Finding Strength in Vulnerability: Filmmaker Frederick Marx Addresses the Crisis of Teen Boys in the “Manosphere”

[Spoiler alert: This article gives away details about the end of the series Adolescence.]

With a 100% perfect critic score and record-breaking two-week total views for a limited series, the soaring success of Adolescence is notable. Philip Barantini’s new drama delves into the darkest parts of the “manosphere.” According to Frederick Marx, Oscar and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, author, and founder of Warrior Films, that uncensored exploration has turned some common cinematic themes into depressingly unnerving images that strike a truly contemporary chord.

The Themes of Adolescence

Central to Adolescence’s heartrending narrative is the fate of the Miller family after 13-year-old Jamie is arrested for a violent crime against his female classmate. This crime unearths important truths that otherwise would have stayed buried. “Boys like Jamie are bullied every day in the cyber world, resulting in sensitive and smart boys releasing their rage in harmful ways.” 

As Marx observes, the series zeroes in on the intimate family relationships that illustrate how it happens. As Jamie and his dad learn to deal with the murder and its implications, the father also uncovers the part he may have unconsciously played in his son’s perpetration. In parallel, a different father-son relationship unfolds between the policeman and his teenage son. Like many other parents, the policeman has to be schooled by his son about the realities of online bullying and its origins. At the end of Episode 2, he makes a positive turn and gives his son more loving attention.

Capturing Transformations on Film

For over 45 years, through his work, Marx has had the privilege of witnessing and capturing transformative moments like these – dawning epiphanies that lead to the process he calls ‘bucketing out the pain’. Adolescence illustrates this in its final moments as the father breaks down and sobs. In a hugely cathartic release, he takes a big step into his own vulnerability to reveal the generational trauma that has indirectly shaped Jamie.

What ignited Marx’s commitment to understanding boys’ issues was the making of Hoop Dreams, an Oscar-nominated film named “The Best Documentary Ever” by the IDA. While focusing on two boys’ high school journeys as they pursue basketball success, Marx began to wonder: Who is there to usher teen boys into true maturity and wholeness?

Revealing the Darkness of Toxic Masculinity

Wanting to find out, he created Boys to Men? – a 4-part mini-series exposing the twilight world adolescent boys inhabit, feeling caught between a macho past and a feminist future. The first three parts follow the stories of three 15-year-old boys over a year, revealing how, despite their racial and cultural differences, they similarly struggle to reach maturity. “Spencer’s Story” is complementary to Jamie’s, revealing how boys’ rageful impulses start with bullying.

The series culminates in the 4th episode, a nearly hour-long studio discussion with 32 boys, aged 15 or 16, who share their perspectives on approaching manhood. In this emotionally revealing conversation, the boys contemplate and compare their definitions of mature masculinity. From different backgrounds, with different aspirations and occasionally opposing ideas, the boys are linked by the toxic notions they have been brought up to believe in. Without purpose-driven mentorship, they turn to social media and peers who only reinforce these harmful stereotypes.

Marx’s Mission to Highlight Positive Models

Making the series led Marx to a revelation. “I had to turn my lens to focusing on solutions. It does no good to posit more and more examples of how “toxic masculinity” is formed; I needed to spotlight positive models of mature masculinity,” he adds. He does this in his short film Rites of Passage: Mentoring the Future and in his book Rites to a Good Life.

At the core of mature masculinity, according to Marx, are accountability and integrity. Ensuring that his words and actions are in alignment is foundational for a boy to become a reliable, trusted man of honor. Emotional intelligence shapes the way a man interacts with others. “Historically, men are not taught EQ. If we have any attunement to our emotional lives, typically, it’s only anger,” Marx adds.

Another factor necessary is a strong sense of purpose – a higher calling, a mission of service – that brings greater meaning to his life. Similarly, every man has shadows waiting to be unearthed – the foundational misunderstandings or lies that he unconsciously lives by, sourced in his wounding. Marx argues that accepting one’s darkness is the first step to finding one’s true light.

The Risks of Repressing Emotions

“Repressing pain and trauma doesn’t mean they disappear. These feelings always resurface, and they need to be dealt with. Without understanding them in the first place, people, feeling lost and overwhelmed, are in danger of acting out because of them. Just like Jamie does. We’re seeing similar scenarios in the news every day, and we have to do what we can to prevent this rage from taking shape,” he shares.

Finally, Marx believes mature masculinity cannot be realized without men learning to live cooperatively, not competitively. Taught by the culture and capitalism that they must compete to survive, men fight over resources, jobs, money, women, success, and more. “As tough as it can be after centuries of being taught otherwise, men need to learn to become allies. They need to let down defenses and let other men see their hearts, their so-called ‘weaknesses,’” he says.

“The reason Adolescence strikes a chord with so many is because it works backwards in time to reveal the historical conditioning that all men absorb. First, we peel back Jamie’s toxic rage; then we see how it ebbs and flows in his father; finally, his father reveals how his father abused him as a child. It’s the transmission from one generation to the next, the generational wounding, that has to be upended,” adds Marx. “All it takes is one moment—one moment for one man to decide to drop the male mask, the strong, emotionless facade, and let himself open up, truly feel, and let tears fall. That’s what’s powerful and transformative, opening the floodgates to healing.”