I used to teach middle school and one day we had a mandatory assembly. Teachers and students were told it was an anti-bullying/suicide awareness assembly. It ended up being the author of 13 Reasons Why (this was several years ago, when it was just a book and they were in the planning stages of the tv production) doing a promotional tour. It was absolutely the lamest assembly I’ve ever attended in my life. He kept name-dropping that the tv show might feature Selena Gomez.
After the assembly I rented the book to see if it would work as a class novel but in the first couple chapters it had a blowjob scene and it was downhill from there, so yeah, not something I’d have my class of 12-13 year olds read together.
A couple years later the Netflix series came out and I watched it out of curiosity and because my kids were watching and talking about it. It was worse than the book because it romanticized suicide even more by actually showing the dead girl as a phantom character.
The author claims that he wrote it to help prevent teen suicide but IMO he made it worse by giving a false image of suicide and finality of death.
The concept of weaponizing your suicide against the people that you feel wronged you struck me as very dangerous for young audiences. I'm glad I did not watch this show when I was a depressed teenager. The show glorifies her suicide as an act of personal heroism. For people who do not feel important enough to live, I think it is a bad idea to suggest that their death can give them that importance. In some ways the show is bold for taking on several issues that most shows aimed at teenagers wouldn't want to sully their brand with, but in other respects it uses these issues somewhat irresponsibly and often seemingly for the sake of shock value.
A study set out to demonstrate that the teen suicide rate noticeably spiked in the month following the release of 13 Reasons Why and the data is certainly compelling. Highest spike in the five years prior to the show streaming. At least one girl that I read about watched the show and then killed herself shortly afterwards in the same way that Hannah does. I remember her mother saying she watched two episodes with the daughter and begged her not to finish the show due to her mental health problems. I believe Netflix removed the suicide scene from the show due to the pushback after release.
Mental health professionals urged Netflix to be careful how they approached it and were like “100% do not show her committing suicide”. Spoiler alert, Netflix does the exact opposite of what professionals recommended. I had a past suicide attempt and self harm issues, but had been stable for years before that show came out. That scene gave me, a “stable” adult, a complete panic attack. I can’t even imagine how I would’ve reacted seeing it when I was younger.
I'm not a mental health professional, but I've taken a number of classes on suicide prevention as well as media ethics surrounding reporting on or depicting suicide.
I've literally watched clips of it in training about the worst ways to depict suicide. It's so ridiculously bad. I've never watched the whole thing, but it's like a recipe for sending a kid vulnerable to suicide over the edge from what I have seen.
I'm sorry you had that experience, I can't imagine how upsetting it would be.
In the tub with a razorblade just straight up shows you her doing it and I believe it was correctly if memory serves.
I didn't feel the way others did about the show, but I've never been full blown suicidal. Have your run of the mill depression and a lot of the "I want to die / wish I was dead / etc" thoughts that come with. But haven't yet gotten to the point where I think of it as an option so I imagine it hits differently.
I watched that show the whole way through and pretty much had the polar opposite reaction to what you typically see people say on reddit who bash it.
Though after I want to say the 2nd season the 3rd kind of jumps the shark. The 2nd was stretching too iirc but not nearly as bad.
I don't know that this show would actually help people or anything, but I never felt like it romanticized these things either like people say.
It's very graphic, very detailed, and also still kind of filmed in an upsetting but weirdly beautiful way. People talk about "romanticizing" suicide a lot and I think it's difficult to get across in a Reddit post, but it's not necessarily making the idea of suicide look positive. It's these detailed, graphic depictions that still basically leave a "beautiful corpse" type of scenario.
It's an old concept, you find it in literature going back centuries, the idea of a "beautiful death." Copycat suicides are even sometimes referred to as "the Werther effect" because of a freaking Goethe novel in which the protagonist (Werther) kills himself and supposedly there was widespread copycat suicides from young men who related to his struggles. That probably wasn't real to the extent claimed, but copycat suicides are a thing and depictions of detailed suicide that people relate to can trigger it. So this isn't a new thing, but it's something we need to be more aware of.
I hope that makes sense, I can answer other questions if you want. It's been awhile since I saw it in a training so forgive any errors, but I distinctly remember getting uncomfortable because I did deal with depression and suicidal thoughts when I was younger and I know I would have identified with her and probably fantasized about it.
It shows her slitting her wrists in the bathtub. It’s been a few years and I don’t care to rewatch it, but I believe the shot shows basically the whole act.
I honestly wasn’t expecting to have such a reaction. I read the articles, I knew what it was about, so I knew I’d be affected in some way but didn’t think it would be that extreme. The second she did it I instantly started sobbing and shaking. Like no thoughts happened at all, it was just totally immediate. I don’t think any specific situation has “triggered” me like that before. And that’s 12+ years after my own attempt.
It deeply upset me. Deeply. I didn't even watch the show - my husband did. I happened to walk through during that scene and it fucked with my head. If I had seen that when I was a suicidally depressed 15 I can see that pushing me over the edge. It was a how to die beautiful tutorial.
I've never had any mental health issues. I'm not a squeamish person at all. I watch gory movies and shows all the time. And and I could still barely stomach the suicide scene.
I attempted suicide at 15. I was in the metal hospital for 6 weeks. I read/watched it at the age of 40. It definitely gave me urges, and thinking about it now years later still upsets me.
The concept of weaponizing your suicide against the people that you feel wronged you struck me as very dangerous for young audiences.
Teenagers commonly have fantasies about getting back at those who wronged them. The idea that you could get revenge and escape whatever torment you're feeling at the same time is doubly empowering. I'd argue even that it doesn't take much of a jump to go from hurting others emotionally by killing yourself to bringing a gun to class to physically hurt them before killing yourself.
Yeah, the show takes all these super serious issues that many teens are facing today, and talks about all of them in the worst ways possible. It's almost like the showrunners wanted kids to off themselves.
They only removed that scene I want to say after a year or more of it being in. I think the second season was about to be released when they took it out. They had been warned for many many months that the show was not good for mental health and they were adamant, swore up and down, that they were doing their best job at handling these themes in an appropriate way. It's in almost every interview around that time with the actors being like "oh we are just trying to prevent suicide blah blah blah". So cringy
My wife's old high school had a pretty big problem when 13 Reasons Why premiered. A bunch of high school and middle school students, hyped up on hormones and very strong emotions watching a TV Show glorifying death and more or less showing you how to do it. The school had two or three suicides that year, which was a lot, and, closer to home, two of her cousins nearly followed through. Both are in counseling now, but damn it was close. I guess a bunch of the kids are in counseling now and more than a few are on suicide watch. And you're absolutely right - weaponizing your suicide was a key part of it. And they didn't even have a ton of bullying, it was just a bunch of kids who wanted to stick it to the people they felt were somehow responsible for their life.
My mother in law works in the middle school, so she gets all the news.
I posted a bit of a ranty comment on this topic a short while ago, in response to someone who believed that the show wasn't romanticized because the actual suicide scene itself was off-putting.
It wasn't the scene itself, because no one in their right mind would romanticize that, but what she does and how she does it. Her suicide is treated like an attack on the people who wronged her, not an escape from the pain. The idea of leaving behind "reasons why" isn't an attempt at communication or wanting to be understood, it's an emotional attack in the "you'll miss me when I'm gone, fucker" way. Of course, for people in a healthy state of mind, her suicide would seem terrible, but that's the problem. It's what people with healthy minds think of suicide. And when someone on the edge sees it, or even later in life when someone contemplates suicide (as people are known to do) they might subconsciously remember the show and decide suicide IS the answer. But they don't realize thats it. You don't get to see the revenge that you got on people, it's not revealed to you that a special someone had a crush on you, you don't see your parents crying or your school mourning, because you're dead. It's the end of the line. You only get to experience life, if, well, you're alive.
Additionally, spending weeks working on your suicide isn't something that usually happens. She'd probably have talked herself out of it by then. And, really, people will forget. I've had a teacher, a friend, and a family member commit suicide. Within 6 months, most people weren't thinking of it anymore. Of course, the family member was distant, but after the funeral, she just faded from thought. Sorry, I started rambling because I feel strongly about this, but it's not the act that was romanticized. It was the basic premise of the show, and how the plot progressed. Because it's a show, it's made for common people, but it's not common people we're worried about. It's the people who see the suicide as possibly a positive thing, as a revenge against their tormentors, or as some sort of martyrdom. It's not. It's just trading the years of life you have for a blip of a few months in others lives.
"Contrary to expectations, data from this study did not conclusively demonstrate that the release of 13 Reasons Why was associated with increased suicide rates in 10- to 17-year-old girls."
Remember when authors had standards and a sens epf responsibility? Like when Stephen King pulled the book Rage from publication after students started imitating it?
As is saying that someone is to blame for someone elses suicide. Suicide happens because people are mentally ill (for which situational matters might contribute) not because someone was mean.
I posted this above but I don’t think young audiences may be smart enough to pick up on the message. It’s a great message IMO because even though she does weaponize suicide, it literally changes nothing. The people she sought out to “teach them a lesson” completely ignore her and continue doing what they do. The only people that suffer are those she actually loved and who loved her. The ones who she wanted to teach don’t suffer and continue to bully and put down others.
I don’t expect young audiences or even older audiences to pick up on this because we normally just have knee jerk reactions without actually thinking through the entirety of something. But I get why it CAN be dangerous. Vulnerable teens shouldn’t watch this and I also believe there is a responsibility to parents here as well.
I read this as part of a young adult creative writing class in college, and this was the exact conclusion we all came to. Like normally when we had book discussions, it was lots of interesting discussion and themes and background, pros and cons, etc. This one was just an hour-long bitchfest about how deeply deeply problematic the base idea of the story is. I haven’t watched the show and honestly try not to even click or pause scrolling on anything that mentions it so that it gets as little revenue from me as possible.
People do in fact weaponize it a lot in relationships. I’ve seen friends deal with their partners who would if they tried to leave them in there relationships. Felt bad for the guy.
Yeah that's why I'll never watch it. I was told it was triggering and left it alone for a long time then found out the real reason its so bad for people with depression and had I seen it at like 15 or 16 I would've probably gone through with it. As is I kinda like life now so I'm happy I never watched.
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u/randomredditing 28d ago
Surprised no one has mentioned 13 Reasons Why