13 Reasons Why backlash reignites
Media watchdog group calls Season 2 ‘a ticking time bomb’ for its graphic subject matter
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for13 Reasons Why.
Aperson who died by suicide returning as a ghost. A student arriving at school armed with guns. A brutal rape in a school bathroom.
These are just three reasons why Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has reignited concerns over its content and what effect it could have on its impressionable teen audience.
The series’ highly anticipated second season debuted Friday, bringing excited fans back to the fictional town of Crestmont and Liberty High School. The newest 13-episode instalment revolves around the aftermath of 17-year-old Hannah Baker’s suicide, the main plot line of Season 1.
While prolonged and gory scenes of suicide are absent from Season 2, the new season continues to address sensitive topics including suicide, rape, substance abuse and gun violence. It also features graphic, sometimes disturbing, scenes.
However, while the first season was a hit, becoming 2017’s most tweetedabout show and maintaining an 80-percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, the second season has not been as well received. It has a 37-per-cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been described by multiple critics as “unnecessary.” A media watchdog group, the Parents Television Council, is also calling on Netflix to pull both seasons of the series, describing Season 2 as “a ticking time bomb to teens and children.”
“If you come into the series with feelings of hopelessness or depression,” PTC program director Melissa Henson wrote, “you’ll never walk away from the series feeling any better. And if you’re not feeling that way, the series will make you feel hopeless and depressed.”
One subject the show’s second season tackles is gun violence in schools, an issue that has been at the forefront of people’s minds since the February mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead and, more recently, at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, where at least10 were killed Friday. Netflix cancelled its premiere party for the show’s second sea- son in the wake of the Santa Fe shooting, which had happened just hours before, according to The Associated Press.
In the final minutes of the season’s finale, a bullied teen named Tyler Downs, arrives at a school dance armed with guns, including one that appears to be an assault rifle. Instead of calling the police, the other characters, all students, confront Tyler themselves, talking him into lowering his gun.
This is not the right message to be sending to students faced with a shooter, Phyllis Alongi, clinical director of the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide, told NBC.
“When someone has a gun, you don’t stay with the person and try to take gun away from them,” said Alongi, who watched both seasons. “You call the authorities.”
But the thwarted school shooting isn’t the only part of the season’s-13th episode people took issue with. One scene in particular left both mental-health experts and fans concerned that the show has taken things a step too far.
Before he attempts to shoot his classmates, Tyler is savagely attacked and sodomized by members of the school’s baseball team in a bathroom. The two- minute-long scene is shown with full sound and begins with Montgomery de la Cruz, one of the athletes, slamming Tyler’s head into a mirror before repeatedly bashing his head against a sink. He then drags Tyler to a stall and starts drowning him in a toilet bowl. Ignoring his pleas for mercy, two other members of the team hold Tyler down and Montgomery grabs a mop. What happens next was too much for many to watch.
Alongi said she had to look away. “I do understand producers want to bring issues like this to forefront, but it was not necessary to be so graphic,” she said.
In a new after-show called 13 Reasons Why: Beyond the Reasons, people involved with the show, including Yorkey and members of the cast, discussed the new season and addressed concerns. When asked about why Tyler’s sexual assault was shown in such a graphic way, Yorkey referenced a concept called radical empathy, which is the attempt to empathize with someone who is completely different from you.
“It was important for us to try and bring the audience over to Tyler’s side a little bit,” Yorkey said. “As brutal as that scene is to watch, I defy anybody to watch it and not feel pain for Tyler.”