TeaBQ

Spoilers for the “On My Way” episode of Glee, trigger warning for discussion of depression and suicide.

Anyone who follows me on twitter knows that I had Opinions on last night’s ep of Glee. (The short version of said opinions would be “Bite me hard, Ryan Murphy. Also fuck you.”) Those were mostly written while I was spitting mad and watching the ep and confined to the limit of 140 characters. I’m still mad, but at least here I can talk about it in paragraphs.

There were many things wrong with last night’s ep of Glee (including, but not limited to: teen marriage plotline, lack of continuity with Dalton’s zero tolerance policy, Kurt the atheist having nobody but the God Squad to turn to, and Rachel’s history of being cyber bullied being treated as not nearly as important as cyber bulling towards any of the male characters). In the interest of not muddying the waters I’m just going to focus on how the topic of suicide was handled and why it pissed me off so much. But understand my own singular focus does not mean that I’m dismissing the problems with the rest of the episode. They were there in spades, and in various levels of egregiousness.

But let’s talk about suicide! As a quick recap for when my own braincells mercifully delete this ep out of my mind palace, the character of Dave Karofsky attempted to kill himself when he, the former gay basher, was himself gay bashed.

I want to be clear that I did not have an issue with the realism of Dave’s attempt. The buildup of him being a self-loathing gay character leading to somewhere Not Good had been foreshadowed ever since he kissed Kurt. It happens in real life, it’s realistic, no problems there.

I also had no problem with a character like Quinn saying that what Dave did was selfish. I don’t agree with the opinion, but unfortunately there are people out there who have that opinion about those who are suicidal. So again – realistic. Totally okay by me.

What made me furious was the way the show treated what it’s like to be suicidal. And to explain why I have to travel down a few paths, so bear with me.

Causes of Depression

First up, let me clarify that not everyone who is suicidal is that way because of wacky brain chemistry. That’s why I was suicidal, but I am not you nor am I everyone else in the world. If there is one tiny, infinitesimal point of information that I’d like people to learn out of all this it is that Depression is not a uniform thing that can be treated the same way in every case.

I did not have a problem with the show never saying that Karofsky clearly had a mental chemical imbalance that needed to be addressed. Not all Depression or desire for death comes from that place. It’s okay.

However for the topic of suicide in general, which the rest of the show attempted to be about, the message was that you can fight off the desire for suicide with happy thoughts. That message is incorrect and harmful. That message, presented as a teachable moment both for the characters and the audience, is offensive and should’ve never been put forth.

Want to Die? Put On A Happy Face

I won’t say that the idea of finding something to cling to in order to keep from making a noose/taking the pills/jumping of a building doesn’t have validity. I did, after all, have my own thought that helped me clutch on to life by my fingernails when I was in my worst place. It’s an option. It can be helpful.

But note: AN option. CAN BE helpful. It doesn’t work for everyone. I’m alive today not because I had a thought to cling to, but because of that, support from family and friends, access to medicine and doctors, and sheer fucking luck that my kind of Depression was the kind that left me with a window, however small, to crawl out of and get to the other side. (As well as the luck that my kind of Depression allowed things like having a thought to cling to to have an impact on me.)

One of the most harmful things people with Depression (and, for that matter, mental illness in general) can and have been told is to get over it. You wouldn’t be depressed if you just tried not being depressed. Get over it. Walk it off. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Plenty of people in the world have it worse than you. Stop being such a whiner.

Is it possible to talk about Depression/thoughts of suicide, suggest the idea of having a thought to hold on to in order to help you through it, and have that suggestion be meaningful and useful for the person it’s being suggested to? Absolutely.

Likewise is it possible to have a movie where the only black character in the film is the first to die and have said death be well thought out, meaningful, and significant to the plot? Sure can.

But in both cases be really fucking careful of what you’re presenting and the culture that you are presenting it in. Just as the overwhelming cultural history is that the black guy dies first in movies because the black guy dies first in movies, the overwhelming culture about depression/suicide/mental illness is that it truly can be cured with happy thoughts and a chipper attitude, full stop. Not that it’s possibly helpful in certain circumstances. Not that even when it’s helpful it needs to be part of many things helping the person to get through it.

Can you present it without being part of that culture? Yes. Last night’s episode of Glee did not do that. It took the idea of Karofsky’s suicide and literally had Will teaching the Glee kids that if they had a happy thought of their future, they could avoid wanting to kill themselves. They had Kurt, the voice of bullied gay teens on the show, walk Karofsky through a daydream of good things to come and presented it as just the message Karofsky (and by extension others who try to kill themselves) needed to hear to be happy and better.

If it had just been Karofsky I could’ve seen it. It would’ve been problematic but at least it would have made more sense in the narrative that Karofsky, who was driven to suicide by his environment, needed to hear that one day his environment would change and it would, as they say, get better. That he had the forgiveness and understanding of the kid he’d formerly bullied would’ve also helped tie it all together.

But not with the message around it. Not with the kids and the audience being told to keep a happy thought to figure off suicidal urges. Not with part of that happy thought message being tied up with repeated mentions of how “life’s too short” so why not be happy now.

Making that the central takeaway lesson about suicide goes back to the whole incorrect and also harmful thing. For some it helps. But for many it doesn’t. Instead it reinforces the idea that depression and suicide are signs of weakness and failings on the part of a person who just couldn’t get over it and think of happy things. It also ignores how for some the depression makes it physically impossible for them to think of happy things. It reinforces the oft-repeated message that people who are depressed have nobody to blame but themselves, just as killing off the black guy first reinforces the oft-repeated message that black characters are expendable.

Not All Desires to Die Are the Same But They Are All Serious

As I mentioned before, people come to the desire to kill themselves through different paths. Mine was a bad brain chemistry. Someone else could be past the point of wanting to deal with cancer treatments. Still someone else could be bullied to the point of wanting to die.

I do not fault the show for treating Karofsky as though there was no such thing as a mental chemical imbalance. Being Depressed from being bullied doesn’t mean your brain suddenly started working differently than it did before. (Well maybe it does, fuck if science knows. But you get my point – my brain was always about the bad chemistry. For others that is not the cause.)

There are absolutely people out there who are bullied to the point of being miserable, depressed, self-loathing, and wanting to die. There have sadly been those who went ahead and killed themselves because of it. My comments on the show last night were not intended to dismiss those who were Depressed and/or suicidal because of circumstances like that and I apologize if my words came off that way.

My point here is that, even putting the brain chemistry thing aside, someone who has been bullied to the point of wanting to kill themselves has been hurt. Seriously hurt. Their pain needs to be respected and treated as such.

If Karofsky had been physically beaten to the point where he needed to be on life support, nobody would be telling him to walk it off. (Or they might, but they would be justifiably regarded as an asshole.) They would understand that maybe Karofsky might need reminders that one day he would heal and could go back to playing football again, but that he would also need the help and support of doctors, friends, family, and various forms of medicine, surgery, and physical therapy to get there.

The way he felt – the way that sadly too many people feel – by being tormented should not be handled differently just because the wounds left were psychological. If you are so miserable that you want to die for any reason this is a situation where people need to step in and help. Not just that, but help in ways beyond a “buck up, little camper” pep talk. Someone like Karofsky may not need various forms of meds in order to get him through this like I did, but he needs something.

Again, how the show presented suicidal thoughts ties in to why this was so upsetting. An example of a suicidal thought was Will’s speech about getting caught cheating and wanting to jump off of a roof. I don’t have an issue with the idea that something that’s a suicidal trigger for one person may not be for another. I had a breakdown over a chipped coaster. I’ve been there. The reasons aren’t always huge or even logical.

But Will’s speech presented that moment without context. It, along with the lesson about happy thoughts that followed, gave the impression that when teens think of suicide it’s entirely because they’re drama queens and need happy future thoughts to ground them back in reality. Again: a message that is both incorrect and dangerous.

Bringing it all Home

I can’t say enough that not everyone’s Depression/suicidal urges/etc is the same. Yes, by sheer statistical odds I am sure there are people out there for whom last night’s Glee held exactly the messages they personally needed to hear for the circumstances that they have/had gone through. (I mention the odds not to dismiss the possibility, but to stress how stupid it would be for me or anyone to suggest otherwise.) But that’s a very narrow focus within a much larger group for whom the messages of last night’s Glee were false and actually harmful.

I cannot praise a show that maybe had a glimmer of a possibly good message when that message was wrapped in an even greater message that reinforces the idea that anyone who is Depressed and/or suicidal, regardless of their reason, is a short-sighted weakling who can get over it with a happy thought.

People don’t kill themselves because of weakness. They do it because they are in pain. Lack of respect for said pain doesn’t help. Nor does it help to have a show that is normally so good about things like gay rights issues present Depression and suicide as things that are easily gotten over with a positive attitude and an upbeat song about how that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Especially when the thing that didn’t kill you was a failed suicide attempt.

So fuck you Ryan Murphy, fuck you Glee, and fuck the entire culture that allows messages like that to be praised for bravely addressing issues instead of slammed for being the shitfest of inaccurate harm that it actually was.