*Mild Spoilers Ahead*
I still don’t know if I would say I liked “13 Reasons Why.” How can you “like” graphic depictions of sexual assault and suicide? It seems like the wrong word.
It’s definitely thought-provoking and well done. You know a show is complex when it creates conflicting opinions within one viewer. On one hand, I think people who believe the show should be banned are overreacting and unable to appreciate art, but on the other, I agree it is triggering. After watching the second season, I realized the show makes me want to kill myself.
To clarify, I am not suicidal nor have I ever been suicidal, and although I do own the same shoe box Hannah puts her tapes in, that’s just because I dress like I’m still in high school. I don’t think watching the show puts me at a risk of self-harm. But I also don’t think my feelings are the result of some flaw in my psyche rather than the content of the show. I feel this way when I watch “13 Reasons Why” because it treats victims of suicide (and trauma, to a lesser degree) like they are far more important than everyone else. Hannah Baker is mourned for two seasons by people who blame themselves completely for her suicide.
None of them seems to consider that maybe the tapes are vengeful and the product of an unstable mind. The message sent to the audience is that the revenge would work. All you have to do is kill yourself, posthumously blame it on others, and watch regret and remorse flood from your tormentors from a nice cozy seat in the afterlife.
It’s not an accident that viewers might find themselves wanting to be like Hannah Baker, or to get the attention she does. But imagine if Katherine Langford weren’t so gorgeous. What if the main character was an unattractive, weird teenage boy? I don’t think they could create a series about everyone being obsessed with Tyler if he committed suicide. I’d like to see if they could do it about any kind of boy. In a sense, Hannah Baker becomes a fantasy after she dies, a kind of myth. It’s a kind of objectification. Despite trying to break down barriers and create awareness, the show still perpetuates the dangerous idea that the only people worth caring about are beautiful. And that women get power and significance by being sexual objects.
Although the show is touted as raising awareness for mental illness, in my opinion, it does a better job highlighting the effects of bullying and trauma. Why does Hannah kill herself? Presumably because of everyone around her. But if it’s really their fault, why is Hannah considered mentally ill? If everyone else is to blame for her suicide, she must have made a rational decision. I mean, suicide can be rational. It’s not like everyone who kills themselves does it for the same reason. Hitler could have made tapes if he wanted to. I guess ISIS members actually do sometimes.
But mental illness is not logical or rational. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an illness. Trauma can trigger mental issues, but being devastated over someone’s death, for example, doesn’t mean you’re mentally ill. It’s just when the negative feelings go past what is a normal reaction that you may have a problem. So portraying Hannah’s death as the consequence of her treatment by others suggests she’s fine; she’s just been unbearably tortured by a bunch of high school students.
But Hannah is clearly mentally ill. Some viewers have theorized that Hannah has borderline personality disorder. If the show is really about mental illness, why are viewers the ones providing the actual psychoanalysis of what’s going on? I bet there are a lot of people who’ve never heard of BPD, and here where the show could have educated us about it, we get nothing. Instead we are looking at the events depicted through the lens of Hannah’s mental problems, and nobody ever seems to object.
They should object, over and over. Instead the only question they ask is if Hannah is telling the truth. So if she is, they’re all murderers? Why don’t they question that part? The tapes are essentially public humiliation, which surely falls into the category of the bullying that they are speaking out against. And everyone who receives the tapes before Jessica finds out she was raped before she even knows herself. Why does no one acknowledge what a terrible thing that is to do to someone? But somehow Hannah’s mistakes are just not as important as everyone else’s.
And this, I think, is why the show has a triggering effect. It reinforces negative, toxic thought patterns and deems them valid. The show is brilliant because it portrays life accurately enough so that we can see the truth despite what viewpoint is pushed on us, but for all the people who can’t see that because what is represented is how they think, it tells them that they are right.
Glamorizing mental illness is not educational because mental illness is not glamorous, poetic, or special. It’s an illness. It messes you up. It can make you unpleasant to be around and irrational. It can make you not shower for weeks and hurt the ones you love. It can make you victimize others. I’m only mild neurotic but I have to deal bald spots in my hair and eyebrows because I pull out my hair when stressed, and believe me, it isn’t fun. (But in the world of “13 Reasons Why,” someone can shoot themselves in the head and look better than they did a season ago.) Yes, many people with mental illnesses are misunderstood, and of course we should sympathize, but maybe the reason we don’t understand is because what’s going on isn’t normal and healthy.
I know there’s still a stigma around mental illness and I’m not saying we should go back to thinking of suffers as dangerous lunatics. But if we really want people to understand what mental problems are like, portraying them as “pretty” is just as misleading. Sure, some mentally ill people are beautiful, brilliant artists. But some abuse their children. And some are just morons.
In the end, I guess what bothers me about the show is the idea that Hannah couldn’t have done anything to save herself, and so it was fair that she destroyed everyone else. At the root of it, she was a damsel in distress, and Clay was the knight in shining armor who failed her. That’s not progressive, and it’s not realistic. No one is going to save you, and they wouldn’t be able to if they tried. And while we should always be kind to others and remember that we don’t know the demons they are dealing with, what we shouldn’t do, and what we shouldn’t encourage, is the idea that you are the reason another person refuses to help themselves.
Half-Blood Kuwaiti 