"Here's your tape."
I've seen the jokes on Facebook, the memes floating around social media. There have been a couple articles that I've clicked on and read their response to the Netflix adaption of a popular novel Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. My opinion here is joining many voices; for better or for worse, this story has been in the spotlight.
I won't go into a large summary of what I saw. I just wanted to express some feelings that I had throughout.
The show is about a young man in high school named Clay who receives tapes voiced by Hannah Baker, a friend of his that recently committed suicide, explaining her reasons why she ended her life. There are thirteen tapes, thirteen reasons... And those reasons are thirteen people. The instructions are clear: listen to all the tapes, and then pass them on to the person that followed your tape.
It's been so long that I read the book, but I remember finishing it and feeling disappointed because the book had come highly recommended by a few people, and I just wasn't impressed with it. The writing had been good, I liked the character Clay, but Hannah? Hannah is what made reading the novel hard. Here I had this character who hurt so much that she ended her life, and I didn't like her. I wanted to like her, I wanted to feel for her, but I did not like her.
But it's not only widely liked people that hurt so much that they seek a permanent solution. That part was real, if anything.
Beginning the show, I thought they captured the characters well, and they delved so much deeper with having thirteen episodes than Asher did in the book. Again, it's been quite a while.
There are three scenes that were really unsettling. They show two scenes of rape and the last episode does show Hannah's suicide (she slits her wrists in the tub). My mom fast-forwarded her suicide as it was too graphic for us to watch. I know they did this to show that suicide isn't beautiful, to destroy this romantic perspective of it. But there were parts of the story that didn't correlate with this.
Hannah, whether a good person or a bad person or a typical teenager who makes mistakes and is trying to figure life out, goes through several instances of bullying. People are cruel. But some of them are those teenagers who screw up. Some of her reasons are hard to take as reasons for doing something so extreme and permanent. Some of her reasons are pretty horrifying.
She sends tapes around blaming other people, and she threatens exposure if they do not all listen to the tapes and pass them on. A trusted source has a copy of the tapes and will release them to the public if necessary. Meanwhile, her parents are suing the school and are trying to find someone to blame, because there has to be someone to blame. Right?
In this story, suicide is power. Suicide is revenge. There are a couple instances where a character says "we killed Hannah Baker" or "I killed Hannah", and their lives are spiraling downward. And for someone who is bullied, someone who is hurt by others, that is a horrible lesson to learn.
They do show how Hannah's death negatively impacts people who loved her. Her parents' grief is raw and horrible. Clay is falling apart, though a great part is due to him wondering what he could have possibly done to cause Hannah pain enough to kill herself. The school is trying to figure out what happened and how to respond to the lawsuit.
Suicide isn't a joke. But with some of the reasons that Hannah offered, and for her actions of sending out the tapes, on social media it seems to have taken a humorous appearance. Again, with the memes. "Here's your tape." You've done something mildly wrong? Someone sends a "here's your tape" and it's suddenly funny.
That shouldn't be the response to this at all. And yes, a victim who takes their own life shouldn't have to have a heartbreaking story for their death to matter.
But to have this be the voice of suicide, especially for teens, is a little concerning to me.
It not only gives suicide power and places blame on everyone around the person, I found it very interesting in the scene where Hannah writes an anonymous letter to her teacher, expressing very negative feelings (not necessarily coming out and saying suicide), the teacher begins to talk about resources to use if one is feeling that way. The teacher is cut off by Hannah's narration, showing that not only is Hannah not paying attention, but also keeping the audience from hearing what the teacher had to say.
Unfortunately I felt like this show was more about the mystery, about what people had done to Hannah, than about mental health and how to find help. I felt like the message was supposed to be good: Be kind, be aware, help people who need it, etc. (though sometimes being kind, or loving someone, or doing everything you can for them does not guarantee that you can save them).
But at the end of this show, I didn't feel hope or inspiration. I felt a heavy weight. I felt like fingers were pointing and nothing was right, even when some of the characters try to make it so.
I won't say this show romanticized suicide. I just think that if they wanted to talk about suicide, if they wanted to show how negative and heartbreaking it is while also giving people an idea of how to do some good for those who are in need of it or where to go if you are in need of it, this was not the storyline to use.
The last tape is for the counselor that failed Hannah when she was giving someone a shot to save her life. Listening to how Hannah was talking to him was a struggle because something I did realize is that no one has talked to people about how to tell someone you're having serious problems. She keeps saying, "I guess." It felt like a real conversation. She tells him that she wants life to stop, and he wants her to elaborate on that, because it was a serious statement. "I didn't mean it like that, I guess," she says. That begs the question: do people know how to come forward and say that they're in trouble and desperately need help?
This show pointed out the warning signs of someone about to take their life. It showed the flaws of those around them who either drive them to that point or fail to notice the signs. But I didn't feel it offered any conclusions, any suggestions on making it better other than: pay attention and be nice. I wanted more from it than that. And I felt like it tried to achieve more, would scratch the surface even, but then the message would get dragged down by the mystery of what is on this person's tape?
I've heard that it triggered people, that it brought nothing but bad feelings. I've heard that others enjoyed it and thought it helped them. Leave that to the individual.
Me, myself, and I... It was well-acted, well-cast, and I'm glad that I watched it for the perspective it gave me. But it's not one I'll ever watch again, like I'll never read the book again.
