\n<\/p>\n
The Netflix drama \u201cAdolescence\u201d requires its audience to linger<\/a> \u2014 to sink into the mundane.<\/p>\n Each of its four hourlong episodes was shot in one continuous take<\/a>, allowing its harrowing story \u2014 centered on a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a classmate \u2014 to unfold in real time. As the visual point of view shifts, its audience is invited to eavesdrop on interactions that are extraneous to the plot, as characters loiter in hallways and cars, and make small talk with strangers.<\/p>\n \u201cAdolescence\u201d is unusual because, as a character study without a propulsive plot, it requires its audience be OK with being in the moment. It stands in contrast to most modern television shows, which are increasingly geared toward a smartphone-addicted<\/a> viewership of people who scroll while watching<\/a> (think fast-moving shows like \u201cReacher\u201d).<\/p>\n It also stands in contrast to how we live our lives, with shortening attention spans, increasing isolation and an inability to sit still. \u201cAdolescence\u201d challenges us to be OK with small talk and boredom, even if our impulse is to disappear into our screens.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re becoming conditioned for these fast filtered interactions that involve constant stimulation,\u201d said Fallon Goodman, the director of the Emotion and Resilience Laboratory at George Washington University. \u201cSo the consequences of that are shorter attention spans, making us more impatient with the natural flow of an in-person interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Early in the fourth and final episode of \u201cAdolescence,\u201d Eddie (Stephen Graham, also a creator of the series), drives to a hardware store with his wife, Manda (Christine Tremarco), and daughter, Lisa (Amelie Pease), to buy paint. The ride lasts eight minutes \u2014 an eternity in television time. Viewers ride along, too, watching as the family tries to maintain the illusion of normality, even as the couple\u2019s young son, Jamie (Owen Cooper), is sitting in jail. As Eddie puts it, they are \u201csolving the problem of today.\u201d They discuss their love of the band a-ha and how Eddie and Manda met, and they make plans to celebrate Eddie\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n The sequence does not affect the central story line in a meaningful way, and one can imagine a less ambitious show condensing this scene, focused strictly on character work, to a minute or two, or cutting it entirely. But from the passenger seat, viewers learn Eddie and Manda are in therapy and observe the heaviness under which the family is living, despite their smiles as \u201cTake On Me\u201d plays in the background.<\/p>\n In real life, engaging in banal exchanges \u2014 with friends, family and strangers alike \u2014 is becoming a lost art, in part because of screens. According to a study published in the journal SSM Population Health<\/a>, the average time spent alone increased to 333 minutes a day in 2020 from 285 minutes in 2003. The average time spent engaging socially with friends decreased to 20 minutes a day from 60 minutes over the same period. The pandemic only hastened this trend.<\/p>\n Audiences have been interested in the mundane before. \u201cSeinfeld,\u201d after all, was famously \u201cabout nothing.\u201d And apparent dullness can make for surprisingly captivating television, as Norwegians discovered in 2009<\/a>. Norway\u2019s public television station, NRK, broadcast footage of a nearly seven-hour trip from Bergen to Oslo, taken from a camera mounted on the front of a train. It became a hit, and inspired a genre called \u201cSlow TV.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Thomas Hellum, a producer of slow television programming, put it to CBS News in 2017<\/a>: \u201cMuch of life itself is boring. But in-between, there are some exciting moments.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAdolescence\u201d is not by any means what the Norwegians would call slow television. Things happen. There are the standard-fare police interrogations and dramatic confrontations. But much of the show is about the day-to-day.<\/p>\n Other artistic offerings in recent years have leaned into humdrum interactions as a way of developing characters. The playwright Shayok Misha Chowdhury did so in his play \u201cPublic Obscenities<\/a>,\u201d which was a Pulitzer finalist last year. More than three hours long, it oscillates between Bengali and English and tracks a doctoral student\u2019s return to his family home in Kolkata, India, with his Black boyfriend. It is more meditative than propulsive, even for a stage play.<\/p>\n Chowdhury said in an interview that it was \u201can interesting challenge for me to try and illuminate all the tiny dramas that bubble up from within the most mundane conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201c<\/em>In theater we talk so much about what people want and objective,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me, all of that stuff is embedded if we listen really carefully to the conversations that we have on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By lingering in uneventful moments, \u201cAdolescence\u201d and \u201cPublic Obscenities\u201d say something about the ways our increasingly digital lives have made that more difficult. One of the story lines in \u201cPublic Obscenities\u201d involves an older Bengali man, the main character\u2019s uncle, losing himself in an online affair. \u201cAdolescence\u201d explores the corrosive nature of social media on children.<\/p>\n