Caravaggio and Adolescence
Ahead of the Jubilee of Adolescents, parallels of the Baroque bad boy to the Netflix series are striking
Struggling through the painful yet captivating four episodes of the hit Netflix series “Adolescence,” I was struck by several parallels to the Baroque bad boy Caravaggio, especially as Rome prepares to receive an estimated million young people for the Jubilee of Adolescents beginning on April 25.
“Adolescence” chronicles the events surrounding the murder of teenage Katie Leonard by her 13-year-old schoolmate Jamie Miller. A turbulent teen himself, Caravaggio would appear to have more in common with the troubled young Jamie Miller than edifying answers to the hard questions the show raises.
Still, watching Steven Graham’s masterful crime drama interspersed with visits to the blockbuster Caravaggio 25 exhibit at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, it seemed to me that the problematic Milanese painter might provide some useful insights into the cautionary tale.
Deviating from the typical police procedural, “Adolescence” doesn’t leave the audience wondering for long about the youthful suspect’s guilt.
After many tears and protestations of innocence, a damning video at the end of the first episode leaves no doubt that the boy stabbed his schoolmate, it then pivots to investigate how the murder occurred.
From his school environment to his home, Jamie seems to be a child of privilege, including the great privilege of being raised by a loving family. But his de facto isolation in a virtual world of idleness, sexual stimulation, and bullying, exacerbates the boy’s existential awkwardness and aimlessness, resulting in catastrophe. Each episode is filmed in a single-take style, enhancing the intensity of the narrative, a technique similar to the dramatic devices employed by Caravaggio to rivet his viewer’s attention.
The series has provoked much discussion, some laying blame on school systems, or the internet, or poor parenting. The choice to cast Jamie as a white boy, a product of married middle-class parents, has forced conversations to sidestep the thorny questions of race and social strata, and to focus attention on this critical moment of adolescence.
It is here, in this moment of physical transformation, when decisions are made and relationships change, that Caravaggio’s artistic ideas align with the showrunners’.