ADOLESCENCE

A fame generated by white fear?

Abstract

The miniseries Adolescence, released by Netflix this year, has achieved surprising fame. In Brazil, the series was in first place for a while in the most-watched series, and internationally, it reached ninth place in this category. The series addresses sensitive and relevant issues, such as (cyber)bullying, inserted in a context of criminalization of a 13-year-old boy. What if, from a racial perspective, certain choices regarding the cast and script were directly responsible for this fame? What we will discuss throughout the text is that the relationships between youth, public safety and social unrest present in the miniseries are necessarily racialized. To this end, by provoking the boundaries between the fictional and concrete dimensions of the series, we will analyze it as a case study, in dialogue with critical criminology and critical studies of whiteness, in addition to official data on Brazilian and international public safety.

Keywords: Adolescence. Cinema. Whiteness. Public Security. Racism.