The Tape Within a Tape

I must admit that I’m a massive fan of movies, television and cinema in general. From the time I was a kid to present day I still watch movies and tv shows heavily. I have a huge massive dvd collection of movies and television show boxsets and with inventions like Hulu and Netflix it makes watching tv and movies even easier. Now I’ll also admit that in the past 20 months I’ve been going through some personal stuff along with being weighed down with a ton of responsibilities from work and other sources so as a result I haven’t been able to watch as much movies and tv shows as I would normally would want to.

In fact my back catalog of movies and shows is literally a mile long. Which brings me to this post that recently there has been a show that debut on Netflix based on a book that came out back in 2007 called 13 Reasons Why about a high school junior named Hannah Baker that committed suicide, once she was dead a set of cassette tapes started to circulate to specific people that may have been partly responsible for Hannah losing her life. Something about this premise gravitated to me and I instantly binged watched the show and I love the show so much.

Now this is the part of this entry that I will scream out loud *SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!* I may say some things from this point that may spoil some things about the show so read from this point if you dare… you’ve been warned. The main thing I love about the show is that unlike the book where they didn’t focus too much on most of the characters in the show most of the characters get a backstory and Hannah herself in my opinion is fleshed out a little bit more to the point where I see her as a victim of circumstances.

I will write more about certain aspects of this show in future entries about different parts of the show that really stick out to me but I wanted to post up a revelation I had when re-watching the show for the 5^th time trying to catch certain clues that I didn’t catch before… hopefully you agree with what I think I discovered.

“Ok so re-watching Clay’s episode a revelation popped in my head that either I just discovered something deep… or I’m just blowing something out of proportion. I’m watching the episode of Clay listening to his tape and what went down during the party with him and Hannah. As I was watching I was thinking about everything Hannah was saying in this episode and out of nowhere I suddenly came to the conclusion that….

This is not Clay’s tape at all, this is Hannah’s tape. That tape was herself blaming herself of everything that went down that night and labeling herself with the other people that she blame for her loss of her life and everyone just mistakes it as Clay’s tape but that’s the deception of it. Hannah herself is #11 of the cassettes on the facts that:

1) She regrets sending Clay out of the room because not only did she gave up the one thing that could have made her truly happy… but had Clay stayed then Jessica and Justin would have never went into that room and possibly the rape on Jessica might not had happened. But since it happened and with her still in the room she blames herself.

2) Had Hannah not sent Clay away she wouldn’t have rode with the cheerleader which ultimately lead to Jeff’s accident… and she blames herself for it.

3) Hannah point blank says on the tape to Clay “Your name does not belong on this list, but you need to be here if I’m going to tell my story.” Key words being “my story”. When she was rock bottom and just gave up on life and wrote down her list of names for the tapes Hannah’s fragile depressed mind had subconsciously wrote down Clay so she can blame herself and also so Clay can pass on the tapes for her since she would be dead.

People saw it one way but they never thought to see it the other way.”