(LifeSiteNews) — The new Netflix film Adolescence, a fictional depiction of a teen boy’s murder of a girl after he is exposed to misogynistic influencers, is exploding in the media, with spotlights from the BBC, The New York Times, The Tonight Show, and a litany of other outlets.
While the series is highly popular, the fact that the UK’s Prime Minister is discussing its themes in Parliament raises a pressing question: Why are multiple politicians seizing upon a fabricated story to issue a call to action against “toxic” online influencers?
The four-part drama highlights social media as the center of a chain of events leading a 13-year-old boy to murder: After exposure to the “manosphere,” the online world of “sexist” social media influencers, he comes to be publicly humiliated online when he is labeled a forever-“incel” (involuntary celibate) by a girl who rejected his advances. He goes on to stab her to death in his hurt and rage.
Adolescence is said to be loosely inspired by knife killings committed by boys in the UK, according to co-creator Stephen Graham, who also plays the boy’s father in the film. He explained during a Next on Netflix event, “The idea came as – over the past 10 years or so – we’ve seen an epidemic of knife crime amongst young lads, up and down the country. And for me, there were certain instances that really stuck out where young boys … were killing young girls.”
However, the similarities between the film and reality end at boy-on-girl violence. The creators of the film have not cited any real-life inspiration for the motives or backstory of the film’s murder — because the real murders were not due to “misogyny” or online influence.
Yet the creators of the film, as well as UK PM Keir Starmer and Members of Parliament are exploiting the film’s popularity to call for the restriction of minors’ social media access, and potentially the censorship of certain influencers.
MPs have already praised the film for “forcing a national conversation about the dangerous content seen by young men and boys, with fatal consequences.”
“Will the Prime Minister back the campaign to counter toxic misogyny early and give young men the role models that they deserve?” Anneliese Midgley asked during a March 19 Parliament sitting.
Starmer said he would, adding that he himself was watching the film with his teen children. “The violence carried out by young men, influenced by what they see online, is a real problem … It is important that, across the whole House, we tackle this emerging and growing problem,” he concluded.
Yet, none of these Parliament sitting comments pertaining to “toxic misogyny” attribute any specific case of male-on-female violence to a particular online influence, including misogynistic content. This is because, as British Christian comedian Alistair Williams has pointed out, violence stems not from any influencer or from animus against a particular group of people but from an abandonment of God’s morality.
“It’s the lack of the presence of God and shared morality … that is the reason for murder, violence, you name it. It’s not Andrew Tate or a lack of social media control,” remarked Williams, referring to a popular male social media influencer briefly named in the film.
The co-creators of the film have also repeatedly warned of the dangers of social media when speaking about Adolescence. As Graham warned in an interview with GQ UK that “in today’s day and age, these phones are very dangerous. And these so-called influencers, I think there’s a huge responsibility there.”
He similarly told The Independent that Adolescence should serve as a “warning” to parents about the influence of social media on youth culture.
Jack Thorne, the film’s co-creator, has gone further in advocating for government intervention in the face of the dangers social media poses to youth, even calling for the government to implement a “digital age of consent” during a BBC Breakfast appearance.
He advised in an interview with The Guardian, “Parents can try to regulate this, schools can stop mobile phone access but more needs to be done. There should be government support because the ideas being expressed are dangerous in the wrong hands and young brains aren’t equipped to cope with them.”
Do the creators of this fiction and politicians really believe that online misogynistic influencers are such a serious contributor to male violence that they need to be restricted, or that minors’ social media access needs to be restricted?
There is evidence that pornography is fueling the rise of sexual aggression in men — but none of these calls to action have mentioned porn. Or have they cited a single case evidencing violence triggered by an “influencer,” let alone a pattern of such cases.
One would think that if these film creators and politicians were interested in addressing the roots of real violence against females, they would seek to combat the pervasive problem of sex trafficking and highlight the Rotherham scandal in which over 1,000 women and girls were victimized in the UK, as Evita Duffy-Alonso suggested in her critique of Adolescence.
The fact that both the film’s creators and MPs are using a fictional scenario to call for a government solution to an ill-defined problem then seems to suggest, as Williams has pointed out, that the film itself was created to serve a predetermined political agenda.
It is well documented that film studios collaborate with governments for propaganda purposes. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, circulated a memo praising film as “one of the most powerful propaganda weapons at the disposal of the United States” and recommending “the voluntary cooperation of all motion agencies not under the control of the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff].” (Redmond, 2017)
Elmer Davis, former director of the United States Office of War Information, has said, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.” (Black, 1990, p. 64)
According to multiple sources, the U.S. government strengthened collaboration with Hollywood after the 9/11 attacks when Karl Rove, senior adviser to the President, and other top officials met with studio executives. Studios including the Motion Picture Association of America agreed to help the administration’s propaganda efforts.
It is noteworthy that Marc Randolph Bernays, co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, is a great-nephew of Edward Bernays, who was a pioneering and hugely influential propagandist for the U.S. government as well as corporations, and author of the book Propaganda.
Edward Bernays helped sell the First World War to Americans as the war that would “Make the World Safe for Democracy” while working for the U.S. Committee on Public Information, calling this work “psychological warfare.” He later applied his techniques to market cigarettes to women, and to help convince Americans that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial. He openly described the goal of his methods as the “engineering of consent.”
In fact, Edward Bernays numbered himself among the “true ruling power” of the U.S.:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of … It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
Seen as a propaganda piece, Adolescence already appears to be effective. An English teacher recently remarked on X that “adolescence on Netflix has convinced me that children should not legally be allowed smartphones and that one day we’ll look back on the fact that we allowed it and be really ashamed.” Over 1,000 people “liked” her comment to express their agreement.
This spontaneous reaction, as well as Thorne’s call for a “digital age of consent,” supports Williams’ belief that the purpose of the film is to push for a digital ID, which would ultimately be the only way to truly enforce age restrictions on social media or other internet content.
It also seems likely that the censorship of influencers who challenge the political establishment and can simultaneously be labeled misogynistic, like Andrew Tate, is a desired goal of the film.
Parents of all political stripes argue that restricting social media content for children is not only advisable but necessary for their mental health and moral protection. However, if a recent Florida poll is any indication, they would rather regulate this themselves. When Florida this year enacted a law banning children under age 14 from social media, almost 80% of parents surveyed by Fox News said they prefer parental enforcement of children’s social media use.
Civil liberties advocates have also repeatedly warned that laws requiring age verification or ID verification open the door to digital IDs, which Williams noted “can be used as a precursor to the Mark of the Beast System.”
When Australia passed a social media ban for children under age 16 late last year — the world’s first social media ban for under-16-year-olds — journalist and free speech advocate Michael Shellenberger warned that “this bill is a Trojan horse to create digital IDs, which is a giant leap into the totalitarian dystopia depicted in ‘Black Mirror,’ and already in place in China.”
Parents and schools can work together to curb social media use among minors in order to prevent what parents — and not government officials — have determined to be a danger to their children, including pornography, violent video games, and all forms of obscene video content.
Any government that makes a fuss over “misogynistic” influencer content without making a serious effort to combat sex trafficking and violent pornography has suspect motives.
Bibliography:
Redmond, Pearse (March 2017). “The Historical Roots of CIA-Hollywood Propaganda”. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
Black, Gregory D.; Koppes, Clayton R. (1990). Hollywood Goes to War How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. University of California Press. p. 64.
