Revisiting the popular Netflix-serie “Adolescence” through a Lacanian Lens - "Who is to blame?"

On March 13, 2025, the British series Adolescence premiered on Netflix. In no time, the series became a worldwide success, sparking a wave of societal debates, including discussions about the potential dangers of the digital era we all live in. The topic also made its way into Flemish media: on March 24, 2025, it was discussed in the talk show De tafel van Gert. Due to its growing popularity, I decided to watch the series myself.

The four-part series tells the story of thirteen-year-old Jamie Miller. In the first episode, he is pulled out of bed early in the morning and arrested for the murder of a classmate. The impact of the series could be felt across multiple social media platforms, including TikTok. Viewers shared their thoughts and reflections online after watching. The series triggered not only a wave of emotional and outraged responses but also critical reflections on societal issues such as the influence of social media on children and adolescents. Stephan Graham, who contributed to the creation of the series, stated that its aim was to spark conversations between parents and children (K. Iversen, 2025). After watching, one is left wondering: Who is responsible? Who is to blame?

The story centers on a seemingly “normal” teenage boy growing up in an average family with a mother, father, and sister. His environment doesn't immediately suggest a breeding ground for violence. Yet, he begins to identify with ‘toxic’ male internet personalities and ultimately commits a horrific act against a female classmate out of a sense of humiliation. What is striking about the series is that it’s not primarily concerned with who committed the murder, but rather why.

Already in the first episode, Jamie and his father are confronted by police officers with hard evidence. Surveillance footage shows the teenager mercilessly stabbing the girl. During the interrogation, we see a vulnerable boy, desperately trying to deny everything and convince others he did nothing wrong. It deepens the viewer’s sense of disbelief.

In the second episode, the series zooms in on the broader context in which the violence occurred: the British school system. Viewers are shown how schools struggle to cope with teenagers, who are depicted almost as a ‘terrorizing’ force against teachers that seem powerless. It also becomes clear that they are not the only powerless authority: the police officers themselves struggle to understand the contemporary teen’s world, be it social media, teen slang, or the use of emojis. The teenagers, in turn, don’t seem to take the officers’ visit to the school very seriously. A recognizable distance quickly becomes apparent between modern-day authority figures and youth.

Throughout the series, Jamie’s family is portrayed as unaware and helpless. As a viewer, it becomes increasingly clear that they, like everyone else in the story, are powerless and confused about the situation. Episode three presents an extensive scene in which a forensic psychologist tries to assess Jamie during a conversation. Despite her so-called expertise, even she is left stunned and in tears. The dynamics portrayed in the series shed light on the limits of human understanding, and on both the inability and the urge to quickly resolve certain problems ,especifically, the "problem" of adolescence. I wonder whether a clear-cut answer isn’t simply an illusion that adults desperately cling to. However, the series refuses to provide those answers. It refuses to point fingers. Instead, it highlights the complexity of a contemporary phenomenon in which various institutions, such as the police, teachers, parents, and psychologists, fail (Nussbaum, 2024). It is for this reason that I chose to write about Adolescence.

The Subjective Logic of the Child

Although the series Adolescence refuses to point fingers, it seems difficult for viewers not to assign blame. In many online reactions, the same question repeatedly arises: “Who is ultimately responsible?” Is it society, the parents, or the young boy himself?

On the one hand, I notice that it seems almost a human reflex to want to situate violent acts like this within a broader, more complex framework, seeing them as systemic flaws, societal malfunctions, or failures in contemporary parenting. When these explanations are treated as unambiguous truths, they offer, in my view, a form of simplistic reassurance: they suggest that evil resides outside the individual—as something that can be reformed or corrected, but above all is so “complex” that it cannot truly be understood.

The denial that a seemingly normal boy (someone who could just as easily be a neighbor, classmate, or cousin) is capable of such a horrifying act (one that appears to exceed the limits of what is human) enables adults to transform a direct confrontation with existential questions into a broader social issue: the problem of adolescence.

However, the other end of the explanatory spectrum is even more disturbing. In various online reactions, Jamie is reduced to his act—as if he were inherently perverse, evil, and narcissistic. He becomes a monster: a fallen leftover product that no longer needs to be understood. This desperate search for clear, definitive explanations by the viewer results in the complete erasure of Jamie’s subjectivity. His speech and logic, however distorted they may appear throughout the series, are, in my opinion, dismissed entirely. Jamie is rendered as a problematic figure: a symbolic representation of the aggressive and radicalized adolescent. This is crucial, because the series actually offers a much more complex portrayal of the adolescent’s contemporary world.

The often-shared response that at least it’s not the parents’ fault, since they are portrayed as “normal” in the series, seems at first empathetic and protective. Yet to fully absolve the parents, in my view, also implicitly suggests that the child speaks a language we refuse to hear.

Because Jamie’s speech, however alienating or disturbing, confronts the adult with an uncomfortable truth: one about their own lack and helplessness. Not only ours as viewers, but also that of the parents, psychologists, teachers, and other authority figures. All of them, in the series, seem to fail in recognizing this lack or emptiness that lingers beneath the surface of inhuman acts committed by our children. I wonder why it is so unbearable to carry this lack, especially in relation to themes that affect us so deeply. Why do we refuse to listen to Jamie’s speech, as the so-called representative discourse of today’s problematic adolescent, as a meaningful symptom within a world that is constantly in flux?

Perhaps because it reveals something about the lack of the Other within today’s worldview, exposing how the authority figures, once stable reference points for adolescents, are gradually losing their power. Jacques-Alain Miller (2017) affirms this contemporary phenomenon and touches on a crucial point. According to him, traditional structures, including those around gender roles, are eroding in today's social discourse. He speaks of a certain “hollowness” and a “collapse of all ideologies” as a result of the scientification of society. He names this tendency the waning of the Name-of-the-Father. In his view, fathers no longer know how to “be” fathers according to tradition, something that is now emerging as a symptom of Western society. I believe he hits the nail on the head, and this is also reflected in the series.

This is precisely why it’s so important not to ignore or sweep aside the subjective language of the adolescent. What Jamie shows us through his discourse is not simply to be dismissed as monstrous or evil. Amid the sexist remarks and emotionally detached responses, the attentive viewer sees something else, something that cannot be reduced to hate or destruction. There is grief, uncertainty, shame, humiliation, and longing. We witness a subject searching for a place in this chaotic world, seeking structure and recognition. But he seems unable to rely on a coherent, present Other, one who can structure desire and truly listen to his speech.

To me, Adolescence is far more than a message about today’s weakening father figure in society: above all, it is the story of a boy without a place in the symbolic order. He is not a monster, but someone who cannot position himself in relation to the desire of the Other. What is it that everyone else wants from me, and especially the female? He seeks footing in almighty digital substitutes, online male influencers who guarantee him an identity based on power, achievement, and the denial of the feminine.

The father

A striking yet recurrent detail in the dynamics of Jamie's relationship with his father is the shame he experiences in relation to him. In the third episode, several clues emerge during his conversation with the psychologist, suggesting that Jamie senses his father is ashamed of him. For instance, he recounts an incident during one of his football matches where he made a mistake while his father was watching from the stands. Jamie says: “He just looked away, pretended he didn’t see… Maybe he just didn’t want me to see him look.”

According to Jamie, his father looked away at the moment he failed. At first, it appears to be a moment in which his father disowns him, feels ashamed, or withdraws out of an inability to witness his son's failure. However, Jamie immediately corrects this by suggesting that perhaps his father simply didn’t want Jamie to notice that he was watching. It’s a subtle reformulation, but a telling one: the statement seems to carry a hidden desire,  a wish to interpret his father as protective rather than fundamentally judgmental or failing.

Jamie seems to want to believe that his father acknowledges him, sees him, and positions him as his son within the symbolic field. Yet this desire collides with a harsh reality, in which Jamie instead appears to encounter rejection, silence, and absence.

Although the father, like the rest of the family, appears outwardly ‘normal’ , a hardworking man trying to be better than his own violent father, there is perhaps a core of trauma or sadness in his figure for Jamie. Throughout the series, Jamie’s father often comes across as emotionally distant and cold. This is not so much about overt or visible actions, but rather about the banal and quiet absence of symbolic recognition. Jamie seems unable to rely on a father figure who mediates the desire of the Other and positions him within the symbolic order.

Another striking and interesting example concerning Jamie’s desire occurs when he calls upon his father to be present during the interrogation sessions. He chooses his father’s presence over his mother’s. At that moment, he summons him to appear as the Father, as the one who ultimately introduces the law. Paradoxically, however, he refuses to submit to that law. He continues to deny his actions despite strong evidence, and instead seeks affirmation and belief from his father. It’s as if he wants to expose his lack, but at the same time, he cannot admit guilt. He resists the law, while simultaneously challenging it.

One may wonder whether a deep fear is present here: the fear of an abrupt yet unbearable inscription into a world where he fundamentally falls short. The recognition of guilt would, in that moment, be existential. By stubbornly repeating his innocence to the officers and, above all, to his father, Jamie seems to cling to an illusion of control over his position in the desire of the Other.

It’s also notable that Jamie displays little emotionality in his father’s presence, which contrasts with the affective responses evoked by female figures. Where the father appears cold and absent, the feminine (the mother figure or the classmate) is affectively charged. It is precisely there,  in relation to real affect,  that Jamie seems to lose himself. His tendency is clear: he longs for the Father and calls him forth, but only on the condition that he, as a vulnerable subject, does not have to appear.

This also manifests in the murder he commits. After confessing his love to a classmate, and being ruthlessly dismissed as an “incel” (an internet term for men who are unable to find a sexual partner), something snaps. His position as a desiring subject is once again invalidated,  this time in a brutal and public way. He is mocked online and subjectively annihilated after appearing vulnerable.  What follows is the destruction of this Other, before Jamie himself can be destroyed.

Here, too, something surfaces regarding the sexual and the enigmatic desire of the woman as fundamentally potentially annihilating. The woman appears to him as seductive (as evidenced by the many photos of naked women on his phone) but also incomprehensible. Jamie seems to function in a world of images where his ideal ego is central. When the woman’s enigmatic desire pushes him out of this space and confronts him with the Real, that raw, unsettling part of reality that can't be fully understood, he feels he has only one option left to protect himself. 

That is why violent acts like these cannot merely be understood as unfortunate outcomes of external influences such as misogynistic male influencers (like Andrew Tate). For what emerges in Jamie is not so much the image of an all-powerful Other with whom he identifies as the straightforward cause of his appalling act, but something far more tragic: a fundamental lack.

The Unbearable Lack

During the conversations with the forensic psychologist in episode three, Jamie seems to position himself in two radically different ways. At certain moments, he appears vulnerable and insecure to the viewer, searching for reassurance, especially when it comes to sexuality. For instance, when asked about his attraction to women, he suddenly asks: “Do you think I’m ugly?” At that moment, his dependency on the gaze of the Other becomes apparent. However, this cannot simply be dismissed as “adolescent insecurity”; rather, in Jamie’s case, it appears to reflect a confrontation with the feminine and its enigmatic desire, threatening to destabilize his position as a subject.

It is precisely in these moments, when the Other (in this case, the psychologist) elicits vulnerability and emotionality, that Jamie’s discourse suddenly shifts and hardens. He reverses the roles and positions himself as the one who speaks from the place of the law. He judges, silences the Other, and manipulates. At that point, he is no longer the one being questioned but becomes the one who questions. This suggests that his vulnerability is tied to an unbearable lack, an actual void, that he attempts to bypass through a perverse inversion of his subject position. Whereas earlier he seemed to lose his position as a subject, he now attempts to incite the lack in the Other in order to maintain control over their desire. It appears unbearable for him to appear before the Other as a subject with his own lack, so he seeks to manage the Other’s lack instead, in order to avoid that exposure.

Jamie seems to lack access to himself as the addressee of the Other’s desire. The woman appears to him as a radical Other, which makes the feminine both seductive and fundamentally threatening. It instills fear, not just any fear, but a deep, existential fear of being utterly consumed by the desire of the Other. The woman is the one who seems capable of destabilizing his position, of unmasking him, or worse. It is, in my view, no coincidence that it is precisely when something of feminine desire addresses him (through the psychologist or a female classmate) that he positions himself perversely.

At times, he seeks access to the Other’s gaze to anchor himself; at other times, he radically cuts himself off from it by punishing the Other through manipulative control. Episode three thus displays a shifting dynamic: from fundamental insecurity to sadism, from vulnerability to mastery. This oscillation in relation to the confrontation with the feminine is not without meaning. It may be that the feminine appears to him as a destructive force, capable at any moment of undermining his own subject position, leaving him with two options: either to erase himself or to destroy the Other as a final attempt to affirm his existence. The Other appears to him as a condemning, merciless mirror of his lack.

 Imaginary Identifications as Paternal Substitutes

It is becoming increasingly clear that Jamie’s search for an almighty male substitute, one who tells him how to position himself in relation to the enigmatic feminine desire, carries a deeper meaning than mere bad influence or internet-induced radicalization. His retreat into hypermasculine online figures seems to be a necessity for him, a way to secure an identity and anchor his place within the social field. His imaginary solution to the failing father figure offers the consistency Jamie himself lacks. As Jacques-Alain Miller (2017) states via Focchi (regarding the adolescent transition), it seems to be a way to get a grip on an “immoral” reality in which the Other is no longer experienced as reliable and is replaced by a new, malevolent “big Other.”

These online figures offer him a kind of “manual” for masculinity, especially concerning how a man should position himself in relation to women and vice versa. Yet herein lies the danger: feminine desire does not follow a clear law. As such, it remains a potentially terrifying source of fundamental destabilization. It is a semblance of order imposed upon the Real.

Everything that characterizes the human being is denied by these figures. They symbolize an omnipotence without lack, a subject position without division. They offer an “answer” to the chaos of adolescent life rather than creating space for mediation, space to learn how to bear the lack. In Jamie’s case, this seems to be exactly what he needs. His fear of failure and of not being “enough” can no longer be processed symbolically, which logically leads to the experience of potentially unbearable rejection. For Jamie, it appears to be an attempt to become his own father.

Conclusion
With this writing, I aim to show that the series offers an example of an adolescent who fails to symbolically position himself in a way that allows for mediation between his own desire and that of the Other. There appears to be no inscription within the field of meaning, and his vulnerability is neither recognized nor articulable. In its absence, he turns to imaginary identifications that give shape to his ideal ego, and his quest to understand what it means to be a man is undermined by seemingly “perfect” masculine models in which there is no room for doubt. In my view, it is precisely this that draws him in: the unshakable subject position, one that cannot be wounded.

When Jamie is confronted with brutal rejection and public online humiliation by his classmate, his imaginary identity collapses instantly. The experience is not symbolically absorbed, and what remains is the Real. His act in which he stabs the girl, is the only “language” left, as it is through this destructive act that he attempts to affirm his own existence.

To the question many viewers ask: “Who is responsible?”—I would offer an answer that is less complex than what the media, the audience, and even the creators of the series suggest: those who refuse to listen. Jamie’s act is not merely an expression of “toxic masculinity” or radicalism, but a symptom with tragic meaning, an expression of a subject who cannot find his place and must claim it for himself.