#[ or just ignoring his (admittedly kinda glossed over) character development !!!!!! ]

[redcasted-blog]

[ a warning for anyone who wants to create headcanons that go directly against fanon in a tiny fandom: there are no good fics that you can read which do the character justice. source: me with red link ]

[qyriad]

Ok, Let’s Talk About 13 Reasons Why

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why, I’m here to give my two cents because I feel the people praising it and those condemning it are both missing a lot. I’m going to try to fill in the gaps...which considering the overwhelming amount of controversy means I’m going to be advocating it a lot. 

Having said that, I’m going to start with what the people who are praising it are missing. Before that though, let me add to my credibility a bit; a lot of those who condemn the show say that those who praise the show obviously don’t have any experience with mental health. That may very well be true. I, however, am personally depressed. I have self-harmed. I’m passively suicidal. I have anxiety too (and serious insomnia but that’s slightly off topic). I am an asexual transgender lesbian. I have a right to talk about mental health. *Ahem*, let’s begin. 

13 Reasons Why is Not Some Force For Mental Health

I’m actually pretty surprised that the first few articles that surfaced about 13 Reasons Why regarded it as such. From the first ten minutes it was clear to me that it wasn’t going to have any meaningful message on suicide. The premise is that a girl kills herself and sends tapes listing her reasons, essentially her suicide note(s), to all the people that she blames. The idea of that premise is pretty absurd, and to me it is already obviously glorifying suicide. This isn’t going to be clear to a lot of people who are dealing with mental health issues, but I would have hopped that the people writing this article maybe would have. 

There is no takeaway on mental health here, or no good one at least. No takeaway on suicide. This show doesn’t have anything good to say about either of those.

Showing the Actual Suicide is Indefensible

Holy shit I still can’t believe they actually did that. I can’t believe they actually thought it was a good idea to show the act of performing suicide. They literally decided it was a good idea to show suicidal people how to kill themselves. That is indefensible. I can’t even begin to explain how dangerous that is. That alone makes any ban against the show completely justified. 

“You Can’t Love Someone Back to Life” / “You Can Try”

I’m sorry...what? This is another demonstration of why I don’t think this show is supposed to be taken seriously as a force for mental health in general. Let’s be a tad bit real: love? It helps. A lot. Personally I don’t think I would be here writing this without the ones that love me and that I love. That being said. You cannot fucking say that love prevents suicide as a rule. That’s just bullshit. It’s almost embarrassing. Plenty of people have been loved and still killed themselves. Also this sends the message to loved ones of suicide victims it’s their fault. That’s dangerous to anyone with existing mental health problems as well!

“Self Harm is What You Do Instead of Killing Yourself”

*Groans*. Ok. First of all that line was almost unbearably cringey to hear. This is another thing I can’t believe they actually put in the script. And I guess to a certain strange extent they’re kinda sorta not really right? Like sure, I’d much rather someone self-harm than kill themself. But that line was basically saying “if you’re even thinking about suicide, cut yourself instead!” That is dangerous, but hey at least it’s less dangerous than suicide right? Oh wait they showed the actual suicide. God dammit. 

That was a lot shorter than it could have been because there is no shortage of criticism for 13 Reasons Why. Having said that let’s move on to what this show is good for.

Parents

This is a big one for me. There’s not nearly enough media that shows meh or bad parents and the effects of them. There’s plenty on stereotypically abusive parents, and plenty of media have meh or bad parents, but they gloss over them. 13 Reasons Why has some great moments where you just want to scream at the kids’ parents. Especially Clay’s. I’m going to cite when Clay comes home drunk here. They ask him if he’s drunk and he responds “I think so”. Presumably Clay has never done anything like that before. As the viewers, we know that he was forced to. Admittedly it’s pretty unreasonable to expect parents to come to that conclusion. However, without knowing what actually happened, it would have been pretty reasonable to assume that Clay made a huge mistake that he either does or will deeply regret. Instead Clay’s mother skips logical reasoning and goes straight to punishment: grounding and yelling. There is a lot wrong with that, and 13 Reason Why paints in a way that you feel Clay’s frustration toward his parents. Things like that are actually really important. Clay’s parents didn’t even ask for an explanation. His dad finally offers some sanity and stops his mother before she goes too crazy, but even he doesn’t try to figure out what actually happened. All sorts of parents are shown in this show, and while each representation isn’t perfect, it is much better than mainstream media is doing. 

I’d also like to take a small moment to also praise the show for depicting the counselor as a condescending asshole, because that really is how most counselors feel. 

Rape

Ok I’m going to cop out this one a little bit, because I have to. I have no experience with rape. As such I’m not fully qualified to speak on it, and if anyone would like to correct me in any way, please do so. That being said, I’m going to speak on what I think I can still talk about, and on what I’ve seen others who do have experience say. 

I’m very glad they depicted it the way they did. They didn’t display it as overtly violent other than the rape itself: ie they didn’t show someone beating the crap out of a women to the ground and brutally raping her. That’s the stereotypical representation, and it’s dangerous. It perpetuates the idea that rape has to be that way. No. Rape is nonconsensual sex. I’m sure you can find plenty of other Tumblr posts talking about that. 13 Reasons Why depicts it as just that, and that is great. Yes it’s hard to watch, it should be. It should also have way more trigger warnings definitely. But it does show what is probably one of the more common forms of rape, and it firmly takes a stand against it. Which brings me to my next point. 

How We Talk About Rape

Yes rape gets two sections. Hannah goes to the school counselor and starts to talk about how she was rapped. The counselor immediately assumes Hannah “made a decision with a boy she regrets”. Hannah actually calls him out on this which is pretty awesome. After that, she’s asked if someone forced themself on her, to which she replies yes. She’s then asked if she was drunk or otherwise under the influence. He asks if she said “stop” or explicitly told him “no”. Hannah’s frustration is obvious, Clay’s reaction to hearing about this is obvious; the show makes a clear and strong stance against victim blaming. Then he just tells Hannah to “move on”, which is what causes Hannah to finally give up. 13 Reasons Why shows how society blames rape victims and does nothing about it, and vehemently condemns it. That is extremely important.

Storytelling

In a perfect world, this would be an incredible show. If we didn’t have to worry about the messages it sends, I’d be praising it endlessly. The audio and visual direction is fantastic. The characters are well developed, and Hannah’s sense of humor is kind of perfect. The pacing is brilliant (especially considering they dragged this out from a book that takes place over the course of one night). This show is really good art. However, this is not a perfect world, and the messages sent by media are more important than ever every day. 

Conclusion

I hope that we can learn from 13 Reasons Why. In both ways. If you stripped cringey moments and the, again indefensible showing of the actual suicide, you’d just have the premise, and then we could just say “hey this show is built on a crazy premise, don’t take the premise seriously, but it’s pretty good”. But we can’t. So I don’t advise your average person, and especially not someone with mental health problems to watch this. I do recommend this to anyone who likes analyzing storytelling, and anyone creating storytelling, because then maybe we can start to see better depictions of parenting and its effects on kids. Maybe then we can start seeing media talk about rape the way it should be talked about. I’m certainly not saying we should ignore what’s wrong with the show. However, it does do a lot of things right too, and if we’re very very lucky, maybe other media can learn from those instead.