wgingery

1) 13-year old Jamie is accused of a serious crime: stabbing a female fellow classmate to death.

But instead of taking the audience through the experience, and getting us to feel what happened in our blood, the show detours away from the act, again and again, and expends its energies on stupid mind games recalling the worst excesses of Mao's Communist China.

The murder, it turns out, is merely a 'McGuffin,' an excuse to make Jamie the scape-goat, and by extension, all men.

Because, let's not shy away from naming it, the writers want men to be (metaphorically) gelded so girls and women can feel 'safe.' .

2) You know how your hand feels after handling a slug?

Well, you feel the same way after watching this and now you know why.

In George Orwell's book '1984,'' the authorities manipulate the citizens into believing anything - Black is white. Up is down. 'Adolescence' wants to convince you that 'Masculinity is toxic.'

But consider how they stack the deck:

A) The boys' eyes in the title sequence are manipulated, suggesting that boys are evil, whereas the girls are wide-eyed innocents.

B) In the real-life cases which served to inspire 'Adolescence,' the perpetrator was non-white.

Jamie & his Dad are straight & white., The writers have divided everyone into one of two types. The ones with the 'correct' attitudes are all non-male and/or non-white.. Jamie's Dad - out-of-shape, close shaven, white, working class background - contrasts with the DI - very much in shape, middle-class, black.

3) Cumulatively, this feeling of being manipulated, distances the viewer.

In actuality, of course, it's the schools that have committed the crime of trying to geld boys. They do not affirm boys' masculinity as the natural complement to girls' femininity. Instead they subject boys to what amounts to a systematic years-long '1984'-type brainwashing, with the goal of inculcating belief in toxic masculinity.

Therefore, although Adolescence' would like to be seen as an uplifting tale about social media and father/son relationships, what it actually depicts is a sick-making depiction of a feminized society panicking (as in door-bashingly panicking) over losing control over the discourse around men and masculinity.

FWIW The formation of the word 'adolescence' is interesting. The base meaning is 'al' meaning 'grow.' However, when used as a participle, as in 'altus, it came to mean 'high,' as in 'altitude,' or 'altezza' 'highness.' The related word in English is 'old,' German 'alt.' Later to 'al' was added the intensive particle 'ad,' giving the word 'adultus,' = full grown, adult. (Compare 'coalesce,' meaning 'to begin to grow together, clump').

Finally, applying the suffix '-sce-' which adds the meaning 'to begin to, to start to, we get 'adolesce' - beginning to grow into adulthood.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, nevertheless, take a moment and try on the idea that Blackthorne is a 'Ken.'

Immediately, so much that was puzzling about Blackthorne becomes intelligible: how he can be useless yet also sexy, central to the plot but also the object of derision.

And if Blackthorne is a Ken, Mariko becomes a Barbie (a woman deprived of agency), while Toranaga corresponds to America Ferrara (who, if you recall, is the one who schemes to subvert Ken's 'patriarchy.')

The reason for the correspondence is that underlying both shows is the same post-modern feminist notion of 'the patriarchy': straight white men have seized power unfairly, causing women and men of color to be 'marginalized.'

Accordingly, in order to rectify the situation, i.e., subvert the patriarchy, straight white men must be 'de-centered' and moved to the margins, while women and men of color have to be moved to the center.

Doing precisely that is what this 'reimagined' version of 'Shogun' is up to: 'de-centering' Blackthorne and replacing him at the center with Mariko and Toranaga.

Thus virtually the entire show is about Power - who gets to wield it, who does not, and where one fits in to the system.

This show ends with Toranaga standing godlike on a hill looking out over the water, contemplating the hills beyond, as though envisioning the future.

Plainly, what the show runners admire about their versions of Toranaga and Mariko is that they have succeeded in subverting the power system of their time and place.

Unfortunately, as many viewers have observed, this comes at a cost. It is hard to relate to them. One can admire this Toranaga and esteem this version of Mariko, but not truly love them.

The exceptions prove the rule. It's indicative of their position outside the constraints of feminist post-modernism that Fuji and Yabushige are the two most human characters, as well as the most popular.

The theme of 'Oppenheimer' is connection: the present to the past, of course, but more importantly, one individual to another. It attempts to show how the effects of one man's actions, for good or ill, radiated out like ripples on a pond to affect potentially millions of other people.

The primary aim of 'Oppenheimer" is thus not to teach the history of nuclear physics in the manner of a documentary, but rather to give viewers an experience - the experience of wielding god-like powers together with accepting the responsibility for the consequences.

It is for this reason that "Oppenheimer" takes the form not of a public, objective narrative, but of an interior, subjective personal interpretation. Everything on screen has been filtered through the consciousness of either Oppenheimer (color) or Strauss (B&W).

This accounts for the rapidity, the abrupt cutting, the condensed dialogue, the abundance of characters and the sheer length. The viewer, almost overwhelmed by the multitude of connections, feels scarcely able to keep up,

If there is a flaw in the movie, it lies in the lack of preparation for O.'s sudden comprehension of his debt to others. As it stands, it doesn't quite make sense. What triggered it?

Ultimately, though, this is more than the story of one man, it is a story of a nation, as relevant today as eighty years ago. It is also - potentially - the story of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well.