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I wasn't really feeling this show either, if I'm being honest, and in addition to the other criticisms made, one thing that irked me was that there's an often overlooked but colossal mental illness factor in someone committing suicide and this show didn't seem interested in addressing that at all.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2025 18:09 |
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As with various readings in literary criticism, I think movies can also have different viewings and it's interesting to hear about other perspectives and things others saw in the show that I missed. I didn't think a lot about the revenge angle of the show when I first watched it. But I can definitely see how some of the things Hannah says on the tapes and what others have described as her, "smug, gossip girl-esque tone" sound as if she's enjoying thinking about all the attention she knows she's going to get, and the power and control that she's posthumously exercising over other people. This aspect comes through especially in the beginning when she starts the first tape in a nonchalant conversational manner and then almost immediately precedes to blackmail the listener if they don't pass on the tapes. It also comes through in the scene where she's recording herself outside Tyler's window, essentially inviting everyone listening to target him for bullying, which of course they do. This all reminds me a lot of Jon Ronson's great writing on the Sacco controversy. And I think, along the same lines, one perspective on this show highlights a modern culture that takes a perverse pleasure in shaming and bullying others, particularly in cases where it's perceived to be an act of justice. A culture where verbal and even physical violence are more and more considered an acceptable and moral good as long as they're being used against people we think are bad. The tapes are, after all, way beyond a simple suicide note, or even a unique way to raise awareness about bullying and suicide, they're a weapon that the main character uses to emotionally torture those who wronged her. And in that way the ending of the show, where Tyler seemingly becomes a school shooter due to the bullying induced by Hannah (who herself was also bullied, which also lead her to violence) is an apt one, as it shows that not only does bullying have consequences but also that two wrongs don't make a right. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 06:02 on May 3, 2017 |
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Medullah posted:I've said it before in this thread - The fact that the villains weren't really that bad, and the worst offender wasn't even on the list, is one of the reasons the show really resonated with me. It gets a lot of poo poo for "romanticizing suicide" and showing how "suicide is a good way to get revenge", but ultimately it's a story of a SEVERELY mentally ill girl who didn't reach out for help even when an arm was dangling above her. Yeah, this. The show put's this huge responsibility on the bullying when the reality is she was a mentally ill person who wanted to kill herself. The bullying was a factor, but to portray it as black and white as they do is disingenuous. The thing that irked me most about this show is that people who commit suicide have been known to be emotionally isolated, attention starved, and subsequently emotionally manipulative toward family members and friends before the fact, guilt tripping them into feeling responsible for their suicide. Feeling unloved they try to prompt feelings of sympathy and regret in others by saying things like "oh yeah? Well, you'll be sorry when I kill myself!". And this show just feeds that, sending a message that says "killing yourself is a great way to get attention for yourself and payback against those lovely kids you hate at your high school because after you're dead you'll get lots of attention and have candle light vigils in your honor, while the people you hate will suffer in guilt-ridden agony and have their lives ruined from shame." It's a message that feeds into the feelings of lack of attention and sympathy, emotional isolation, and spite that are often accompanied by mental illness, self-harm, and suicidal tendencies. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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business hammocks posted:I think the show does a pretty good job of dramatizing the main character's downward spiral into severely distorted thinking and irrational action, not least of all by having a number of other characters react differently (but seriously) to traumas similar to hers. She starts off kind of cynical but also naive and romantic in the beginning but is totally out of touch with her emotions at the end, and the choice to externalize them in a passive-aggressive act of revenge instead of opening the phone book and finding a psychiatrist (or taking her mother up on her invitation, or taking the librarian up on his invitation) is really profoundly tragic. Talking about the show as didactic or offering some kind of concrete lesson overlooks the ways it's a character study that makes you watch something really bad happen to somebody over 12 episodes. I actually agree, however I'm not overlooking that stories are contemplative art and that this is a character study of a person's tragic fall into depression and suicide for which there was no solution. In fact that part of the show was about the only thing that I liked. But stories can be more than just contemplative think pieces and it was that underlying aspect, mentioned in my post, that I didn't like.
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