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13 Reasons Why: Reality or Glorification?

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Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Commentary, Media

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13 reasons why, blog, bullying, depression, High school, netflix, personal, pop culture, review, spoilers, suicide, writing

I am an avid Netflix binge-watcher and a couple of weeks ago after freshly cleaning out my queue I was looking for something else to watch. Netflix suggested (and I chose) 13 Reasons Why. I haven’t read the book, I didn’t know it was a hit, I had absolutely no preconceived notions or prior information about anything to do with the story. The first episode caught me off guard and I thought perhaps I was too old to enjoy the story, but then I was hooked. I binged it over a two or three day period and absolutely loved it. Loved it in a dark, cathartic, ripping-the-band-aid off way. I posted on Facebook about it and several friends (of various demographics) agreed that they loved it or planned on watching it, and I saw a few articles about school districts suggesting parents and students watch it together. I thought: cool, this was a realistic show and I hope people take some lessons from it and that was that.

Then I started reading posts about people who HATED the show. A friend posted a status about the fact she would never finish it because it glorified suicide. A Catholic magazine I follow posted an article with a warning from clergy stating that people shouldn’t allow their kids to watch it because it glorified suicide. Other viewers and critics said they thought the show was over-dramatic and that high school really isn’t that bad. And I continued to see posts stating the show portrays suicide positively. I thought about it at length and realized it connects to something my last post touched on: the idea that talking about or portraying something in pop-culture dediabolisizes or normalizes it. I talked about my disagreement with this idea in the political arena, but it fits here too.

*SPOILERS*

If you haven’t watched the show or don’t plan to, this might be helpful.

So, I’ll get right to it. I don’t think this show normalizes, glorifies, dediabolisizes, or portrays suicide positively.

I understand why people may think the show portrays suicide as a solution (especially if they didn’t watch the entire series) because in fact, Hannah’s peers only understand how their actions impacted her after she kills herself and they choose to listen to the tapes she leaves behind. But the show does not portray suicide as a solution to Hannah’s problems.

The show never shows that Hannah killing herself or recording the tapes has any effect on she and Jessica’s rapist. Their rapist never hears her tapes. He is not held accountable for his crimes. Her death does not fix Jessica’s pain. Her parents financial problems are not fixed-in fact, her death makes them worse. Her death and her reasons for killing herself do not solve any of the problems she used to justify killing herself. Her death leads directly to another student being shot in the head (we don’t know the details surrounding that situation, yet). Her death allowed her to escape her circumstances as all death does, but the producers and author never even elude to the fact that suicide “fixes” anything. *Her tape to Clay does contribute to him being nice to Skye, buy his tape clearly states he was always nice to Hannah too.

The show also certainlyyy did not portray suicide as the easy way out. If we are to believe the tapes, this was far from an easy choice for Hannah. It took thirteen separate encounters for her to decide to do it. She didn’t get knocked down in the hall one day and decide, “Welp, imma slit my wrists tonight”. Her rape wasn’t even enough to make her kill herself.  She tried-12 times-to move on, to ignore, to make new friends and 13 times her efforts were met with yet another incident. The show does not portray suicide as an easy decision.

I’ve also seen posts stating that the tapes were a way to get revenge. I don’t see it that way at all. She thoroughly and diligently explains how each interaction with these 13 people made her feel. She got revenge in a passive way, of course. Those people will have to live with the knowledge of how their actions (even if they weren’t violent or mean) led to the death of someone, which is definitely some serious baggage to carry around. She uses the tapes as a way to explain why she did what she did, not as a way to seek revenge. Clay seeks revenge on her behalf, but her suicide is portrayed as an escape not as vengeance. The whole point is that she made the tapes so that people would listen to them and understand how their actions contributed to her suicide. It shows that children (and all people, really) just want to be listened to. She could have written notes. She could have left nothing behind. The emphasis is on the tapes for a reason and that reason isn’t to convince victims to kill themselves.

Also, the show explains that a HUGE part of Hannah’s suicide was caused by her OWN actions, not her victimization. Not only does it show that she ultimately chose to end her life, but two or three of the tapes (maybe more, I can’t remember) center around the fact that she did something wrong. She watched her friend be raped and did nothing. Her PTSD caused her to reject Clay and in turn made her blame herself for hurting him. The show made her an active participant in her downfall. While ultimately she was a victim, it did not paint her as someone who just had some bad stuff happen to them and decided to get revenge. If she was seeking vengeance, she was seeking it against herself as well as her peers.

Lastly but most importantly for my defense of the show, throughout the show the counselor and his lack of professionalism are emphasized time and time again. His character’s conscience is burdened from the start because he knows he did not act correctly to prevent Hannah’s death. By the end, we know that Hannah asked for professional help before killing herself! She did the right thing! She did what we are all taught to do! She asked for help. She went to a professional. She dropped her pride and fear and went to an adult. After trying 12 other times to avoid situations, to avoid being antagonized, to ignore her tormentors, to make new friends, to find love, to have fun, to express her pain through art (poetry), to anonymously ask for help (that letter in class), to change her attitude, she asked an adult for help. And that adult could not or would not or did not know how to help so then she took her life.

Bullying is a problem. Sexual assault is a problem. Yes, high school (and college and graduate school and the workplace) is that bad. People are that mean. Bullying often isn’t a singular event. People’s actions impact other’s in ways they never realize. Some children (and adults) kill themselves after they are bullied. This show portrays that in an in-your-face kind of way. Yes, it isn’t perfect. No, you shouldn’t watch it if self harm causes you to act out (although there are trigger warnings for the episode in which she kills herself, so perhaps you could just skip that one). Yes, Bryce avoiding any consequences is problematic. Yes, not addressing mental health is problematic. Yes, it’s painful to watch. I could go on. But if I listed all of the problems this show has, the glorification of suicide would not be one.

 

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The Story of High School: Part I

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in School and Work

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Abercrombie & Fitch, Alabama, Bixby, bully, bullying, hawaii, High school, new kid, oklahoma, Oklahoma National Guard, school, tulsa, Tulsa Oklahoma, wedgie

So, I’m going to tell you guys about some of my experiences in high school. This will be a multi-part blog, but I’ll start a little bit before high school since that’s when I arrived in the town I ended up going to high school in. In February of 2003 I left Miliani, Hawaii because my dad was stationed in Tulsa, Oklahoma as an active duty adviser for the Oklahoma National Guard. We arrived in Tulsa in March and lived in a hotel in Broken Arrow for several weeks before we finally found a house in Bixby, Oklahoma. Our real estate agent assured us that south Tulsa had the best schools and that we would be more than happy in our new home. She failed to mention that our house was located in very, very small town and that 99% of the people living there had lived there their entire lives and their parents were from there, and their grandparents, and so on. It was a rural farming community and while my house was located north of the river in town, my school was located south of the river in a largely agricultural area. Now, while I grew up on Army bases, I went to my grandparent’s home in Alabama every summer where my grandfather was a farmer. I really loved that lifestyle and thought it was so cool; every summer I would pick up eggs in my counsins’ family’s chicken house and help my grandpa with his cows and I even thought I wanted to be a bovine vetranarian. When we lived in Hawaii I used to beg my parents to let me move to Alabama and live with my grandparents so I could be in 4-H and FAA and all of that! My mom went to the high school in Alabama in the town that I had always begged to move to, in a town smaller than the one we moved to in Oklahoma, and she tried to warn me not to romanticize it too much and explained how it would be, but I didn’t believe her. I imagined everything you see in the movies or hear about small town high schools: football, cheerleaders, dances, parties, sneaking around, being young…but the key is that I imagined getting to be a part of all of those activities, I never imagined what it would be like if you went to that ideal school, but weren’t included in these things. I met some really nice people when I first moved to Bixby and several people were really friendly to me (and continued to be friendly to me until 10th grade). I remember being shocked that there were so many cute guys (I had tons of crushes on island boys in Hawaii, but they never paid attention to me because I was “haole”)…

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A Bully By Any Other Name Would Be As Mean

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

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abuse, bully, bullying, hawaii, mean, Schofield Barracks, school, teachers, wahiawa, wheeler army airfield, wheeler elementary school

I have a whole series of blogs planned concerning my time and experiences in high school, but I have something I want to talk about today: bullying in elementary school. I’d say elementary school was my most socially successful time. By middle school my nerdiness was detected and people started being mean to me, but in elementary school I had tons of friends. My ultimate bully in elementary school wasn’t a peer, but a teacher. Towards the end of third grade, in 1997, I moved from McBride Elementary School at Fort Benning, Georgia to Wheeler Elementary School on Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii. I was assigned to a homeroom teacher, but had separate math and reading teachers. I was way behind in handwriting and math due to moving school districts. I was really, really good at reading though. In Georgia I had to take a test and I was reading at a 12th grade level. Everyday they would send me up to the 5th grade classes for reading time, but when I moved to Hawaii they didn’t accept the test results and I was placed with my peers. The reading teacher really didn’t like me from the start, her name was Dana Shishido-Leonillo. She was a pretty lady and sometimes wore heels and nice suits. She said some mean stuff to me every once in a while, like saying I was asking stupid questions, making fun of me for not memorizing my new address fast enough, and making snide comments about my being “haole”, but I just ignored it. I moved to Hawaii in October and the big event happened a few months later.

She gave the class an assignment (%95 percent sure it was for MLK day) and we were supposed to complete it over the long weekend. I returned to school after the weekend and had my assignment. Class began and she was at her door talking to another teacher. I knew she didn’t like me and thought I wasn’t smart, so I wanted to turn my assignment in first. She was standing in the door talking to another teacher and I went up to her and told her I had my assignment. Immediately, she started yelling at me and told me never to interrupt her again and grabbed my arm and dragged me to her desk. Once we reached her desk she got the piece for paper and taped it around my face-a piece on my forehead and a piece in front of each ear. Everyone in class was staring and laughing and she told me to walk back to my desk. I obviously couldn’t see and was in front of the whole class, so I had to feel my way back to my seat, bumping into things and being laughed at. I got to my seat and she started teaching. About ten minutes later she left the room to go next door to talk to another teacher and while she was gone the tape fell off. I didn’t know what to do and I was really scared. By this time she was walking back into the room and so I got up and told her it had fallen off. She took it from me and said, “Maybe next time I will just staple it through the bone!” and held up her stapler. She kept the paper and told me to go sit back down. Later that day I got home and told my mom what happened and she called my dad at work. My dad rushed home and we all drove up to the school. Hawaii is a union state, so it was really difficult to get a meeting and we finally got to talk to the principal without the teacher present, since she didn’t have a union delegate with her. The school said they couldn’t do anything, so then we went to the MP station on Schofield Barrack (since the school was on a military base). We had to fill out a report and my parents got a restraining order against her. In the end though, nothing ever went in her file and no professional disciplinary action was taken. After that year I was on the opposite side of the campus from her, because the 4th and 5th grade classrooms were far from the 3rd grade rooms, but she was friends with one of the 5th grade teachers, so it was always really awkward and the teachers never really liked me after that (until middle school).

After this whole fiasco I had an issue with authority and teachers and would always smart off to them and be sarcastic…I still got good grades thankfully, but I just didn’t feel the same about teachers and authority figures afterwards. Low and behold, I googled her recently and she’s won awards for teaching excellence and is still teaching kids at the same school…

Needless to say, this even greatly affected me for a really long time. It wasn’t until 6th grade that I really started getting picked on by my peers (unfortunately, I picked on a few people too), and that continued until I was out of high school, but we’ll talk about that another time!

What is the worst experience you ever had in school? What happened? How did it impact you? How have you dealt with it?

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