How 13 reasons why has got me thinking
Warning: This story contains spoilers.
I honestly didn’t understand what all the hype about this new TV show on Netflix was all about. Although I never got around to reading the novel, I borrowed my cousin’s Netflix account details and my TV show binge began. Besides just being a source of entertainment, the show has given me an alternate perspective on youth and high school — especially since the culture surrounding the featured school was so different from mine.
When I finished all the episodes, one of the biggest eye openers for me was the possible threat and danger surrounding high school life. Each of Hannah Baker’s unpleasant experiences, documented in her tapes, revealed a dark side to each of her peers through their deception, betrayal and disloyalty towards Hannah. In parties, students get drunk and sleep with each other. In the later scenes, Hannah actually gets raped in Bryce’s hot tub during his party. I find it crazy that besides being a high school senior myself — who is graduating in two weeks — that I’ve hardly ever had experiences remotely close to these. I’ve lived and studied in an international boarding school in Japan and I do have friends, but have never been really close to them. I’ve never been involved in a relationship of any sort, have tasted alcohol or handled a gun. I’ve been to dance parties like my school’s high school prom, where I joined a group of girls and dances and snacked on chocolate and cheese crackers.
In short I find it absurd that the characters — boys and girls my age would be so familiar with practices so inappropriate and illegal.
Something else I didn’t get was how parents and adults are so unaware of what’s happening in the teenagers’s lives. Parents are never at home when parties happen. When both Jessica and Hannah get raped, none of them tell their parents(although Jessica does only at the end). When each of the involved students are asked to testify in court, all their parents give the same reaction — saying they have no idea how their innocent kid got caught up with such problems. Mr Porter is a practically useless counsellor. Somehow adults start waking up only after Hannah’s suicide — before which they somehow never suspected anything.
I find it intriguing that as despite being of the same age as the characters and living in the same time window, in a similar suburban setting, I share around 90% of my life with my parents. They are possibly the people who know me best and trust me as I trust them.
Lastly — and most importantly — something which scared me was the frivolousness in which human life was portrayed. 13 reasons, according to Hannah, were reasons strong enough for her to give up all she had. Jeff just dies so suddenly and unexpectedly in a car accident. Alex shoots himself in the head in the last tape. These characters are there one moment, and gone the next. As an individual who’s never dealt firsthand with a sudden or shocking death, I find it so hard to imagine how some individual’s lives could be so terrible that it would drive them to kill themselves.
13 reasons why was more than just the story of a girl’s suicide. It introduced me to a deep and dark culture of lost self confidence, fear and hatred, where the darkest emotions and instincts are hidden deep within.
