A few days ago I power watched “13 Reasons Why.” I can’t speak on the book, I have not read it so I will speak on the Netflix movie of the same name. I have no idea how close the movie is to the book. I am not a teenager or even a twenty or thirty something person, I am definitely older than that. I started watching it to see what it was about, not knowing this was designed for teenagers. I don’t suggest teenagers even watch it without an adult present.
The story starts off with a pretty seventeen year old high school student who just moves to a new town. Before school starts her best friend that she met has to move away. We all hate losing friends but we all move on. I found this movie affected me in depressing ways because I remember school and none of it was good for me. Back when I went to school not only was I bullied by my peers but by my teachers too. So if the teacher bullied and humiliated you then it was okay for the students to do it also. This movie is about bullying. This movie has a good message about bullying and how some students are more entitled than others but it backs it up with a very bad message. I am glad that I went to school when I did and not today. Cell phones and internet increases and keeps the bullying going forever, because once it is on the net it is there to stay.
This movie is full of teenage boys who follow the Donald Trump school of thought that you can just grab, kiss, and rape females and it is all okay especially if you are a jock or wealthy. Yes, when I went to school jocks and cheerleaders were the idols, not nerds like me. So Hannah our female protagonist goes out with a jock one night who while kissing her is sneaking crotch shots with his phone. Then proceeds to send them to every kid in the school and there it starts for her.
In this movie they decided they needed to include everyone and everything. So there are gay kids, LBGTQ, jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, kids with two gay fathers, cops kids, and the obscenely wealthy kids, African American and Asian. They cannot be accused of being racist at all. What I can accuse them of is making it okay or seem okay to commit suicide and blame everyone for why you did it. This is what happens to Hannah and she spends a little over a month dictating her suicide tapes, she didn’t write a note. It is weird to think this today that everyone still has cassette decks. She obviously does because that is what she does.
She dictates thirteen tapes and each person in those tapes has to listen to them and pass them on to the nest person she considers responsible for her suicide. She tells each one why they pushed her that much closer to killing herself. Now this just isn’t about bullying it also involves rape and the wealthy jock getting away with it. It does not address the fact that when people consider suicide they are at the darkest points in their life and can’t even see a way out. Most people considering suicide unless they have a terminal illness do not spend over thirty days putting tapes together.
This movie makes everyone responsible and I am not saying they all weren’t responsible in some way, The thing is Hannah was insanely depressed and yes, it is depressing but she didn’t show it and did not seek out help until the very end and then not really. But it did serve to send horrible mixed messages and the worst was that if you don’t seek help or tell anyone, that it is okay to kill yourself. That if people are not your friends anymore, you can kill yourself and they will put up memorials to you and wow you will be the coolest kid. It does not say that being a teenager is hard, hell being an adult is hard and you will lose friends and be depressed. It does not say seek out help and suicide is not painless, there are other ways and it is not cool. You don’t have to go to your parents, go to clinic or phone a suicide prevention line in your city or town. You can even go to a school counsellor and all you have to say is that you need to speak to someone. Hannah went to her school counsellor who she also blamed and yes, he said something wrong very wrong, but he is not a doctor or a psychiatrist and she was vague about things. She should have just told him she needed to see a doctor immediately He was the first person she should have spoke to not the last.
The whole thing is that there are other things that can be done, suicide is not the answer. People who are close to you, people who truly love you never get over it. You will never be the coolest kid in school if you commit suicide, it is not okay for anyone to abuse or bully you and they need to reprimanded. Because some guy is wealthy, sports star, reality tv star, movie star or president of a country, does not make any of it okay. If someone is no longer your friend you find other friends, you don’t kill yourself. No one said life is easy and believe me it isn’t. There are billions of people who have considered suicide at some point in their lives.
There is something horribly wrong with our world when they make a show glorifying suicide. If this show is even close to the book it is not something anyone should read especially if they are depressed. I wasn’t depressed going to watch this movie but I certainly was after. That was because of the glorification of suicide.
R L Ryder 