13 Reasons Why: 9 Reasons It Ultimately Fails

7. Shock Value

13 Reasons Why is, at times, very uncomfortable, even almost impossible to watch. There are two different portrayals of rape, and one of suicide, all of which are graphic and have you wanting to look away.

Of course rape and suicide should be hard to watch if they're being put on-screen, but I don't think the show fully succeeds in its messaging here, because there's no real necessity to showing these things happen. We don't need to see Hannah being raped, for instance, so what is it that's left? The show is clearly attempting to strip away the male gaze - even directly referencing it early on - and yet it also plays into it as well.

The reason for putting it on screen, then, comes across more as being for simple shock value; it creates the male gaze it seeks to avoid, and while unintentional the way it plays will inevitably, to some, feel like a sexualised moment. Sexual abuse is of course an important topic, and especially for younger people there needs to be more information and education around consent and what constitutes abuse. The show does aim for that with Hannah's voiceover during the assault on Jessica, but because of the shocking imagery it largely and unfortunately gets lost in the shuffle.

It also shifts perception of the characters, who no longer become simply flawed: we learn that they know of Jessica and Hannah both being raped by Bryce, and yet are insistent in their covering up of the events. Which, yeah, is the Bystander Effect, but the show doesn't really seem to understand how that shifts the portrayal of these characters and how sympathetic we can be towards them.