I just finished watching the first season of the recent hit NetFlix drama series, 13 Reasons Why. The subject of the series is teen suicide and it’s depressing but it’s a good series and well worth watching. I recommend it. It’s certainly conversation-provoking which I think was its intent.
Revealing that it’s about teen suicide is not a spoiler—that’s something we know from the very first minutes of the very first of the show’s thirteen episodes. Each of the episodes is devoted to one of thirteen tapes made by Hannah, the young woman who took her own life, each of which is dedicated to one of the people she considers a reason for her death.
The series compresses an enormous amount of dysfunction into thirteen hours. Factors besides depression that are at least touched on include bullying, sexual abuse, absent or otherwise inattentive parents, broken families, worries over sexual preference, financial stresses, high school cliques, indifferent or otherwise ineffective high school staff, and substance abuse. It is saved from being the teen angst equivalent of the perfect country western song by sensitive and affecting writing, acting, and direction.
I found it too distressing to watch straight through. I watched exactly one episode at a time over a period of several weeks until I watched the last two episodes back-to-back last night.
I have no basis for knowing whether it is a realistic depiction of today’s adolescence or not. To my eye it is surreal—augmented reality—rather than real—actual reality. It certainly doesn’t reflect what my high school years were like. If high school is actually like that now it’s a scathing condemnation of the world that today’s adults have built.
In a bit of irony 13 Reasons has been renewed for a second season.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it. There was a suicide in my son’s class this year, and all of the issues described ring true in my experience as a parent of adolescents. I think it really is quite bad in most junior high and high schools, and the best we hope for is to find pockets of normalcy.
I was also told by an LCSW that her colleagues all report concerns that their at risk teen patients might be influenced by the show to put suicidal plans into action. My impression was that they felt the show was realistic and well done but parents need to be watching it with their kids and that’s not happening in many cases.
I can’t speak for today, but from my experience of twenty-three years ago, girls were treated like objects for sadistic expression.