Tape 2: Side A – Alex Standall
As further we travel down the road of Hannah’s tapes the more we see the parallels Hannah shares with certain individuals and for this entry we will talk about Alex Standall. Alex is kinda interesting to talk about because just like on the last tape with Jessica I would describe Alex as one of the few people on the tapes that had a close connection with Hannah and ironically he is one of the people on Hannah’s list that caused the most damage to her. As I explained on the first tape that Justin inadvertently destroyed Hannah’s image with her being branded a “slut” in everyone’s eyes somehow Alex destroyed Hannah’s credibility making everyone ignore her nice personality and her creative intellect but instead being only viewed and referred to as the “girl with the best ass”. It got to the point where when people saw Hannah they turned into Al Pacino from the “Great Ass” scene from the movie Heat, for those that never seen this legendary movie here’s a clip to see what I’m talking about:
To sum up Alex’s tape lets go back to the last tape. As I mentioned before Hannah, Jessica and Alex were all new students that banded together and formed the “Fuck My Life” crew that hung out at the local coffee shop. Eventually Jessica and Alex decided to be a couple leaving Hannah as the odd man out. Jessica eventually reveals that Alex broke up with her and she blamed Hannah due to a “Hot or Not” List that Alex created. Jessica uses Hannah’s bad rep as a “slut” to blame her for her failed relationship even though Hannah had nothing to due with the break up at all causing Jessica to take out her anger by slapping Hannah leaving a scar on her face. Now both Jessica and Alex’s tapes intertwined with each other because the actions of Alex led to the actions of Jessica. Alex wanted to sleep with Jessica but she didn’t want to so they broke and out of revenge Alex created a list of all of the girls at school and ranked them by whether they were hot or not and had categories such as “Best Kisser”, “Worse Kisser”, “Best Ass”, “Worse Ass” and etc. and thus the “Hot or Not” List was born.
It’s kinda ridiculous on how a random ass list Alex wrote out of anger and pettiness inadvertently caused so much trouble and had deadly consequences. If Hannah had any chance of getting rid of the “slut” stigma that chance was taken away when that list was created and circulated around everyone at her school. The list also had an inadvertent side effect to Alex because it cause most people Jessica included to think that Alex hooked up with Hannah gaining him positive rep from the male students and even caused the jocks to allow him to become part of their crew however with the sacrifice of destroying the friendships he had with Hannah and Jessica. Goes to show you that in high school “perception is reality” which can allow random accusations and silly labels to carry some weight and if you are accused or label as something then you are forced to carry that weight.
My opinion of Alex is that he was a loner type that just wanted to fit in with people that would understand him kinda the same desire that Hannah had, however one bad decision alter his fate and caused him to turn his back on the people he once cared for. The very funny and ironic thing about Hannah, Jessica and Alex is that they all share similar journeys throughout this process. On the last entry I pointed out how similar Hannah and Jessica were to each other and I will discuss further on an later entry how similar fates they share as well. Hannah and Alex is an interesting case on the fact that every painful memory and actions that Hannah had to endure Alex low-key was suffering the same fate. I didn’t noticed it when I watched the tv show the first time since the focus was mainly on Hannah, but after multiple viewings if you play very close attention Alex was going through his own depression and suicidal journey just like Hannah did.
One of the points on the tapes that Hannah was pointing out was that nobody was seeing the signs of her going through depression that led to her eventual suicide.Once Alex listened to the tapes and realizing what his actions had caused he became depressed and suicidal as well and just like people ignored the warning signs that Hannah showed ironically people were ignoring the warning signs Alex showed as well leading to his fate of him getting shot in the head… yet surviving. Whether Alex’s gunshot was the result of him trying to commit suicide or he was shot by someone else we don’t know. What we do know is that Alex was the only one on Hannah’s list that really showed he regrets what he has done to her and didn’t try to downplay it or ignore it. As much as I wanted to hate Alex I couldn’t because he made stupid decisions that teenagers typically make. End the end both Hannah and Alex were victims of the butterfly effect.
Fractured Mindframe 