13 Reasons Why You Should Kill Yourself
(After finally watching Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why)
SPOILER ALERT: 13 Reasons Why is awful. This in itself is a tragedy as the premise is certainly fascinating. Clay Jensen is a high school senior who receives a shoe-box full of cassettes made by Hannah Baker, a fellow classmate who recently committed suicide. Each tape focuses on a person whose actions prompted her to end her life and the first few episodes are extremely compelling. Unfortunately, like any half-hearted suicide attempt, the series starts in a very dramatic way but quickly degenerates into a maudlin after-school special that has all the incisive profundity of a dull spoon. Here’s a list of 13 reasons why 13 Reasons Why makes you want to kill yourself.
1. The so-called “victim”, Hannah Baker, is an insipid, wretched creature. The decisions she makes are horrible and her treatment of some of the other characters is beyond contemptible. By the time she gets around to offing herself, the audience is cheering for her to get on with it — grateful, in fact, that she removed herself from the gene pool. She doesn’t even have the decency to leave a note for her parents who are genuinely loving people — leaving them tormented by needless guilt.
2. In addition, the characters are thoroughly one-dimensional. They’re not high school kids, per say, but more like cheap cardboard renderings of what the 36 year-olds on the writing staff think high school kids should be like. In one scene, two virgins rip off their clothes with all the simmering confidence of seasoned porn-stars. Contrived is the appropriate adjective that describes it.
3. In lieu of authentic characters, tropes and stereotypes quickly follow. Poor helpless girls waiting for someone to save them? Check. Evil rich exploitative white-guy? Yup. Literary gay person who dons 80s New Wave apparel? Done. A diminutive over-achieving Asian? Got it. Ultra-involved helicopter mother? Locked in. As the list goes on, it becomes clear that no one rises above the status of cheap prepackaged stock character.
4. In addition, unlike gritty dramas like Kids where the actors actually look their ages, some of the casting choices make it impossible to suspend one’s disbelief. Take Christian Navarro, the actor who plays Tony Padilla. While he’s dressed like a young John Travolta Grease stand-in, the guy looks old enough to be selling condominiums instead of popping zits and clearing his browsing history from the family desktop. It’s too bad this character didn’t kill himself as well as he’s so tediously sanctimonious. That’s the problem with self-righteous people. They don’t commit suicide. They just make everyone else want to.
5. And speaking of a holier-than-thou attitude, would it have killed the writing staff (clever pun intended) to throw in some more humour? A little banter? Some interesting dialogue between teens who have an almost preternatural ability for off-the-beaten track conversations (think Dazed and Confused)? While it’s true that 13 Reasons Why is taking on some heavy material and dark subject matter, there’s a goodly amount of comedy in Hamlet (which deals with themes of nihilism and suicide) and The Catcher in the Rye (which is the heartfelt narration of a troubled teen). Different tones would have added depth to the series — making it more believable and engaging.
6. Related to the deafness of tone is the absence of nuance. While the show has been (unjustly) accused of promoting and glamorizing suicide, it reduces this issue to the point of absurdity. Here it is in a nutshell: People were mean to me. I killed myself as a means of exacting posthumous vengeance. Feel bad for me. The end.
7. This facile messaging is couched in pretensions of complexity. Since Hannah Baker killed herself on account of what 13 people did or didn’t do, the burden of guilt is collectively shared. “We all let her down,” one character muses introspectively. In a more melodramatic scene, the protagonist, yells, “I killed Hannah Baker! How am I supposed to live with that?” Of course if everyone killed this girl, then no one really did. Moreover, the show misses the point that Hannah actually killed herself. The inanity of this twisted post-modern logic is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s statement that “they muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
8. That brings us to the next point. In addition to suicide, blaming others for one’s own choices is the ultimate expression of moral cowardice. Granted, while she’s dealing with bullying and sexual violation, the redemption of life is overcoming the tragedy of despair — of rising above. However, the logic of the series seems to be the following: I’m not responsible for my life, but YOU are. This shoddy value structure permeates the show making it laughable at some points and unbearable at others.
9. “Something needs to change,” declares the protagonist during one of his many weepy cry-fests. Yes, but what, pray-tell, is the pat one-stop shop solution to teenage bullying and suicide? Answers aren’t forthcoming. Obviously, people should treat each other with respect. People shouldn’t be harassing others online. Fortunately, schools and lawmakers are taking a tougher stance against it. Aside from that, what else is there? Maybe one of the real tragedies of this show is its hubris in thinking individuals have it within their power to prevent tragedy and feelings of despair — which is — for worse or better — a natural facet of the human condition.
10. The futile search for a cure-all solution to these social ills leads to preachy virtue-signalling. The show’s philosophy can be summed up with the following folksy maxim: Be nice to everyone because you never know who’s an unhinged suicidal maniac who will blame you after they slit their wrists. Indeed, throughout the series, the characters wring their hands and pull their hair trying to figure out they could have prevented Hannah’s suicide. If I had only said X or Y or Z then this never would have happened. The implication here is that if only Sylvia Plath’s neighbour had said something nice about her garden, then maybe she wouldn’t have stuck her head in an oven. Narcissism knows no bounds.
11. As guilt gets passed around like a joint at a lame Nickelback concert to exonerate Hannah’s choices, no one questions why she let herself down. Towards the end, almost as an afterthought, the girl finally goes to a guidance counselor. After a perfunctory meeting she decides to leave. She also chooses not to speak to her parents, or talk to someone, anyone — including a random operator at a suicide prevention helpline. The show does its best to paint Hannah into a corner where suicide was the only way out. We know this is simply not true. Instead, she’d rather blame everyone for ending her own life — including the one guy who was actually good to her — which is simply grotesque.
12. Since its airing on Netflix, 13 Reasons Why has garnered a lot of attention from critics, psychologists, parents and the public at large. It has sparked debate and discussion and many see this as a positive step in creating dialogue about these very real issues. However, because it delivers such an unrealistic rendering of suicide, it fails to offer anything outside of standard clichés and does not, as Hamlet suggested, hold “the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image.” It has no genuine social message — save for the faux victimization of a non-victim and the championing of weak, cowardly behaviour.
13. This series fails at all levels. It’s a bad drama with an incoherent message populated by terribly unrealistic and insipid characters. The plot, while compelling at first, quickly degenerates into tedium. Ultimately, watching this show is a slow form of torture that makes one contemplate suicide — if only to make the pain go away.
