Beruflich Dokumente
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Time stands still in the “Me Too” era, everyone holding their breath as the reports come
in about the rampant sexism and sexual assault across industries. For women, this conversation
nothing new, save for the fact that light has finally shone on the issue. Across the world, the
nation, the campus, women whisper in corners about their experiences, tell stories about their
own traumas, hidden away. These traumas do not get the light of day, or so they have been told
by the men in power. Yet these stories exist and must be told. Not for entertainment, not for
power, but to recover parts of oneself lost by those experiences. Trauma narratives have an
innate ability to heal, if used right. However, far too often, Hollywood takes those narratives and
uses them for monetary gain. 13 Reasons Why, for example, commodifies and sells trauma as a
dramatic serialization. And while those involved with the show pat themselves on the back for
“how great of a job they have done” in presenting a series about teen suicide, the series uses
emotional rhetoric to pull audiences in and manipulate them into believing that feeling another’s
pain will somehow lessen one’s one and that suicide can “send a message” to others.
Despite the show’s faults, the conversations 13 Reasons Why attempts to undeniably
force the topics of teen bullying and suicide the genre of “trauma narrative”. A trauma narrative
may be defined as something that “demonstrates how a traumatic event disrupts attachments
between self and others by challenging fundamental assumptions about moral laws and social
relationships that they themselves connected to specific environments” (Larsen 407). However, a
traumatic narrative should aim to represent and address its respective topic and give voice to
those who suffer such a trauma. It is in this mission that 13 Reasons Why completely and utterly
fails. Unlike exemplary pieces that characterize this genre, 13 Reasons Why fumbles with its
conversations about sexual assault, mental illness, and suicide, clearly not understanding how to
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approach any of these topics in an appropriate and well-conducted manner. It does, as Amy
Larsen explains, “use trauma to establish identification with the audience and persuade them”
into some kind of action (Larsen, 407). 13 Reasons Why does fulfill this characteristic, in that it
has sparked large and expansive conversations around the world about suicide, mental illness and
bullying. It even includes some degree of trigger warnings, and attempts to address how to
properly speak to such horrors. Ironically, however, 13 Reasons Why’s problems stem from the
fact that it is a trauma narrative produced by a writer who may not completely understand the
genre.
Trauma narratives themselves are not inherently “bad”, especially since conversations
about such topics must start. It is when those narratives get twisted with entertainment and a
quest for ratings, rather than addressing the issues of the traumatic event that the problem
becomes apparent. Wendy Hesford explains in “Reading Rape Stories: Material Rhetoric and the
violence, and trauma; give voice to heretofore silent histories; help shape public consciousness
about violence against women and thus alter histories narrative” (Hesford 195). Trauma
narratives can be incredibly cathartic to the people writing and/or consuming them, as long as the
trauma contained within is dealt with and represented properly. Unfortunately, these narratives
are often not made for that purpose. Instead, narratives like 13 Reasons Why are packaged up and
sold to audiences for ratings, and thus feed off of others’ suffering--giving into an insatiable
hunger for entertainment which capitalizes and profits off of suffering, rather than giving voice
to the traumatized.
While 13 Reasons Why is certainly one of the most evident cases of the commodification
of trauma, the use of trauma as entertainment is certainly not limited to this television series.
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Entire literature genres, nicknamed “misery literature” or “mis lit” for short, profit off trauma.
HarperCollins alone reported an 31 percent increase in annual profit due to misery literature. Ten
of the top “misery literature” novels in 2008 sold over 600,000 copies (Rothe 90). Linda Alcoff
survivors has been sensationalized and exploited by the mass media, in fictional dramatizations,
as well as ‘journalistic’ formats. The media often use the presence of survivors for shock value
and to pander to a sadistic voyeurism among viewers” (Alcoff 262). Patricia Yeager remarks
“liberal academics reproduce, for themselves and their students, stories of trauma” (Yeager 28).
People ache for stories that tell of other’s extraordinary suffering, to the point that it has become
a multimillion dollar industry. People are profiting from stories of pain and trauma, and it is not
those who suffer that benefit either short term or in the long term.
Anne Rothe suggests in her book, Popular Trauma Culture, that this is because
“suffering means producing” (Rothe 88). Rothe also states that people consume these trauma
narratives because of “notions that suffering generates spiritual purification and that moral
enlightenment can be gained not only from one’s own immediate experience but also through the
vicarious experience of others’ suffering via media consumption” (Rothe 14). More than that,
Leslie Jamison points out in “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” that “wounds promise
authenticity and profundity, beauty and singularity, desirability. They summon sympathy. They
bleed enough light to write by” (Jamison). Trauma is sold because people see beauty in it, think
there are universal lessons to be learned from it. In selling this trauma, however, the damaged
bodies are erased from their own stories. Survivors voices are silenced. Shows like 13 Reasons
Why erase the voices of teen suicide and sexual assault, while simultaneously parading around
13 Reasons Why is so successful due to its ability to emotionally draw its target audience
in, using pity, fear, and friendliness as emotional tactics without regard to consequences. These
emotional connections play a vital role in the later manipulations 13 Reasons Why presents
without consequence. Indeed, without such emotional bonds, the teen audience would not have
been as vulnerable to the message. In “On Rhetoric,” Aristotle writes, “there is persuasion
through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion [pathos] by the speech; for we do not give
the same judgment when grieved and rejoicing or when friendly and hostile” (Aristotle).
Essentially, the interpretation of the artifact is dependent on how the speaker makes the audience
feel. The fact that emotion impacts one’s decision is unavoidable, so when creating an artifact,
speakers must be cognizant of power to alter the impact of the message. Brian Yorkey and his
co-writers of 13 Reasons Why seem particularly aware of this, using three specific emotional
appeals to draw and trap their audience in: Pity, being friendly, and fear.
Yorkey and his team first draw audiences in through the use of pity, defined by Aristotle
as “a certain pain at an apparently destructive or painful evil happening to one who does not
deserve it and which a person might expect himself or one of his own to suffer” (Aristotle).
Within the first three minutes of the show, audiences are given a quick glimpse of the world of
white boy walks over to Hannah’s locker, devastated. Her locker is decorated with pictures of
her, small notes taped to it about how they’ll “never forget” her. Clay is suddenly approached by
another nameless character, demanding to know what Clay is looking at. This nameless character
then gets up into Clay’s space, claiming to know “he’s not innocent, no matter what she says”
(Yorkey). Immediately, Yorkey throws this idea of a ‘destructive evil’ onto Clay, having him
Fans of the series can recognize that this boy, even unnamed, is someone who has heard
the thirteen tapes Hannah left behind to explain her suicide, but newcomers to the show are
thrown into the series and accosted, just like Clay. Yorkey intentionally plants this seed in the
audience’s mind, telling them that Clay is just a confused kid, mourning the loss of a girl he so
clearly “loved”--he does not deserve the random harassment. Yorkey forces the audience to pity
Clay, which forms this sympathetic connection. When the storyline drags, this pity for Clay is
what keeps the audience going because viewers want to make some sense of how something so
horrible could happen to someone so “kind”. In continuing the show--giving into the pity--
connection to the main protagonist. Yorkey furthers this pity in the next few scenes, slipping into
flashbacks of Hannah and Clay together, to further establish Clay’s heartbreak. Yorkey even
shows gaggles of teens giggling at Clay’s pain. Yorkey makes it abundantly clear that audiences
should feel bad for Clay, that they should invest in the story for that reason.
appeal. Aristotle writes, “let being friendly be wanting for someone what one thinks are good
things for him, not what one thinks benefits oneself, and wanting what is potentially productive
of these good things” (Aristotle) Due to the pity that Yorkey forces his audience to experience,
he is easily able to force the audience to wish for good things for his characters. But then he
takes it one step further, because these characters are actually reflections of the audience
themselves. Yorkey’s main characters, Clay and Hannah are essentially blank slates. For most of
the series, little is known about either of them, other than the fact that Hannah committed suicide
and Clay loved her. Both Clay and Hannah have things happen to them, both experience
complex feelings in reaction to them. However, nothing else is truly known about who they are.
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Yorkey builds a narrative completely out of the moments talked about in the tapes and the
immediate responses of each characters, but true backstories are never given for any of the
characters. This allows the audience to easily take on the persona of either Clay or Hannah. By
allowing the audience room to do this, Yorkey creates an inherent need for “being friendly”, and
thus furthers the emotional connection. The audience member is now invested in the story
because the characters are them. They experience the hurt alongside Hannah, the anger alongside
Clay, and the trauma alongside both. In doing so, Yorkey prepares his audience for his message,
Finally, Yorkey appeals to the audiences greatest emotion, that of fear. Allowing the
audience to project themselves into these characters forces them to imagine themselves, imagine
their loved ones, experiencing such horrors, doing such horrors. Aristotle defines fear as “a sort
of pain or agitation derived from the imagination of a future destructive or painful evil...even
signs of such things are causes of fear”(Aristotle). This is exactly what viewers get when they sit
down and watch 13 Reasons Why. They project themselves onto these blank states, but in doing
so, they inherently imagine a future where someone they love commits suicide or is assaulted,
which agitates and hurts them. It allows them to imagine themselves feeling like Hannah, doing
like Hannah. That is the danger of this show. It uses pity, projection, and fear to create emotional
connections with these characters, to the point where the audience is no longer capable of
stopping. It’s as if they are on a train, watching it speed towards the station, but cannot reach and
pull the brake. They are paralyzed, manipulated into watching until the end and then wounded.
Aristotle writes that the best way to ensure that the audience experiences fear is by
“making them realize they are liable for suffering” (Aristotle). The moment that a person begins
13 Reasons Why, Yorkey ties them to characters and then forces them to “live through” the
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events of the show, showing just how vulnerable they are to the effects of mental illness or
trauma. As Lauren Berland writes, “these stories must work like a virus so that people burned
with trauma-knowledge feel a continuous and displeasing bodily echo” (Berlant 44). For 13
Reasons Why, nothing rings truer. The farther the audience gets in the story, the harder it
becomes to ignore the emotion that wells up in their body as the story progresses. Even when a
viewer finishes the episode and puts the show away, they are left with a heaviness that burdens
Conversations swarmed around this show precisely because of how well Yorkey creates
emotional connections between the audience and the characters, forcing them to grow together
and experience the trauma equally. The danger of this, however, is that it means that the lessons
imparted in Yorkey’s work have that much larger of an impact. The entire show glorifies suicide.
It teaches young viewers that “all you need is love”, and the negative emotions and behaviors
can be overcome. Yorkey tells audience members, through Clay, that if one loves someone else
enough, that this person will not commit suicide. However, this is a dangerous and irresponsible
lesson to teach the young audience Yorkey attracts. This view of suicide is a simplistic and
moronic way of understanding the effects of mental illness. It also acts as a way to blame the
people left behind. Hannah killed herself because her friends, because Clay did not love her
enough. Yorkey plays a dangerous game in his use of emotional appeals, because he essentially
grooms his audience into a vulnerable state, then imparts this dangerous message.
Despite its flaws, 13 Reasons Why is continually propelled into the social sphere because
it has surrounded itself with praise, using epideictic rhetoric. Aristotle defines epideictic rhetoric
as the use of kalon, which “describes whatever, through being chosen for itself, is praiseworthy
or whatever, through being good, is pleasant because it is good. If this, then is the kalon, then
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virtue is necessarily kalon” (Aristotle, 79). Kalon, essentially, describes what is good and what is
virtuous. Aristotle then defines virtue as “an ability, as it seems, that is productive and
preservative of goods and ability for doing good in many great ways” (Aristotle, 79). In other
words, virtue comes from the attempt to preserve and to create, rather than destroy. 13 Reasons
Why surrounds itself with this rhetoric. The writers and producers pat themselves on the back
about how they create conversations about suicide, mental illness, and sexual assault, even going
so far as to put a “warning” before the first episode of the show. Essentially, they tell viewers
that the show is virtuous and good because of the conversations it starts. At the very beginning of
the series, viewers are presented with a short clip, where each of the actors spends a brief second
describing how the show “tackles tough, real-world issues”, and how “by shedding a light on this
difficult topics, [they] hope the show can help viewers start a conversation” (Yorkey). The series
starts a conversation, but it is a hollow and unfinished one. The conversation is, in fact,
important, but only when appropriately guided to an appropriate end. Instead, 13 Reasons Why
young girls suicide, giving no warnings to the young viewers watching. Many viewers have
spoken out against such a graphic scene. Many demanded to know why the show would choose
to go down such a graphic route, given the young target audience. Writers and producers on the
show defended the decision to use such a graphic display of rape and suicide, saying that “[they]
worked very hard not to be gratuitous, but did want it to be painful to watch because [they]
wanted it to be very clear that there is nothing, in any way, worthwhile about suicide” (Butler).
Instead of apologizing for their actions, recognizing that their choice was problematic and
working to redeem themselves, they praised themselves for their attempt to avoid glorifying
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suicide, while inherently constructing an entire show based on just that; the glorification of
comments that “there should be no reason, no justification whatsoever, why any kind of
portrayals of suicide can be extraordinary harming because these portrayals both glorify the act
and trigger viewers. Instead of finding relief in the representation, people who struggle with
suicidal ideation may only find perpetuated ideas about what their experience is like. Indeed,
there is real risk of copy-cat actions by the viewers and triggering symptoms of trauma in
13 Reasons Why crafts its identity around the whole idea of “confessional speech” and
“trauma narrative”, but as Linda Alcoff explains, “confessional speech is not liberatory but
instead a powerful instrument of domination” (Alcoff 263). While the show is meant to start a
conversation regarding the stigma around mental illness, it instead takes the narrative and puts it
in the hands of an already dominant group, resulting in a production ready made for consumption
by the paying audience. It perpetuates the domination of the victims of sexual assault and
silences the voices of people who actually treat and work to prevent mental illness and suicidal
ideation . It claims cinematic beauty and social awareness while hiding its true mass-marketed
trauma narrative. The show cannot be praised because of its socially relevant content while
simultaneously causing irrevocable harm because the two outcomes contradict each other. 13
Reasons Why tried to start a conversation, a noble attempt, but failed to recognize its inherent
privilege and problems. Unfortunately, when mental health experts and survivors brought this
contradiction to their attention, they praised themselves for at least giving an effort, while
pocketing the profits. Apparently, it is praiseworthy to attempt to tackle an issue such as mental
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illness, even if many are harmed by the result. Thus, 13 Reasons Why exemplifies the
problematic nature of trauma narrative. Done well, the genre educates through empathy; done
badly, it silences victims, popularizes the trauma, and endangers the viewer. One can only hope
that there are no real “Hannahs” or “Clays” because they viewed 13 Reasons Why.
13 Reasons Why had the opportunity to handle a complex set of issues, carefully and
respectfully. Instead, they packaged and sold the trauma narrative, patted themselves on the back
for a “job well done”, and emotionally manipulated their audience through emotional appeals.
But in the “Me Too” era, clumsy handling of topics like rape and mental illness will not be
allowed. These conversations are incredibly important, and cannot be commodified to fit a
redemption or recovery narrative. They cannot be fit into a box created by the dominator, and
Works Cited
Alcoff, Linda, and Laura Gray. “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation?” Signs,
vol. 18, no. 2, 1993, pp. 260–290.
Aristotle, and George A Kennedy. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Oxford University
Press, 1991.
Berlant, Lauren. “Trauma and Ineloquence.” Cultural Values, vol. 5, no. 1, 2001, pp. 41–58.,
doi:10.1080/14797580109367220.
Butler, Bethonie. “'13 Reasons Why' Depicts a Graphic Suicide; Experts Say There's a Problem
with That.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 17 Apr. 2017,
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-13-reasons-why-depicts-suicide-20170417-
story.html.
Hesford, Wendy S. “Reading Rape Stories: Material Rhetoric and the Trauma of
Representation.” College English, vol. 62, no. 2, 1999, pp. 192–221. JSTOR, JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/379018.
Jamison, Leslie. “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” VQR Online, Virginia Quarterly
Review, 2014, www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-
pain.
Larsen, Amy. “‘I Was Ready for a Mending’: Rhetorics of Trauma and Recovery in Doug
Peacock’s Grizzly Years and Walking It Off.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 30, no. 4, 2011, pp.
406–422., doi:10.1080/07350198.2011.604612.
Rothe, Anne. Popular Trauma Culture: Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media. Rutgers
University Press, 2011. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hjdcn.