Teen Suicide in A Girl Like Her: An Annotated Bibliography

A Girl Like Her. Dir. Amy S. Weber. Perf. Lexi Ainsworth, Hunter King, Jimmy Bennett. 2015. Netflix.

The film, A Girl Like Her, provides a perspective on teen suicide and it’s effect that I haven’t seen before in that it uses a style called “mockumentary” in which, implied by the title, it mocks the style of a documentary. The film is intermittently footage and interviews, giving the feel of a documentary, despite being fictitious. In the movie, a documentary is actually being made, originally about the school’s sports achievements but the filmmaker chooses to do it about the protagonist, Jessica Burn’s attempted suicide and her reasons instead, which truly speaks to the importance of teen suicide and its prevention.

This is my primary text.

Fisher, Douglas. “Keeping Adolescents ‘Alive and Kickin’ It’: Addressing Suicide in Schools.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 87, no. 10, 2006, pp. 784–786. www.jstor.org/stable/20442157.

The journal details warning signs for teens committing suicide and then how to deal with it within a school, such as creating talk within a school, when to talk about it, etc.

It also includes a small figure, within the text, that lists “adolescent literature that addresses suicide”, only one of which I have heard of (John Green’s Looking for Alaska). The section on warning signs was the most useful, in that Jessica Burns displayed some of the warning signs, such as withdrawing from friends and/or social activities and experiencing drastic changes in behavior. However, the other warning signs aren’t really seen, making them a bit redundant.

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“Suicide Statistics — AFSP.” AFSP. N.p., 2016. Web. 02 Dec. 2016. The website gives statistics on suicide in the U.S., including suicide rates nationally, as well as rates in states, compared to the national rate. The site also gives means of suicide, as well as how many people visited a hospital due to nonfatal self-harm. This is relevant to my primary source in that Jessica Burns attempted to kill herself by poisoning through the use of hydrocodone, putting her in the 15.9% on the chart on the website (if she wasn’t fictitious, obviously). Since the movie is based on “millions of true stories”, these statistics back up the idea that suicide is more relevant than a high school’s sport streak.

“Found Footage Film Critic.” Found Footage Critic. N.p., 2016. Web. 03 Dec. 2016. <http://foundfootagecritic.com/found-footage-film-genre/>.

The Found Footage Film Critic page details what the “found footage” film genre is and what sort of films fall into this category, such as Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, etc. It also defines the term found footage as well as mockumentary, which is actually what A Girl Like Her is, even though I initially thought it was a found footage film. Since the page defines these terms, it relates back to my primary source in that it defines what the movie is (a mockumentary) and also what it is not (a found footage film), although it tries to mimic that kind of style. It will be useful when explaining this in my presentation, as these definitions are very clear and concise.