Massive spoiler alert! If you don’t want spoilers, don’t proceed!
According to The University of Melbourne, when criminology became a more popular topic of study, it was males who were primarily studied. This is where the term “men can’t help themselves” came from, since men’s minds were the ones being researched in these studies.
Soon, the Biological Positivism theory was born, which is a theory that criminal behavior is determined by naturally occurring biological factors, like brain structure and genetic predispositions, instead of free will. More recent research has shown that life experiences and environmental factors are more likely to blame for an individual committing a crime. Both of these theories explain why people behave violently, but they do not excuse the behavior.
Netflix’s new show, Adolescence, is about a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Millar, who kills his classmate, Katie Leonard, and leaves it to the viewers to theorize why it happened. It highlights the problem of male violence and the mistreatment of women in our society.
In the show’s first episode, police busted Jamie’s door down early in the morning for the accused murder of Katie. He is driven to the police station to be checked into the criminal justice system, all of this while uncontrollably crying and repeating, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” After the investigator, Luke Bascombe, asks Jamie some questions about the case, he shows footage of Jamie chasing Katie in a parking lot and stabbing her to death. The audience is left shocked because they think of Jamie as innocent since he kept claiming he never did anything wrong, but in his eyes, he didn’t do anything wrong.
In the second episode, Bascombe went to Jamie’s school in hopes of finding out more about the crime. We see the effects of Jamie’s actions on the teachers and students. Bascombe’s son, who also attends the school, tells him about Katie’s emoji comments posted on Jamie’s Instagram page. The investigator had originally thought they were a sign of friendship between the two, but realized they were actually being used to make fun of Jamie.
In the third episode, Briony Artison, a court-appointed psychologist, visits Jamie in the juvenile detention center to perform a psychological evaluation on Jamie. In the episode, there is a huge shift in Jamie’s personality compared to the day of the arrest. Before, he seemed shy and innocent, but now he would quickly switch from being friendly to violently lashing out. He ended up revealing that pictures of Katie topless went around the school, making Katie less wanted, and what he thought would better his odds with her. When he asked her out, she said, “I’m not that desperate.” Jamie asked Briony, the psychologist, if she liked him and if she thought he was ugly, but she couldn’t give him an answer. He erupted in a violent rage and had to be dragged away by the guard. Despite what happened with Katie, he was still seeking validation from women.
In the final episode, Jamie’s family celebrates his father’s birthday at home. They try to have a normal day, but Jamie’s crime haunts the family. The show ends with a call from Jamie telling the family he is going to plead guilty to the murder of Katie. The family knew what he had done, but it was only at this point that the weight of his actions were truly felt by the family. His family wondered what they had done wrong to lose their sweet boy and at what point he had turned into a murderer.
“I feel like Jamie killed Katie because he was embarrassed she could bully him and have more power over him. Him killing her was like reclaiming his power,” said Lillian Moore, an Athens Drive student.
As gender norms have loosened up over time, women have become better adapted to the things that were more traditionally seen as ‘masculine’ because masculinity is represented as a good thing, while ‘feminine’ things like being able to be fragile or tender at certain times have not. To stop these violent behaviors and the mistreatment of women, those aspects of femininity need to be normalized within everyone. In Jamie’s mind, he is supposed to hold power over women, so when a girl bullied him and held the power, he turned to violence.
“I don’t think that means men need to start wearing dresses to prove they aren’t sexist or anything, but I think the reason we don’t see those sorts of things becoming trends among men is because of sexism,” said Bailey Ballard, an Athens Drive student.
Unwomen.org says that one in three women has been subjected to physical violence at least once in their lives, and most of these cases were by their former or current partners. 60% of countries still lack proper rape laws to protect women. By the time a woman is 19, there’s a 24% chance she’s been physically, sexually, or psychologically abused by a partner. Society needs to do a better job of protecting women because day after day, more are being subjected to these dangerous situations.
