[Peace-discuss] Summed up review of recent/current series related to teen suicide.

[Karen Aram]

Taken out of context, the most important last paragraphs, deal with a series being shown on Netflix. I haven’t seen it, but evidently it’s the most popular show of 2017. The full review can be found in the WSWS.Org<http://wsws.org> by Genevieve Leigh. Again, everything is promoted as “the personal” rather than “the societal.”
As Hannah Arendt pointed out, we do not exist in this world alone, we exist within a society, thus as a philosopher she preferred being referred to as a “political philosopher.”




13 Reasons Why

13 Reasons Why presents a reasonably accurate portrayal of life for high school students. This generation will live shorter lives, enjoy fewer job opportunities and experience more debt than their parents’ generation. American teenagers today have lived every day of their lives with the US carrying out bloody military operations in some corner of the globe.

It is distressing but hardly incomprehensible that the overall suicide rate in the US has risen by 25 percent since 1999 for every age group under 75. One of the more shocking spikes has taken place among girls between the ages of 10 and 14, whose suicide rate has tripled over the last 15 years.

The series is limited in its social critique, but there is a definite acknowledgment of forces greater than the characters’ immediate circumstances. At one point, Hannah’s parents consider using her college savings to pay the bills for their struggling small business, which has been unable to compete with the new corporate “megaplex.” Another scene shows the school system failing to help Hannah during a last-ditch visit to the guidance counselor. In a secondary strand of the drama, school officials are preoccupied with covering up any wrongdoing in Hannah’s death for fear of a lawsuit and loss of funding.

The show’s makers seem themselves at a loss as to whom to blame. There is a recognition that something is seriously wrong. Hints and suggestions are dropped: Economic hardship? Some misguided or perverse ideology? Failing institutions? Yet nothing concrete is said. Instead, the audience is left with the meager and futile message that we all must be nicer to one another.

A great Marxist, Leon Trotsky, once noted that, “fortunately,” even under the most dire economic conditions, only a tiny percentage of the population were driven to ending their own lives. “But peoples never resort to suicide,” he pointed out. “When their burdens are intolerable they seek a way out through revolution.”
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