The Controversial Netflix Show '13 Reasons Why'

Introduction

The show ’13 Reasons Why’ is a highly controversial Netflix show that has been the topic of many arguments and warnings. The biggest being that the show romanticizes suicide. An issue with this show is that it tries to say that bullying is what led the main character (Hannah Baker) to have mental health issues which are what lead her to commit suicide. Due to this the critics and those against the show are arguing that the show causes those who either have mental health issues them self to think it is okay to commit suicide or that those who are being bullied to think they are suffering from something deeper and look to Hannah’s answer as their answer.

My argument is that ’13 Reasons Why’ is about bullying as well as mental health

For mental health, these other themes included depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress. These are all side effects that the main character could be experiencing but it never discussed throughout the show. All of these smaller themes show that people need to have the conversation about mental health. One blogger wrote how they were not sure how the conversation would go “[b]ut we do need to be talking about this, we do need to provide young people with the tools needed to cope with life events” (English, 2017). This tells how people feel that it is important to have these

These three types of bullying were all done in the show but they were never addressed as something bad. While I found that most bloggers agreed that the show glamorized the act of suicide and agreed that there was little to no discussion on the effects of bullying leading to suicide in the show a few stated that the show did not romanticize the high school experience.

Blogger Kaitlyn Spell who wrote about her experience being bullied while in school and how it led her to attempt suicide in eighth grade. Spell had these thoughts on ’13 Reasons Why’ writing:

This is not a romanticized or glamorized version of high school. This is very real. Teenagers have it way harder than I did. Social media and smartphones exacerbate bullying and cliques. When I was in school several of my classmates for many years would tell me I was not worth the air I breathed. (Spell, 2017)

The themes found in this quotes kept coming up throughout the other blogs that I looked at. Since these themes showed up in many different blogs I believe that these are important to look at while figuring out how to deal with bullying in today’s