By Jagdesh Singh | Opinion |
It’s been 3 days since, and the scene of the father crying at his son’s bed then slowly tucking in the boy’s teddy bear is still lingering in my mind. Performances like this are so rare. When it forces the watcher to empathise with the protagonist, to imagine being in those shoes, it can change some circuitry in your mindset.
Netflix’s limited series ‘Adolescence’ is raking rave reviews for the performances and the questions it asks the passive audience. As a father of 3 daughters, my first impulsive reaction was sadness and anger that a 13 year old boy could murder his schoolmate, a pretty and popular girl of the same age, in such a cold blooded manner. (No spoiler alerts here because this is established right at the beginning of the show).
By episode 4, which is the last hour long episode, you get to learn how tragic this murder is to those around the murdered and the murderer as well. The boy was brought up in a normal typical loving family without the cliched abusive father or without absent parents that so many horrific crimes are usually attributed to. Angry young men and angry adolescent boys who commit crimes typically come from poverty stricken and broken homes, prevalent drug abuse and always gang related. It was nothing of the sort for this boy and his family.
This wasn’t a ‘whodunit’ but rather it was produced layered like an onion, asking the ‘why he did it’ as each layer is peeled away. In a couple of interviews, Stephen Graham (who was one of the actors and writers of the show) articulates his belief that the phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is applicable for both children doing well in society, and also for children on the other far side of the spectrum where their destructiveness does damage in society. Typically, we very quickly try to blame the murderer if old enough, or the parents who brought up the murderer if young enough.
But here, in the show, you get to see all the critical building blocks of the young boy’s mentality that drove him to do that heinous act of violence. His friends. His school. The murdered girl’s attitude towards him. His teachers. And finally, the dark clouds of social media, where the girl’s taunting of him was for all to see, played a massive part of his mental and emotional makeup. This was the scariest part for me as a father of kids the same age as the boy. A single emoji can mean something so different to us and to the children.
It is impossible to monitor what our children are consuming on social media. The many platforms online are making it easy for literally anybody to have the ability to influence the thoughts and ideas of adults like us any time. This risk is almost tenfold for our children. You might have heard of influencers like Andrew Tate, considered a hero for speaking his mind to many young men around the world. His views are considered extreme toxic masculinity, preaching to young men and boys about their superiority and entitlement as males compared to the fairer sex. To the point that it’s not bad to be abusive, harmful and even kill another human being as long as it’s a female. This boy in the show is a product of this growing mentality.
Compassion is an innate and natural part of being a human. We are born with it. Compassion makes us humane and human. With conditioning, we are all at risk of losing this very basic attribute of ours. That is why it is so easy to justify violent and malicious actions when we blame it on race and religion. The toxic masculine beliefs of the boy is another excuse of losing his compassion and humanity.
As part of the village raising our boys, I have a duty as an uncle or a friend to make sure we’re teaching our boys and girls to avoid losing their compassion. Boys who grow up to be men must learn to accept their sisters and friends to be equal as humans, to treat them with respect, to be able to accept rejection when approached, and to just be simple gentlemen. As Sikhs, this duty is even more vital because these are fundamental teachings of our Guru.
If you have the time, try to watch the Netflix series with your boys and even your girls, and have that conversation about what they think and if they can relate to what the characters are going through. That, I really believe, is the first step to working towards keeping our children’s compassion and humanity intact.
Jagdesh Singh, a Kuala Lumpur-based executive with a US multinational company, is a father of three girls who are as opinionated as their mother
* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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