With the incredibly sensitive social themes of Netflix‘s Adolescence, it should come as no surprise that some viewers are politicizing the series.
Jack Thorne, who co-created the show with star Stephen Graham, recently denounced “absurd” insinuations that knife crime in the UK “is only committed by Black boys” after unsubstantiated online claims that he changed the ethnicity of the main character to make the show’s killer 13-year old white boy Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for the murder of a girl at his school.
“We’re not making a point about race with this,” said Thorne on The News Agents podcast. “We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.”
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His statement comes after Elon Musk personally amplified one post on his social platform X, accusing Thorne of “anti-white propaganda” with the series, claiming he “race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.”
“Wow,” wrote Musk in response, offering no additional context for his 219 million followers.
Leading Netflix’s charts in its debut week, Adolescence is not based on one specific case, but it aims to call attention to online radicalization of young boys and widespread reports of knife crimes.
“The big question was why is violence from young men or boys towards young women or girls going up? Why is this happening?” Thorne previously told Deadline. “Looking into it and trying to pose that question as fulsomely as possible, without providing easy answers, was the aim that Stephen [Graham] and I set out on years ago.”
Thorne added, “I hope what we’ve done is shine a light on an area which has been talked about but not looked at. This is an issue that everyone has been aware of, but discovering it through Jamie is something we’ve been set on capturing. That people are excited to watch and understand Jamie, and try to understand the issue through Jamie, is rewarding.”
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