I Am Nineteen And I Hate Thirteen Reasons Why

Before reading my article you should know that I’m not some woman in her mid thirties, I am just a nineteen year old college student and yes, I hate thirteen reasons why.

Netflix drama Thirteen Reasons Why is like the fidget spinner of television, meme-worthy, senseless but popular. So when you have to scrutinize a popular opinion, your personal opinion needs to be backed by legitimate facts and some substantial indagation.

 13 Reasons Why, adapted from the novel by Jay Asher, is about a teenager called Hannah Baker who takes her own life. She leaves behind a set of cassette tapes, each addressed to a different person in her life, detailing how they hurt her and contributed to her death.  It follows a shallow narrative that soon ends with a suicide, suicide that has failed to get out of its young audience’s pigeonhole of romantic panacea.

Let’s say it straight, Suicide is not romantic. Suicide is messy, ugly and a ghastly excuse. While slitting your wrists, you won’t have any sad rock song playing in the background and nobody would care if you ever decide to leave thirteen tapes behind, they will just sit in you police’s evidence stack. In show’s co-producer Selena Gomez’s words, this show is just intended to make you aware about life complications. Death is not a solution for bullying and sexual abuse but rather confronting your demons is and then ultimately making peace with the circumstances.

The biggest problem would be, it is aimed at a young audience. In this capacious internet sphere, do you think your 9th grade sibling is unaware about a suicide glorifying show that people are raving about?  Fifteen and sixteen year olds who are particularly vulnerable to this pestilence, and likely to experience suicidal thoughts. This show normalises the act. It goes into too much and too graphic detail about the suicide itself, a perfect 101 guide to kill yourself and make it look like art.

Hannah is a weak protagonist, well it is evident because in the end she decides to kill herself and leave behind “13 reasons” that led to her blind yet espoused fate. Her tapes that will serve as an ignition for revenge wheel. Decide to take your own life, and let the people deal with your shit because you were too weak to handle it. 13 reasons or just one person who dug their own grave?

With all said, I’m writing this in the elucidation of  23-year-old Peruvian Franco Alonso Lazo Medrano committed suicide and, just as did the main character in the show, left behind audio tapes made for those he claimed caused him to take his own life. The idea? The style? Yet people still think it’s about suicide awareness and not a suicide chaperone. Dr Gould from Medscape said “It is very unfortunate that the producers chose to show that the only way to cope with these problems and open up lines of communication is to kill yourself.”

We as audience fail to understand the power of popular media and it’s influence on already fragile minds. Remember, Television, movies, books at one time were used as a Propaganda tool at one point, that invades the cognition of its audience. A cogent approach should thus beat the drum for such a sensitive subject.

What is suicide? A cause of death, that will soon make your name a hazy memory.