Show The White Lotus in schools. Not Adolescence

TV.

Yes, I escaped the world of tariffs which no one truly understands into the world of television. To be honest I do not watch a lot of drama. My diet is news and documentaries. I cannot commit to endless drawn-out Netflix episodes. As for crime, there is perhaps something missing in my brain, but I never care much about who did it. So I don’t do it.

But I did watch Adolescence because of the hype around it. It was brilliantly acted. Stephen Graham as we already knew, is a great actor. Episode 3 where we see this combustible boy with the shrink was compelling and well worth the one-shot technique. The last episode was not so great. The murderer’s mother and sister like the victim, we never heard anything about, indeed all the female characters in other words were there mostly there to soothe and soak up male rage. Apart from the shrink – an astonishing performance by Erin Doherty and an underwritten role for Jade, Katie’s friend who was actually allowed to be angry, this was a show as everyone kept telling us about ‘toxic masculinity’ hardly a new concept.

It has something to tell parents possibly. That is : you do not know what your kids are up to online - though we brought up kids who could not go to school and got all their learning online through the pandemic - and it informed us vaguely about something called “the manosphere”. Or what I would call ,the world. Again, online organised misogyny whether in the form of notorious influencers or just in the gaming world ,sub -reditts is not a new phenomenon. This stuff is only shocking if you have never bothered to look at it for the past decade. Or ever considered the power relations between men and women.

But all of this appeared to be news to Keir Starmer who frankly has gone a bit mad and decreed this show be shown in schools. Is this all going to be new information then for teenagers? I think not. What on earth will teenage girls get out of watching a programme that tells them if they turn a boy down, they will be stabbed to death?

Porn

The really difficult conversation to be had is not about Andrew Tate types, who many teenage boys if you bother asking now, think is prize prick but pornography. It is vile and violent and easily accessible, and we know 9 year olds are watching hardcore imagery. If boys grow up thinking that what most women want is to be slapped, choked, pissed and spat on and penetrated by several men in every orifice , then we are in trouble.

And we are in trouble.