[spoilers]
You must be familiar with the show’s premise by now – the series picks up two weeks after high school student Hannah Baker kills herself and leaves a series of tapes meticulously explaining and placing the blame of her death on students she went to school with. This is my first problem with 13 Reasons Why – it is a heavy-handed show that may be well meaning, but teaches and preaches some pretty dangerous lessons – the first being that “everyone is accountable for your mental health but you”.
For a show that has talked itself up as creating a discussion around teen suicide, the narrative offers no useful advice, tips or any real information on how to cope with depression and suicidal thoughts. Throughout the show Hannah is slut-shamed, rejected, isolated, betrayed and finally raped but in spite all of this turns to no one or no thing for help or reassurance. She is completely stripped of her agency – by placing the blame on her fellow students – when ultimately suicide is Hannah’s choice and the product of mental illness, something that the show never once explicitly mentions.
By the time Hannah reaches the point of killing herself she has endured a series of upsetting and traumatic events, well outside of regular schoolyard bullying. These scenes were not only uncomfortable to watch but prefaced with no warning or disclaimer. In the weeks that follow her suicide the shows main focus is how her death affects those left behind, instead of a more important focus on the sickness that made Hannah Baker take her life and what steps could have been taken to prevent this.
In fact, in retaliation to the controversy surrounding the show, New Zealand’s Office of Film & Literature Classification has created a new rating – R18P – meaning anyone under the age of 18 may only watch the show in the company of an adult. A post on their website hits the nail on the head when it says – “The show ignores the relationship between suicide and the mental illness that often accompanies it – people often [die by] suicide because they are unwell, not simply because people have been cruel to them.”
On the whole, people don’t tend to tackle the subjects of suicide and mental illness without first thinking about how best they can represent and discuss the complex, mysterious topic of mental health – this does not, however, seem to be the case when it comes to 13 Reasons Why. Yes, on a positive note, there is now dialogue that has been opened up as a result of the show’s content, but had the content been handled in a less ham-handed way initially, this rebuttal would not be necessary. The show seems to want to operate as a means of “shocking” teens out of suicidal thoughts and in it’s careless approach, is having the complete opposite effect.
