(Archive May 2017) Review of “13 Reasons Why”

By Brianna Stevens | Observer Contributor

It’s 2 a.m. I should have been asleep hours ago, but here I am, crying my eyes out over 13 Reasons Why. If you’re like me, you, too, sobbed at the graphic depiction of suicide in the show. It was gut wrenching to watch.

If you have not seen it, 13 Reasons Why is based on the book by Jay Asher, which was published in 2007. The show tells the story of Hannah Baker, played by Katherine Langford, a teenage girl who decides to commit suicide, and leaves behind tapes explaining her 13 reasons for this choice.
I was impressed with this Netflix Original Series, and yet, disturbed. It was a bold move to show all the graphic scenes that they did, which was done against professional advice. A “viewer discretion” warning popped up before at least 3 of the episodes because of the graphic content depicting rape, suicide, and general violence.

In the special, “13 Reasons Why: Behind the Reasons,” Brian Yorkey, the executive producer of the show, said “we worked very hard not to be gratuitous, but we did want it to be painful to watch.” During this scene, I was already crying and I was holding my stomach, gasping for breath because of how painful it was to watch. Despite their efforts, the scene was too over the top. Differing from the book, where Hannah ended her life by taking pills, the show depicted her slitting her wrists and bleeding out.
The choice to adapt this book into a short series as opposed to a movie was a wise one. Every single episode is packed with important details that, if turned into a movie, would have been lost and the power of the story would have been lessened.

Every detail was vital to the message. The overall theme being, nobody knows what’s really going on in somebody’s life. Nobody even realized that Hannah was so close to ending it, as she said in the last episode, “The scary part is, it looks like nothing.” You can’t tell what’s going on underneath the surface. To expand on that, we truly do not know what Hannah’s true intentions were in ending her life. Was she trying to escape the pain of her own mental illness (which was not identified), or was she trying to make all 13 people on her tapes feel terrible? Either way, what she did ended another person’s life, and we do not know if that was unintentional or not.

What I am asking of viewers is to skeptically and analytical watch his show. Was is truly done to the best extent it could have been? Were the “Viewer Discretion” warnings enough to ward off the intended audience? I know when I was a young teen, a silly warning like that would not have stopped me from viewing.

Addendum: Although this show had a powerful message and graphic way of depicting that message, the target audience was inappropriate. This show is marketed as a “teen drama,” and yet the graphic nature of Hannah’s suicide is far too sensitive for young teens. The way it is depicted is incredibly triggering to those who have had suicidal thoughts or depression. The show sensationalizes suicide and makes it look like a good way to get revenge on people who have hurt you. The reality is that suicide is a permanent end to temporary problems. Once you get passed all the dramatization and glamorization of the show, there is just the gruesome and cruel death of a high school student who believed she was alone when she absolutely was not. The show glorifies suicide and fails to mention mental illness. In a statement, Dr. Steven Leicester, head of online counselling services at Headspace, said: “There is a responsibility for broadcasters to know what they are showing and the impact that certain content can have on an audience – and a young audience in particular.”