ABSTRACT

In Chapter 4’s Netflix show 13 Reasons Why, teenagers engage in an overt display of analog culture throughout its two seasons. Most poignant and central to this culture is Hannah Baker’s use of cassette tapes to compose a lengthy suicide note to her peers. Hannah composes on old technology to make statements about the limitations and dangers of screen technologies, especially as they are used in cyberbullying and transmission of photographs via smartphones. While the cassettes are the most tangible example of unplugged, or analog, technology, other examples serve as catalysts in the plot, such as a classmate’s 1990s style zine magazine, Moleskine notebooks for poetry, and the graffiti written on bathroom walls. Season Two further highlights the use of analog technology by focusing on Polaroid pictures that emphasize how disposable and superficial the bodies of young women become to athletes engaged in illegal activities. Most importantly, however, Hannah’s use of analog technology acts as a form of embodiment that speaks directly to the horrors of suicide and the disembodiment caused by violence to the self.