TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY

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Hannah Baker - the bullied, the raped, the cyber bullied, the slut shamed, the body shamed and the one blamed for everything that was going wrong with her friends. TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY brought into fore the kind of life high school students live today.

True, the series is based off of a book written by Jay Asher, an American author and is set in the U.S.A but the fact remains that people are the same everywhere. High school kids are the same everywhere. Bullying is a universal theme. Bullying happens at home, at school, at work place and given where “bullying” happens each instance is accordingly assigned a phrase  - Abuse, Bullying and Harassment.

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If I were asked at what point of time in my life I felt most stressed? I’d say high school. It’s that phase in life when you are coming to terms with your body, curious about sexuality and sexual orientation, then there is the ever looming sword over one’s head – Academics! Lest we forget, the constant need to be the perfect child our parents wish we were. Nobody ever tells you it’s okay to not be perfect. It’s okay to take your time to understand yourself. It’s okay if you want to go in a different direction from the rest of your friends.

Kids today face the very same problem, except it is worse. Their social progress is all over the internet. Parents put up status messages of their child’s progress and achievements. These days parents have Instagram accounts set up for their kids even before the kid is out in the world! To have your life documented. To have your grades flaunted. To have everything you do be compared to the kid next to you has to be stressful.

Was Hannah Baker a stereotype? Did the show really need to be as graphic as it was? Yes, because this is probably one of the shows that was watched by many kids with their parents and resulted in the start of a conversation. It made teachers realise that they need to up their game. That they need to be present for the kids. That their job as teachers doesn't just end with going into the classroom and belting out knowledge but also requires that they cater to the student’s wellbeing. For those of you who disagree with this, please remember, as kids we spent almost a good part of the day from 8 a.m. to 3:45pm in school and that's almost the equivalent of an adult doing a 9 to 5 job! So yes! When you spend that chunk of time in school around specific adults you would expect those adults to be able to cater to some of your needs and given the age range the need for those adults to be emotionally available to these kids becomes extremely important. Additionally for parents who go for jobs and come home in the evening there's always a question about whether they are being present for the child or not or whether they are just letting their child deal with issues on its own. 

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Often times parents don't pry into the child's life and don't ask too many questions and usually the child manages to not let on that he or she is being bullied and even if the parents do see the signs, they choose to ignore it because in their minds they think if it was really that serious my child would have told me about it. That’s where most parents are wrong. Always ask your child. Begin a conversation. Bullying is never an easy experience to deal with single handedly. All that bullying will structure the ‘adult’ version of your child. Bullying can be contained if only adults did their job as adults. I guess that's one of the main things we learnt from TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY season 1. This is not a series that should be taken lightly. This is not a series that should be watched lightly. This is not a series that kids should watch by themselves. I would recommend that the parents watch it with their child so that parents get to know exactly how a teenager’s life is today. Given the advent of Technology and how far it has taken us and how easy it is to put something on the Internet and destroy someone's life, is something that we have witnessed. Of course we have a lot of people saying that this show wasn't necessary. That there was no mention of Hannah’s mental illness that she just took the step out of rage and in doing so romanticized suicide. To all these people I’d like to ask, do you remember Amanda Todd? No? Well let me link you to her video. This is not something that is purely fiction it's in fact reality, the kind of reality we didn't quite see ourselves facing but guess what! We are in the INTERNET era, that's why parents need to sit with the child and watch the show, parents need to learn the reachof internet. We need to learn that kids today are on a different level of stress than when we were as kids. This is why we need to keep reminding ourselves that we didn't have the technology back then but otherwise we would probably have faced the same issues. Technology from 15 years ago is no longer the same, it's come a long, long way and we can see information about individuals being uploaded in an instant and things have a way of going viral.

Dear reader, you and I might use the internet for work, research, recipes, to find easy DIYs etc but there are also pedophiles and other monsters lurking on the internet who are watching you without being noticed! Kids today are smart they know their way in and out of shady internet alleys that you are not aware of. If a child did come and tell you about these “shady” places, that kid will be ostracized for the rest of his/her school days. That’s why kids don’t speak up. That’s where it all begins. Hannah went through a lot – individually, these are incidents that would not push a person over the brink but when all these incidents are looked at ‘together’  you wouldn’t be surprised. As far as complaints about the show not dealing with mental health issues more elaborately – please listen to Hannah’s dialogues again. If they don’t represent anguish and if her façade fooled you into believing that everything was alright then… ummm… you need to interact more with people. She is objectified, raped, witnesses a rape and is sexually harassed. Would you expect anybody to be emotionally in a good place after all of that? Her friends knew this. She told an adult about this. She was turned away when she sought help.

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One more argument I keep hearing is that the show portrays women as ‘weak’. How? She is not weak because she killed herself. She’s strong because she managed to survive until that point. She even did the thing that is expected of her – seek help. Isn’t asking for help the poignant sign of “I need to be rescued, I can’t fight this alone anymore” ? Now don’t say women are weak because they ask for help.  Also remember Hannah wasn’t an “Adult” she was just a child.

The only thing I agree with though is the portrayal of her suicide in the final episode. It was way too graphic for me. I felt queasy and I don’t know how I managed to recover after that. The scene wasn’t necessary. Yet, a part of me hoped that if someone who bullies watched that they would take a moment and have an epiphany that they need to stop bullying. That maybe a kid they’ve been bullying might just take that awful step.

Final point being – watch it. If you have a teenager at home – your child/niece/ nephew/cousin watch it with them. What I learnt is that adults need to do their jobs as adults. Kids need to know the difference between being a snitch and someone who is not a tattle. Everybody has a responsibility. Adults lead by example because kids become their parents.

My rating: 4.6/5

Recommend: Yes!

Netflix put up a teaser trailer announcing the release date of season 2. Will you be watching it? I most definitely will.