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00:00Now, the hit Netflix drama Adolescence has made television history in the United Kingdom.
00:05The show about the social media fuel killing of a girl by a 13-year-old boy also making
00:10waves around the world.
00:12The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he's watching Adolescence with his children
00:16and the show is reigniting debate on smartphone bans in schools.
00:20Here's a look at Adolescence.
01:00Now, each of the four episodes of Adolescence was filmed in a single shot.
01:17The camera work is brilliant and the show isn't about who committed the crime, but
01:21why?
01:22Adolescence spans 13 months and here's the show's co-creator Stephen Graham explaining
01:28What inspired him?
01:58We can now bring in Jack Halberstam, Professor of Gender Studies at Columbia University.
02:16Thank you for joining us on the programme today.
02:19Adolescence very quickly puts the spotlight on in-cell culture.
02:22What exactly is in-cell culture?
02:24Yeah.
02:25Hi.
02:26Thank you for having me.
02:28In-cell culture is a very sort of niche corner of masculinity where young boys feel as if
02:36they are being marginalised actually by women, not by the culture, but by women who don't
02:43find them attractive.
02:45In the past, a child's behaviour was reflective of their parents, their friends, their teachers.
02:51Is now social media, is it now a factor?
02:55Social media is a factor in everything, but this is a generation that came of age on screens
03:03and it's uncharted territory.
03:05We don't exactly know, but we're finding out in scary ways what it means when kids are
03:13isolated from each other, but joined by screens that then connect them to all kinds of toxic
03:19cultures online.
03:21The show Adolescence definitely deals with that and suggests that there are dark corners
03:27of the internet where young boys are easily influenced by figures like Andrew Tate.
03:33I want to talk about that because episode three of the show is essentially the character
03:38Jamie being evaluated by a psychologist, a female psychologist.
03:43He's shy in very small bits, but what struck me was the manner in which he speaks to the
03:48female psychologist.
03:49Either he tries to flirt with her or he's talking down at her.
03:54He oscillates between the two.
03:56Is this reflective of incel culture?
03:58I mean, who knows what's reflective of incel culture?
04:03I don't think it has a kind of uniform identity.
04:06It just seems to be a sort of weird, marginalised, violent corner of manhood where men who feel
04:15that women aren't paying them the proper kinds of attention decide to wreak revenge.
04:22And I do think in that third episode, in the interactions with the therapist, you see the
04:26pushes and pulls that are inherent to adolescent masculinity in this culture, the need to be
04:33recognised by girls and women who you simultaneously despise and want attention from.
04:41And that's exactly the kind of dynamic that you're describing.
04:45But the other thing to say here is that this series comes at a really important time in
04:50the culture where the very men who just say five years ago were being called to the carpet
04:56for sexual harassment and, you know, the Me Too movement was in full flow.
05:03Those men are now governing culture, governing big nations like the U.S.
05:11I mean, we're watching every day as unchecked toxic masculinity is not being played out
05:18just in a high school, but is being played out in the highest offices of governance and
05:24government.
05:25So then how do you combat it, given that people like, as you said, the U.S. president?
05:29I mean, they're there.
05:32Right.
05:33How do you combat it by pushing back on these insane narratives that the main threat to
05:38the culture that we live in comes in the form of trans women who want to use the women's
05:42bathroom or want to play in women's sports, as opposed to the threat coming from the way
05:49in which we train straight men to be straight?
05:52I mean, if I were to say publicly, you know, in a major newspaper, we need to rethink heterosexual
06:01masculinity.
06:03I'd be laughed out of the room.
06:05But we can hear every single day about why trans people are unnatural or are accessing
06:15health care that they shouldn't or whatever it may be.
06:18So we're living in the world dreamed of by toxic masculinity.
06:23And I think adolescents, apart from the fact that it's an incredibly well-made show, is
06:29tapping into some of the fears that people have right now about this, you know, this
06:36patriarchal culture and its resurgence.
06:38Stay with us, Jack, because my colleague interviewed Caitlin Moran, a journalist and author of
06:43What About Men, and asked her if adolescence was a watershed moment when it comes to dealing
06:48with the rise of toxic masculinity.
06:50Take a listen.
06:52You look at what the women's movement has done, we have empowered women.
06:54We can talk about our emotions, we have very tight knit communities, but there isn't that
06:57kind of cultural information and support for young boys.
07:00And so into this void, the only people who've stepped forward are people on the far right
07:03and in the mannersphere like Andrew Tate.
07:05And ostensibly what he offers is what young boys want.
07:08They want to be told how to be men.
07:10Unfortunately, the kind of advice that Andrew Tate is giving them is not going to help them
07:13to become men, because it's basically down to you need to become very fit, very hench
07:17and ripped to go to the gym.
07:18You need to invest in cryptocurrency and you need to blame any problems in your life on
07:22wokery and women.
07:24There was a recent report saying that teenage boys are more likely to have a smartphone
07:28than have a father in their houses.
07:30And even if you're in a single parent family, you don't have a father there.
07:34We need to make sure our communities have support for boys.
07:36Jack, I'd like to bring you in once again, because episode four of adolescence essentially
07:41demonstrates the opposite of a toxic masculinity.
07:45You see James's father there who is he's not beating up his wife.
07:50He's a loving husband.
07:53But besides the fact that despite this, his son still goes astray.
07:58So what should parents be doing, in your opinion?
08:00I mean, how can you stay on top of a teenager?
08:03Yeah, I think that's probably not the question.
08:08How do you manage your teenage boys?
08:12I think the question is what messages in the culture are being distributed through all
08:18of the banal networks that we know of, whether it's a social media platform or the news or
08:24TV. How are those messages arriving at young men who are receiving lots of
08:32contradictory information about the culture?
08:34And one answer to this doesn't come in the form of like, hey, women are having these
08:39hard conversations. Why aren't boys and men?
08:42One of the answers is about the way in which we enforce this strict gender binary in the
08:47context of the nuclear family.
08:50That clearly is both an outmoded and potentially a dangerous social
08:56structure to just keep enforcing without any questions about its implication in the
09:02production of toxic masculinity.
09:05And I know we're probably running short of time, but there's another piece of this that I
09:10think is important.
09:11You know, you've had segments on the news today about the fear of the rise of fundamental
09:18Islam. But what about the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, which, of course, is
09:23fueling the authoritarian capitalism and toxic masculinity that we currently live with?
09:28We need to be asking different questions about the culture that we inhabit and stop looking
09:32to the same old explanations.
09:34Jack, very, very briefly, if you will, we saw that Australia has restricted social media
09:39for under-16s. Is this something states should be looking at doing, considering the
09:43teenagers know how to outsmart the system?
09:47Well, I honestly think we should all restrict social media for everybody, for
09:53ourselves. This is clearly out of control.
09:57Yes, probably you should restrict it for under-16s, but we should probably all of us get
10:01off these platforms run by plutocrats and billionaires.
10:05Jack Halberstam, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
10:07More news coming up on Around the World.
10:11Stay tuned.