Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi regrets including suicide
MELINA Marchetta, who wrote the hit Australian novel and movie, has admitted her acclaimed teen drama would’ve been very different if written today.
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WHEN it comes to cult Australian novels and movies, few hold a candle to Looking for Alibrandi.
Written by Melina Marchetta in 1992, the novel became so popular and such a rite of passage for high school students that it was eventually made into a film in 2000.
Marchetta recently sat down with Pedestrian TVand revealed, if she were to write her hit novel today, she’d leave one part out.
The novel is now 25 years old and, even after all that time, the tragedy of John Barton, played by Matthew Newton, is still very fresh.
And, just as it shocked audiences and readers, Marchetta admits the suicide was just as shocking for her.
“With the John Barton thread — gosh, I remember distinctly realising that he was going to die, and it’s just terrible, because in a way as a writer you try to stay in the character’s life, and I just realised that if he had gone up to his father and said ‘This is how I feel, let’s talk about it’, it just would’ve seemed unrealistic,” Marchetta told Pedestrian.
Despite the dialogue around suicide continuing to move in a positive direction, Marchetta told the publication that Looking for Alibrandi would be very different if she wrote it today.
“I always feel torn about [Barton’s death], because I’m not sure if I wrote that book today, I’m not sure I would have written about that suicide. It’s touched my life too much since then, and I just don’t know — I don’t think I could have actually gone down that way because of the people close, in my life, who have been affected by suicide,” she said.
“It was never a planned thing, I never thought ‘Okay, I want to write about this girl who meets this boy who doesn’t know what to do and takes his life’. It was a shock. There have been a few shocks in my novels over the years, and that was one of the biggest ones,” she added.
Marchetta reconsidering Barton’s suicide in Looking for Alibrandi comes weeks after Australian youth mental health organisation Headspace issued a warning against Netflix’s show 13 Reasons Why.
The show, which sees a high-schooler record 13 audiotapes explaining why she killed herself, has drawn both worldwide criticism and praise for its extremely realistic depiction of suicide.
Since its release, the teen drama has led to numerous countries adding their own trigger warnings.
The show made history in New Zealand after their classification office created a brand new rating, RP18, for the show.
The rating requires anyone under the age of 18 to view the show with the supervision of a parent or guardian.
New York’s Department of Education also recently urged school principals to warn parents about the series after America’s National Association of School Psychologists released a statement.
“We do not recommend that vulnerable youth, especially those who have any degree of suicidal ideation, watch this series,” it read.
Despite the numerous warnings, the show has become the most talked and tweeted about show of 2017 and has triggered thousands of conversations about the difficult topics of suicide, sexual assault and high school bullying.
Originally published as Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi regrets including suicide