I watched this show after I listened to all the hype about this and while the study seems like it may be credible, I don't really get it.
They spent the entire first season delving into the mindset of a girl who had committed suicide and everything that led to her making that decision. From bitchy and macho high school popularity, to bullying to rape and then the trivialization of her experience leading up to that decision. It was a show about all of life's very real events that contribute to the thought processes that go on inside the head of someone in this state. I understand the repercussions it may have caused a spike in teen suicide and while I hate to minimize that, it served a far greater purpose which was helping everyone that doesn't suffer from suicidal thoughts understand just what someone with depression battles silently every day.
As someone who does battle depression every day, I can assure you, this topic needs to be brought to the forefront of people's understanding. It's still a common mentality that depression isn't a thing, that it's just people whining about not being able to deal with life. People need to know how to read the signs that are routinely missed, misunderstood, trivialized and invalidated in the most mentally devastating manner that lead to suicidal thoughts.
I'm sad that there seemed to be a teen suicide spike, I'm sad that people chose to look at this show as an ideation of teen suicide, but it was a very real treatise on what it is to go through depression and suicidal thoughts and it's a topic that needs to be discussed openly instead of being swept under the carpet and ignored, belittled and stigmatized.
I applaud the show for the ground they broke. It needed to be.
most of the criticism i've heard about 13 reasons why is less that it portrays a 'taboo subject,' but rather that it does so in a way that glamorizes suicide.
from some perspectives, hannah got everything she wanted by killing herself. she got attention to her case and revenge on the people who mistreated her - and the show portrays that she wouldn't be able to achieve that if she hadn't committed suicide.
not everyone sees the series that way, of course. but for a certain subset of people - often young people who are bullied and neglected, who feel victimized by the world but helpless about it - it's very easy to interpret the series into 'suicide is how i win.'
I see it as less about how I win than here's how I get people to realize the effect their behaviour had on me to a point that I considered that suicide was the only viable to way to end a suffering I can't see any other way out of.
these kindsa shows glamorizing the effects are ignoring one crucial fact - when the person affected dies, it becomes 10 times easier for everyone to ignore/avoid the issues that led to her death. sure some people may reform/chase the issues but those are statistical outliers.
there is also the "they were mentally unstable and any testimony they provided posthumously is suspect" which lawyers can and will use
The other issue is that the kind of people that bully someone to the point that suicide is the only way out often lack the empathy and self-reflection to understand that they were the cause of the problem.
The way they called this out in the show could be interpreted as vengeful, but is there any other way they could have addressed this angle?
The jock football captain raped her and then showed such little remorse, not only brushing it off as nothing, but that because of who he was, she obviously was "gagging for him" (to coin a British phrase.) He thought of it as having done her a favour by gracing her with his attention. Is there any other way to demonstrate what effect that had on her mental state to someone with such narcissistic tendencies than to choose a tactic like this to make him hear her and understand the effect he had on her? He clearly lacked empathy and had little if any ability, or want to self reflect. If she'd still been alive, he probably never would have listened to the tape. He'd have scoffed at her and belittled her and would never have given his behaviour a second thought. He only listened to the tapes because he was backed into a corner where he needed to know what was said so he could get in front of it and keep himself out of trouble. He needed to keep himself in everyone else's good graces because the image he needed to uphold to maintain his place in society was more important to him than his integrity.
Sure, she was mentally unstable... but why was she mentally unstable? The eloquence demonstrated on the tapes were evidence that the torment of her life was the cause of this instability. Any sufficiently skilled lawyer would've been able to argue that point from the tapes alone.
I wouldn't take ranting on cassette tapes and then offing yourself as a sign of mental stability(and i would be more likely to be selected for a jury as a result). The average judge wouldn't even bother listening to the tapes and would ask for a transcript and MAYBE listen to one or two tapes for emotional context(good luck if those were the most incoherent tapes).
Also you are SEVERELY over-estimating how much empathy the average society has for dead people. sure it's shocking but the human mind bounces back REALLY quickly. if it didn't then every school shooting would paralyze the state/country it happened in for years(and clearly it doesn't). it took the world only a decade to forget the atrocities of the world war. 9/11 is a joke to most people now and mostly written off as a one-off.
You don't effect change by taking your ball and going home
The things you're discussing are very important and certainly one of the reasons The Bell Jar first hit me like a ton of bricks when I was young but this show's problem is it frames suicide as a way to 'get back at' the people who hurt you. It's a harmful revenge fantasy.
While I can see your point, usually people considering suicide aren't looking for a way to get revenge or get back at anyone. They're suffering and can't see any way out. Like people who cut, or turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain they can't deal with, suicide ends it, once and for all.
As they say though, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Oluo literally cites a study that suggests that, contra your confidence, revenge absolutely can be a factor:
"A strong relational theme that the participants described explicitly was revenge. Several adolescents explained the aggressiveness of their act as a way to make other people feel guilty for their deaths and made the vindictive intent of the attempted suicide very plain"
> It was a show about all of life's very real events that contribute to the thought processes that go on inside the head of someone in this state.
But no, it's fiction. It's not real, and it's not based on reality. We don't get any actual insight into what goes on in the head of of young person who is suicidal or who dies by suicide. We get what some author and show-runner think might be going on in that person's head.
Which is still much better than none at all. It's another perspective, which as fictitious as you make it, is still different than what most people think right now and push them further toward trying to understands depression.
I have a feeling that it's more than what "they think might be going on" and contains actual research toward how a suicidal people think, but I have no source for it.
As humans, we are really good at clinging onto things that support what we want to believe and forgetting about the things that oppose our beliefs. You see this today: if someone you know does something bad, you are very likely to say "that's just one thing, overall they're a good person". It's the same with religion and politics, you have to have a very open mind to accept new information that may change your beliefs, often it's easier to just let the information slip in one ear and out the other and continue with your daily life.
Someone already thinking about suicide or depression might watch the show (first season, maybe the second as well) and see that suicide is a viable option, and the potential benefits you get for executing it (leaving your mark on the world, leaving behind your story, etc).
Someone depressed, but -not- thinking about self-harm will see how accurate it is and will be able to identify with it, as with you and a few friends I know that have watched it. I had no idea these friends I've had for years were depressed until they watched the show, so it did bring positive change to their lives.
I watched the show and I didn't get it. I mean, she wasn't around to see the effects, so what was the point? I mean, she did all this for revenge. But she's gone, so ... ?
Not trying to be insensitive, I just plain don't understand why she thought suicide was the solution for her problems.
They spent the entire first season delving into the mindset of a girl who had committed suicide and everything that led to her making that decision. From bitchy and macho high school popularity, to bullying to rape and then the trivialization of her experience leading up to that decision. It was a show about all of life's very real events that contribute to the thought processes that go on inside the head of someone in this state. I understand the repercussions it may have caused a spike in teen suicide and while I hate to minimize that, it served a far greater purpose which was helping everyone that doesn't suffer from suicidal thoughts understand just what someone with depression battles silently every day.
As someone who does battle depression every day, I can assure you, this topic needs to be brought to the forefront of people's understanding. It's still a common mentality that depression isn't a thing, that it's just people whining about not being able to deal with life. People need to know how to read the signs that are routinely missed, misunderstood, trivialized and invalidated in the most mentally devastating manner that lead to suicidal thoughts.
I'm sad that there seemed to be a teen suicide spike, I'm sad that people chose to look at this show as an ideation of teen suicide, but it was a very real treatise on what it is to go through depression and suicidal thoughts and it's a topic that needs to be discussed openly instead of being swept under the carpet and ignored, belittled and stigmatized.
I applaud the show for the ground they broke. It needed to be.