Netflix continually shows an absolute lack of regard for basic decency when it comes to the content they offer subscribers.
Perhaps the single greatest offender among Netflix’s offerings is ‘13 Reasons Why,’ their smash hit teen drama laced with suicide, rape, graphic sex scenes, and more. Everything you want your children to be inundated with all in one convenient television series, right?
13RW goes beyond typical sin-glorifying entertainment, however. Centered largely around the suicide of Hannah Baker, one of its main characters, the show has prompted copycat suicides.
According to the American Family Association, a young woman, Anna Bright took her own life on April 18, 2017. Upon discovering their child’s lifeless body killed in such a gruesome way, Anna’s parents thought she’d been murdered.
AFA reports:
The lead detective said, “Mrs. Bright, she did this.” He also said she mimicked the suicide from the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
Viewing records retrieved afterward revealed that, unbeknownst to her parents and without their permission, Anna had binge-watched the first season of 13RW just two weeks prior to her death.
The show was popular among her peers and even filled the text messages sent back and forth between Anna and a friend during the days leading up to her suicide.
https://vimeo.com/261191655
The similarities between Anna Bright and the fictitious Hannah Baker were too many to list, AFA continues:
Hannah left behind a set of recordings; Anna left behind a journal that included seven letters written to specific people.
On the days of their deaths, both Hannah and Anna came home from school, put things in order, and changed into comfortable clothes before ending their lives in a bathtub full of water. Hannah used a razor blade to slit her wrists; Anna shot herself in the head (something her favorite character Alex did during the last episode of Season 1.)
The major difference: Hannah is fictional and her decision was played out as part of a script; it was reversible because it was fake.
Anna Bright isn’t the only victim of 13RW’s mind-infecting darkness.
Bella Herndon and Priscilla Chiu, two Californian teens, took their own lives just days after watching the series. Franco Alonso Lazo Medrano, a 23-year-old in Peru, also committed suicide and left behind recordings that mimicked Hannah Baker’s videos in the series.
In the wake of 13RW’s fallout, several experts denounced the show, including psychiatrist Dr. Fadi Haddad, who told Time Magazine he believes the show distorts teen suicide and depression and directly leads to copycats.
“Some of my colleagues in the ER say … they see kids now saying, ‘I told my mother I’m going to be Hannah Baker,’” Haddad said.
Social worker Brooke Fox called the series “a tutorial on how to complete the act of ending your life,” emphasizing that Hannah Baker’s act of suicide as revenge against those who had wronged her encourages others to follow in the character’s footsteps.
It wasn’t until July of this year, more than two years after Hannah Baker’s graphic suicide scene led to a dramatic spike in Google searches for “how to kill yourself,” that Netflix finally offered a tepid response to concerns about the show’s negative impact on young viewers.
Netflix deleted the three-minute suicide scene from Season 1 and began running a brief “trigger warning” video ahead of each episode, but not until they released a second season once more harping on suicide, rape, and mental illness.
According to a review from AFA, the show’s third season kicks it up a notch with a dark focus-shift onto homicide with one of the show’s antagonists being murdered.
The 13 plus hours of Season 3 contain:
- Pornographic scenes of heterosexual and homosexual teens having sex.
- Teens using sex toys for masturbation and having sexual encounters with a prostitute as a “cure” for being sexually frustrated.
- A graphic discussion about a teen who was sexually molested as a child and later became a sex worker on the streets.
- Two different characters contemplating suicide.
- A teen being brutally assaulted by a former teammate who leaves him for dead before another teen throws him into the river and watches him drown. Teens cover up the murder as does a law enforcement officer.
- The magnification of toxic masculinity and extreme feminism.
- Teen drug use and addiction that is covered up and accepted.
- The humanizing of a serial rapist whose actions are ignored and excused all because of his attempt to be a better person, although his old self is still evident – a complete misrepresentation of human depravity, repentance, and redemption.
- Teens averting a school shooting by disarming and talking down the shooter, hiding it from authorities, and disposing of the weapons. Then they put themselves on an around-the-clock watch of the mentally ill student, who is also suffering from PTSD. They offer friendship as the cure and do not get him help nor inform his parents.
- Parents and authority figures who are routinely clueless, oblivious, and not trustworthy; thus, teens keep secrets and handle serious issues themselves, which totally contradicts the show’s self-proclaimed purpose.
This show is wildly popular and teens are soaking this insanity right up. We must put a stop to it, and AFA is working toward doing just that.
“Although AFA acknowledges the removal of the suicide scene from Season 1 and applauds that there is an end in sight for the series, we are not giving in or giving up, but instead pressing on—stronger now more than ever,” said AFA Executive Vice President Ed Vitagliano of the series. “Together, we are putting the maximum pressure on Netflix to pull all seasons of this dangerous series from its streaming service. The entire series is a dark and depressing primer for impressionable young people, inviting them to enter a realm of perversion, hatred, and violence. Asking Netflix to drop this dangerous series is the right thing to do and critical for the well-being of America’s youth.”
Netflix’s gross negligence and romanticizing of teen suicide are responsible for the lives of people like Anna Bright. With all the sickening events depicted in subsequent seasons, including a fourth and final season currently in production, what other tragedies await the families of young people who watch this show?
Netflix doesn’t care, they don’t want to educate or help young people struggling with these real-life issues. They want to make a cheap buck off of being edgy. Sign the AFA’s petition to tell Netflix we will not stand for their perverted, dangerous “entertainment.” It’s time to #CancelNetflix.
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