Thirteen Reasons Why

Recently, Netflix has gotten into the trend of turning popular books into popular tv shows. Thirteen Reasons Why is an example of a book turned into a show. I read the story when it first came out, after being suggested it by a friend. So, after reading the book so long ago, I decided that Thirteen Reasons Why would be a good place to start. 

Thirteen Reasons Why follows Clay Jensen as he listens to tapes that his close friend, Hannah Baker, leaves behind after her suicide. The show jumps into two different periods of time that can be summed up as, before and after Hannah’s suicide. The periods before Hannah's suicide actually follow Hannah herself as she experiences the reasons for which she took her life. These time jumps are made more interesting through the director’s use of lighting for each group of time periods. When the show follows Clay Jensen, after Hannah’s suicide, the show has cooler tones to the point it looks blue-ish. In contrast, when the show follows Hannah it has warmer tones to the point it looks yellow-ish, even more so when Hannah and Clay are together. The immediate thought that came to mind was color theory, where warmer colors such as yellow represent happiness while colors such as blue represent sadness. The question is who or whom’s emotion are we seeing? I think that the lighting is based on Clay’s emotions. At first I believed Hannah's emotions were being portrayed with the warmer tones being her alive as a happy girl and on the other hand the blues being after her suicide, but I eliminated this for two reasons. The first being that we are seeing Hannah experiencing the reasons why she killed herself, so why would she be happy? The second reason being that I had my doubts that the director would try to portray the feelings of Hannah after she is dead. This brought me to my second conclusion, Clay Jensen. Other than Hannah, he is the main character that the show follows and he is the one who is closest to Hannah that cares about her before and after her death. Not only did he care about her, but he loved her and he deeply regrets not telling her. The lighting is symbolic, to Clay. Hannah was the light of the room, someone who brought him great happiness thus the warmer and leaning towards yellow lighting. After she commits suicide, he must live in regret and sadness, he must live as someone who lost his light thus the cooler and leaning towards blue lighting. Besides the obvious controversy about the show and it’s portrayal of suicide, it’s amazing how much someone can get from the show from just its simple aspects, such as lighting. It reminds us that we must not only watch a show, but analyze it as well to truly understand it.

However, a simpler way the director helped show the change in times is by a simple band-aid. Clay Jensen gets hurt and wears a band-aid on his forehead. In the present, Jensen wears a band-aid, while in the past, he's clear of injuries.