Lyssa Dougan

The Alarming Rhetoric of 13 Reasons Why

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

Trauma of Representation”, “survivor narratives do expose oppressive material conditions,

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

explains in “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation” that “the speaking out of

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

how wonderful they are for starting conversations.

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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

Hannah Baker and Clay Jenson. Clay, the stereotypical, know-nothing-other-than-his-name

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

accosted by his peers, knowing nothing of what’s to come.

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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--

audiences are inherently vulnerable to Yorkey’s messages, as he’s forced an emotional

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.

Yorkey’s second tactic is an interesting manipulation of Aristotle's “being friendly”

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,

ripping them open until he can force his message inside.

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

them, an echo that follows them.

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

silences the voices of those truly suffering from such trauma.

The biggest controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why is that it graphically displays a

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

suicide. Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education

comments that “there should be no reason, no justification whatsoever, why any kind of

production - entertainment or news - would be so descriptive and so graphic” (Butler). Such

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

survivors and their family and friends.

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

they most certainly cannot remain silenced any longer.

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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.

Yeager, Patricia. “Consuming Trauma, or the Pleasures of Merely Circulating.” Extremities:

Trauma, Testimony, and Community, University of Illinois Press, 2002, pp. 25–57.