13 Reasons Why was still exploiting the teen audience it aimed to support in Season 2

The Muse

The Netflix teen drama didn't "make up for its own shortcomings" in its second season, says Maria Sherman. "13 Reasons Why demands that viewers take an additional step to educate themselves and provide awareness for issues the programming itself fails to tackle meaningfully and, instead, paints sexual assault and acts of suicide in a gratuitous light. There’s being sensitive to horrifying depictions of real-life atrocities, and there’s being sensitive to the damages those images can cause on an impressionable audience. 13 Reasons Why lacks the nuance essential to navigating this terrain." Sherman notes that creator Brian Yorkey has said he wanted to raise awareness with his explicit male rape scene. "I don’t disagree with him," she says, "but when the means of creating 'awareness' is exploitative towards those it seeks to support—in this case, victims of sexual trauma—it’s time to take another trip to the drawing board."