Let’s talk about 13 Reasons Why
I know I’m a little late to join the conversation, but I really want to share my view on this topic.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not hate 13 Reasons Why. I actually quite enjoyed watching it! I was just a little... disappointed.
Why? First of all, I hated the lack of depression and/or other mental illnesses. That might sound odd, but a lot of people who don’t know a lot about this subject and watch the show will blame bullying and assault for Hannah’s death. They won’t realize she has other problems like depression and/or a personality disorder, since this isn’t discussed once in either the book and the series. I think the fact that they left this out is strange, how do you want to start a conversation about suicide if you ignore it’s #1 reason?
Another thing is the impact such a thing like leaving tapes can have on the people that have to listen. It works for the show and the book, but when such a thing as blaming other people for a suicide becomes a thing in real life it might ruin a lot of lives. In the series it’s shown that, because of the tapes, two people almost tried to kil themselves and one actually did.
I believe this might actually happen in real life, which brings me to my next point: imitators. When someone is already contemplating suicide and see 13 Reasons Why, I totally get they try to imitate it. The show makes it seem like this sort of perfect revenge! When I was working on a first version of this “rant” a few months back, I literally wrote: I would not be surprised if the show causes a couple suicidal people to end their life and leave tapes, letters or whatever, trying to get revenge from the people that hurt them. And now there have been multiple cases in which exactly this has happened. Good job, Netflix!
Also the fact that they showed the suicide, even though psychologists advised them not to bothers me a lot. Especially since in the book Hannah didn’t slit her wrists but took pills. If they had just followed this it would’ve caused a lot less uproar.
I have a whole list of complaints left, but the most important one I want to share is the second season. The only reason a lot of people tolerated the show is because of “the message”, but the fact that there’s going to be another season, that isn’t based on anything since the book stops after the tapes, gives me the feeling that the makers don’t give a shit about the message and just want to make money.
But as I said at the very beginning, the show isn’t all bad. There are a lot of positive things about it, like the fact that it started discussion about topics that aren’t talked about enough and also exposed real flaws in our school system.
I think 13 Reasons Why missed the mark on a couple of things, but if you’re watching it in the right state of mind it can be very educational and makes you think about important and relevant topics. Thank you for reading.