It’s increasingly rare for a TV series to break through the individualized algorithms of our feeds. But for the last few weeks, the Netflix series “Adolescence” has been generating widespread conversation.
The show — which is fictional but filmed with documentary-style realism — tells the story of a 13-year-old high school boy named Jamie who murders a female classmate. Much of the series focuses on how shocked Jamie’s family is to discover that he’s capable of such violence. He’s a good student who hasn’t shown any obvious signs of trauma.
But when investigators start looking into Jamie’s social media history, they discover a troubling batch of Instagram posts, which seem to suggest that Jamie has been bullied by the girl he ends up killing.
The third episode of the series presents an extended sequence in which Jamie is interviewed by a psychologist. At first, he’s friendly and sweet. But when the psychologist starts asking probing questions about Jamie’s family and his inner life, he explodes with rage — throwing objects around the room and screaming at the psychologist.
When journalist Stephen Fried watched that scene, he was impressed. Fried has been covering teenage mental health for over forty years. In 1984, he published an influential piece of narrative nonfiction called “Over the Edge,” which documented the turbulent life of real-life teenagers in suburban Philadelphia. And Fried found the portrayal of teenage mental illness in “Adolescence” to be fairly revolutionary.
Fried joined The Show to discuss how he hopes viewers learn the right lesson from the series.
Full conversation
STEPHEN FRIED: When you see a kid in this much pain, we always want to blame it on what's happening currently in society, right? We don't have the words to suggest that the person has a diagnosable mental illness that could be treated. So it's always, what are we going to do about X, Y or Z?
So when I first started writing about this in the ’80s, it was, what are we going to do about boomboxes and cable TV and heavy metal music? And we watch ““Adolescence,” it’s what are we going to do about social media and all these kinds of things?
And all I would say is, let's make sure that we understand the difference between treatable mental illness and the delivery systems for the pressures of society.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah. It's so interesting to me, those examples you cited: boomboxes, cable TV and heavy metal music. Those are all things that, whatever it is, 40-some years on now seem — and tell me if you disagree — sort of quaint as far as social menaces go.
FRIED: Yeah.
DINGMAN: So what did you make of the way that dynamic is presented in “Adolescence”? Because in your piece, “Over the Edge,” one of the things that you write about is the fact that these boys who ended up jumping to their deaths left behind these tapes that they had recorded, where they were on acid and they were kind of recording the monologues that were going through their minds as they prepared to do this.
And it seemed like in the aftermath of their deaths, that was where a lot of the attention went, was on the existence of these tapes. Much the way in “Adolescence”, as a lot of the attention amongst the investigators in the early going is on these Instagram posts and comments that Jamie and the other people in the story have been engaging in.
Did you see an analogous situation in terms of the way that people perhaps focused on the wrong thing in the aftermath of the incidents in “Adolescence” and in your piece?
FRIED: Well, look, I think first of all, we focus way too little on these cases, whether they are cases where people take their own lives or people who were just very seriously ill. And part of it is because they don't feel open to talk about it. So I don't blame people for being interested in the first thing that they find out about.
I feel bad that they don't get the opportunity to find out more. I mean, when these young men took their own lives, of course it was in the newspaper that they had jumped off a cliff and that there were tapes that they had left before they died. And it was my strange luck as a reporter to get them.
DINGMAN: The tapes?
FRIED: Yeah, somebody got them to me. And I had them, and I had to transcribe them. I had to transcribe two hours of —
DINGMAN: Oh my God.
FRIED: Not incoherent but sometimes incoherent talk and then try to figure out what it was they were talking about.
And one of the interesting things about “Adolescence” I will say is that in a way, it's too bad that he killed somebody.
DINGMAN: In the story.
FRIED: Yeah, because I would have been equally interested in his rage if he hadn't. It is astonishing. And it's so amazing to see anybody pay this much attention to mental health and to really stay focused on it. I feel like in most cases in TV and movies, we get little glimpses of it, and then the camera goes away somewhere else.
So I just thought it was fascinating and incredibly powerful and very scary. But at the same time, it made me realize: normally the door closes, right? These scenes, somebody screams at somebody, and then the kid slams the door. I just think it's very rare, unfortunately, that a 13-year-old kid who's that upset gets to talk for that long and isn't interrupted and isn't allowed to leave.
And the question that we have to have as a society is: Are we interested equally interested in that rage if it's not a murder, just a 13-year-old kid who's in real danger?
DINGMAN: I know that after you published the original version of “Over the Edge,” you did a follow up where there was the suggestion that part of the rage of Marc Landis, who is the real-life teenager in your story, may have been that he had been sexually abused. And we don't get any information to that effect in “Adolescence” in terms of what's going on with Jamie.
But as you're saying there is the sense that if people in his life had been listening a little bit more attentively to what was going on with him, they might have been able to intervene earlier. When you were watching that third episode, where the whole episode is basically this long exchange between Jamie and the psychologist —
[Audio from Episode 3 of “Adolescence” plays]
Was there anything Jamie said, based on your experience that gave you this sense that there was more to the story than we hear about in a literal way?
FRIED: Sure. There has to be. I mean, this is part of the problem. I think that we just assume that if you see somebody be open in that case, that that's everything. What Jamie did there is the beginning of a process which, sadly, because he's going to jail is never going to be continued. And the question is whether you can see that kind of rage in somebody who needs help early enough so that they don't destroy their lives or take somebody else down with them.
Part of me wants to know what the next interview with Jamie is like. If we care about Jamie enough to know what happens to him, it's not just like what's the “Law & Order” version of it? Does he go to jail or not? What else happened with him? Don't you want to know what happened to Jamie?
DINGMAN: Absolutely.
FRIED: Not whether he did it. I mean, we know he did it, right? There's a film.
DINGMAN: Yeah, there's video. To your point in a way, whether he did it is the least interesting part of the story.
FRIED: Learning about Jamie is a gift. For somebody to create a piece of art like this, that matters, about exploring this kid's head. I really hope that it doesn't get interpreted as being about social media and emojis.
Every generation of kids has their own pressures and their own fears, and it's ridiculous for us to think that our version of it is better or different or worse.
DINGMAN: So that makes me think of a line from the post that you wrote about this, where you said, “Mental illness adapts to the times, not the other way around.”
FRIED: People need to remind themselves of this all the time, because the question should be: What treatment is there for the Jamies of this world? Whether they've hurt somebody or they're about to hurt themselves, are we able to take care of them and to see — even when they scare the hell out of us — that they need treatment, that they need help?
We make murder the other because it's easier for us than to think that it's something that people would do because their brains aren't working properly.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, Stephen Fried is a journalist, a professor at Columbia and (University of Pennsylvania), the author of many books and — of course — the 1984 article “Over the Edge.” Stephen, thank you for this conversation.
FRIED: Thanks so much, Sam. It was fascinating to talk to you.
