Netflix's original series 13 Reasons Why is about a young girl named Hannah who committed suicide and left thirteen tapes, with thirteen reasons as to why she killed herself. Each episode is a new reason about something someone did for Hannah to commit suicide. The show's producers wanted to create an awareness of mental health. I am going to use the Equipment For Living form to analyze this text through the sociological lens. The show is using a fictional story of a young teenage girl who committed suicide to raise awareness of the social issue of suicide. The majority of the show is flashbacks, giving the viewers the reasons why Hannah killed herself. The show helps us "size up" the situation of suicide and gives us strategies to respond to it. We see the motives Hannah had to kill herself and the show is made to help us in real life see those signs and symbols of mental illness before someone gets to the point of suicide. I think the show does a pretty decent job at showing the struggles of a teenager in high school who is being bullied, but it doesn't show any other generation outside of high schoolers. The show may be helping high schoolers to realize that their actions in their school lives can have affect on someone with a mental illness, but they don't show any other generation how their actions in a daily work life, home life, or adult social can have an affect on someone struggling with mental illness.
This sounds like an awesome show! I plan to watch it once school finishes and I have more time. The fact that they are showing a mentally ill person is amazing. Shows that show an accurate teenage lifestyle are not that common so this is amazing. Showing mental illness and putting it out there defineltly shows how difficult it is to be young!
ReplyDeleteI have watched this show and completely agree with your post. The creators of the show wanted people to see this social problem from this specific type of view. I think this show did a great job of depicting real life bullying and mental struggles teens and young adults experience through out their time at school.
ReplyDeleteI think this blog post was written really well but I respectfully disagree. I think a major issue I have with 13 Reasons Why (I am only on episode 8) is that Hannah is blaming her fellow classmates. While there is no doubt that she was bullied there are many times when the characters either say she is lying or not telling the complete truth. I think the fact that every person gets to hear every tape is extremely negative. For example there is an episode where actor Miles Heizer who plays Alex is under so much pressure he falls in the pool after getting belligerently drunk. While this show shines light on mental illness I think that it could have better emphasized the solution verses the problem. It seems like to me that Hannah's tapes are her revenge, and it is almost as if she is bullying her peers back.
ReplyDeleteI watched about half of this show so far an I think the show TRIED to do the best they could with raising awareness for mental health but I do think they were playing the blame game to much and that she blamed her classmates instead of actually addressing a mental health issue. Now I dont want to sound like I am saying that bullying did not play a very large role in her suicide and is a huge problem but I think that the producers could have done a little better job with that.
ReplyDeleteI think it does a great job of focusing on bullying inside the school but not really going on outside of school. But the show did a great job from what they did they could have added more. The show did a great job within the boundaries of what they were trying to show between friends and the show.
ReplyDeleteI have seen many criticisms of this show, but I have not seen it. It seems that many people appreciate what it tried to do, but brought up many reasons as to why it fell short. This is something we are not used to. It is not often that television portrays people with mental illness and tries to bring it into light. It is something that needs to happen way more often. It is important because people that do not suffer from mental illness do not know or understand what others go through. It is good that they tried to bring it into light, but there is always a need for more representation.
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