course the little girl is the victim.  But how can a little boy do such an evil act? 

Jamie spends hours on his laptop and phone. What must he have been looking at? He’s no exception.

I use public transport every day, sit upstairs on buses. The majority of passengers are on their phones. Most of it seems total nonsense. I saw someone looking at a naked person on their phone. There’s that permanent scrolling on to something new.

And all the time mega companies are making a fortune at what we are watching, writing and saying on these machines. It is such a business that the president of the United States has dropped his tariffs on these machines moving from China to the US.

We all have been seduced, fooled and tricked up to our eyeballs on what’s happening.

Of course we’d be lost without our phones and laptops but look at the cost we are paying. It’s worse than the Wild West. I’m by no means a luddite but surely the person always has to be in charge. 

To think that little children are being abused and seduced, indeed, destroyed by large multi national corporations is beyond belief. It’s not that long ago since the ‘dirty magazines’ were on the top shelf in the shop. There’s much worse now in the pockets of little children.

A mother with young children told me she and her husband go through their children’s phones every night. They’ve had to look up short hand texts and emoji meanings online in order  to decode some of their messages. Sounds great idea to me.

Anglo American poet TS Eliot’s words sure are prescient: ‘All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,/All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,/But nearness to death no nearer to God./Where is the life we have lost in living?/Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?/Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’