Man enough to kill, boy enough to cry: Liminality and irresolvability in Adolescence

This short article considers the television show Adolescence , using the show’s title as an entry point for analysis and critique. Adolescence is the name we give to the liminal zone between childhood and adulthood. However, the concept of an “adolescence” is conspicuously gendered and racialized; it is a strategic attempt to extend the protections and moral absolutions of childhood that is overwhelmingly reserved for white, male youth. As such, one of its primary functions—both in culture at large and in Adolescence as a cultural representation—is to selectively complicate questions of agency, responsibility, and blame. My analysis proposes that this titular sense of adolescent liminality is mirrored in Adolescence’s overall narrative ambivalence about the causes and conditions of gender-based violence. Ultimately, I find that the show harnesses the “in betweenness” of its adolescent protagonist to divorce violent misogyny from power, dodging important questions about the compounding roles of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and the digitally networked far-Right.