Alternate Forms of Justice and Adjudicating Trauma in 13 Reasons Why

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the production of images of sexual violence, suicide and its traumatic aftermath within the television series, 13 Reasons Why. The understanding of law as a deeply cultural enterprise, constituted and influenced by aesthetic, affect and narrative, is invaluable to revealing law’s hidden structures and techniques. Drawing on cultural legal methodology and trauma literature, this article examines the legal and narrative impetuses to articulate trauma within 13 Reasons Why. After outlining the implied failure of legal institutions to deliver satisfactory justice for the viewer, this article unpacks the animation of alternative modes of justice beyond law. This justice takes its form in the pre-recorded cassette tapes made by the deceased protagonist, Hannah Baker, which transform her private trauma into a public one by naming those who she believed to be accountable for her death. In analysing the content and medium of the tapes, and the unfinished business implied by Hannah’s ghostly haunting, this article considers the excess of trauma in relation to the distinct concepts of law and justice. Through its analysis of 13 Reasons Why, this article contributes to the ongoing tensions in trauma articulation and the perceived disparity between legal and just outcomes.