Contrasting Lost Generations in Adolescence and Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day

I never thought we’d make the same mistakes we saw in films like Kids, but as a 43 year old I cannot deny that we are witnessing a lost generation

I want to come out up front and say that Adolescence is one of the greatest things I’ve watched on a television. I don’t want to qualify it as a show or miniseries or a one-shot magic trick because the honesty with which it grapples with teen angst is to be applauded regardless of format.

I won’t spoil the show and won’t delve too far into plot.

The reason I’m writing about this show and contrasting it with Edward Yang’s 1991 masterpiece Brighter Summer Day is because both stories explore lost generations of men, but the settings couldn’t be more different.

While Adolescence takes place in a nondescript English Town with the backdrop of young women making fun of teenage incels in Instagram comment sections and Andrew Tate rallying those same incels, A Brighter Summer Day is set in 1959 Taipei at a time when children were raised by proxy th…