Content warning: This post deals with themes of suicide.
The noise over Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has been so loud it’s drowned out almost everything else on the internet this week.
Rumoured to be the streaming platform’s most successful TV drama series to date, writers and mental health advocates have come out in droves to debate one hot topic:
Is this show opening up an important conversation parents and their teenagers needed to have for decades? Or is this a dangerous grab for money that’s simply guised as some concerned act of advocacy?
The web – and indeed Mamamia readers – seem utterly divided.
But between the countless memes, listicles, and opinion articles penned by columnists – I’ve searched for something I just couldn’t find.
Where are the voices of people who have lived this? Where are those who have had their lives penetrated by the dark tentacles of suicide? What do they think of 13 Reasons Why?
I decided to find out.
I spoke to 28-year-old Lee (she chose not to share her last name), whose little brother Mark died by suicide a few years ago. He was a twin and 24 years old when he passed away.
While there aren’t many parallels between Mark’s mental illness and the fictional storyline of Hannah Baker, Lee does worry about the messages 13 Reasons Why sends to high school students.
Her main issue with the show is a character I hadn’t even bothered to think about – Mr Porter, the school guidance counsellor.
“I know [13 Reasons Why] was meant to encourage conversations between parents and kids, but I don't understand how it does that when the one person who reached out to for help, didn't get any," Lee told me.
"So why would teenagers watch that and want to go get help themselves? If people are suicidal watching that and thinking about seeing the school counsellor, and they saw that scene where Hannah was told to get over [her rape]... why would they?"
LISTEN: Is 13 Reasons Why helpful or dangerous? (Post continues...)
It's a pretty significant downfall - one that the opinion pieces and video interviews seems to have missed.
How can 13 Reasons Why legitimately encourage teenagers to discuss their mental health issues with adults, when the only adults it depicts are at best detached, and at worst utterly ignorant?
"I agree that there are professionals like [Mr Porter] who are like that, but I think they could have done better, because there are also people who aren't," Lee told me. "I know that the show would put me off getting help if I needed it and was at school.
"This wouldn’t encourage anyone to get help at all. It encourages silence, and keeping things to yourself," she said.
It's just one of the reasons Lee feels lethargic about 13 Reasons Why - she loves the idea of opening up discussions about mental health, and creating a dialogue between sufferers and their support networks, but there's a certain way it should be done.
"It felt like characters were rewarded for their secrecy or something," Lee said. "There wasn't any punishment or consequences for staying silent, or reward for speaking up, which I didn't like."
To suggest that people who take their own lives are doing so out of revenge is also troublesome, the Sydneysider said. Because suicide isn't about revenge, it's about deep depression.
"I know that with my brother, he left us a letter, and went out of his way to make sure there was no inconvenience to our family," she said. "The last thing on his mind was making people feel like shit. I feel like Hannah put all this crap on people and [suicided] as a revenge thing, when that's such a simple way to look at it.
"The story I’ve lived is that people who suicide just don't want to be in this world anymore. My brother thought he was doing more damage being alive, he wasn't trying to make us feel guilty, he was trying to make us feel the opposite.”
The most contentious scene of the season, where Hannah takes her life in the bathtub, should never have made it in either, Lee said.
“I was surprised that they shown that scene, I don't think they needed to show her cutting into her skin. I get that they’re trying to be dramatic, but I don’t know if including that scene was wise.
“I don’t agree with all the stuff coming out about it being a positive influence… I just think there wasn’t much to come out of it, really."
So, given our need to talk about suicide and mental health more, does Lee think 13 Reasons Why was worth it, and if she could go back in time, would she still watch it?
“I didn’t think it was particularly amazing," she told me. "They had me hooked on the drama, but now I know I wouldn’t want to watch it."
If you or a loved one is suffering mental health issues, Mamamia urges you to contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit the Beyond Blue website.
Has your life been touched by suicide? What did you think of 13 Reasons Why?
Top Comments
This is another one persons perspective, though, and not one I agree with. I have dealt with a lot of what Hannah dealt with in this series (sexual assault, rape, isolation and emotional abuse). I would have found this particular narrative quite relateable and I think it would have helped in my personal circumstance. It actually not only brings back memories, but makes me more confident in my convictions now, as an adult. It has opened up specifically conversations amongst my friends about casual sexual assault and the pain of isolation, and I find myself sharing things I was actually embarassed to before, let alone at the time. Showing others what effect these things can have on a person has helped them understand what I have been through, and I can give them another dimension. I also found the suicide scene necessary, as I believe glossing over the actual precipice of her pain and the pain of death would have glorified it in a way... like it would have happened calm and quiet? Like it wouldn't have hurt? Like it wouldnt torture the people who found you? As though you just disappear and that's that. The visualisation of the painful, panic-inducing and messy death is more realistic than some romanticised glossing over.
I'm not sure if others feel the same, but this is my personal opinion, as someone who has not committed suicide, but seriously contemplated it. A friend of mine committed suicide two years ago, and I don't know if she would feel the same as the author above or myself, because despite knowing her I was not in her head, and I believe we can speak only to our personal thoughts. Had I not been alive today, would the people who knew me echo these thoughts? Who would know? At the very least, this show has brought these topics to the open more than I have ever seen, and that is definitely NOT a bad thing.
Actually the funny thing about this series and how it turns people and their complicated behaviour into a set of reasons, was that it made me realise that we should never hold ourselves accountable for other people's suicide. An estranged friend of mine killed herself 2 weeks after I walked past her at a train station. We hadn't spoken in 2 or3 years and didn't speakthatday. I never saw her again. After hearing of her death I always wondered what might have happened had I said something, could it have changed the situation.
Hannah's obvious assumption of her own faultlessness and how she contrasts that by assuming that everyone else's actions to her, even indirect actions are malicious and intentional really highlighted the irrationality of blaming 13 people for your suicide and indeed, the irrationality of the ultimate suicide. My friend was mentally ill, it wasn't my responsibility to save her and I had no way of knowing she needed it. Let it go.