Eskimo.
Today’s topic: “A Movie That Should be Required High School Viewing” seemed ambiguous to me. Should it be a film we hope high school students will identify with and be comforted by, or aim for something that will teach them a lesson, possibly to the satisfaction of we adults? I think Heathers does both, sick and twisted though it is.
I was positively in love with the movie when it came out during my senior year of high school, and I watched it repeatedly. It was a go-to for quotes for years, and a sort of cult-barometer on which to measure someone’s coolness. By that point, I was pretty much through the angst of adolescence and could appreciate the parody. The film lampoons the addiction both teenagers and adults have to that angst; how they rely on it and expect it, and how it can become a fetish if given too much weight.
Sure, it’s about cliques and bullying, conformity and alienation, and the difficulty of communication between the generations. But it’s also about how adults seem to expect the dramatic from teenagers. Sloppy murders are passed-off as suicides, and no one questions them; rather, they become a cause celebre. The kids begin to look at suicide as another thing the cool kids do, and the adults practically foam at the mouth with the ways they can help. “Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make,” says the hippy teacher who jumps into the fray, as she’s finally given the go-ahead to stage a lock-in to really get to the bottom of the teenagers’ feelings.
But no one’s really sad about the deaths; they were the most popular kids, but also the nastiest. No one would have killed anyone, surely, if not for the new kid in town, J.D. (Christian Slater), but they all seem to care so little about each other as people that dead or alive seems just a question of semantics. It’s only really through the trauma and extremity of being involved with these murders that Veronica (Winona Ryder) wakes from this stupor and tries to actually save those around her.
The film has something for teenagers to hang onto though. At one point, her mother says, “When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.” I love this line because it’s true. Because life sucks, being an adult sucks, but high school sucks more.
This is mainly because you think it shouldn’t, like it should be the time of your life. You believe that you should be happier than you are and it seems like everyone is having far more fun than you. It’s the first time reality intrudes on your existence, and it’s quite a shock. When you couple increased responsibility with a lack of freedom or independence, you get the perfect recipe for indignation and angst. To get through, you either shut down or lash out. Heathers, though extreme and dark (and brilliantly so), is actually an expression of that frustration.
Heathers makes me think of Slater, which makes me think of Pump Up the Volume, which makes me think of Lara… Wonder what she’s up to today (and I wonder when the hell we got so old, huh?)
Gayle – I watched Heathers for the first time on VHS the week I got home from the Army, at about 2AM. I laughed so hard that I woke up my entire household and got a stern reprimand for “not being in a barracks” anymore. The scene that killed me was the aftermath of the “suicide” of Kurt and Ram (mineral water – Fa&&*ts!); I was convinced that would have really been the reaction, and was even more convinced after I spent time in Ohio. The exchange between Veronica and her mother was spot on accurate – to paraphrase Paul Mooney, among others, “everybody wants to be an adult, nobody wants to be an adult”. Oh, and after encountering her once in real life, I can attest that Shannon Doherty never had to act to play a hardcore bitch. That is one distasteful person!
This is incredibly insightful regarding the teenage (and adult) brain. Linking this to my tumblr.
xoxo
I remember I saw this for the first time with you, Gayle. Where is lost in the confines of my brain – it’s filled with all this other useless information. This is the movie that started my crush on Christian Slater. Which also makes me think of Pump Up the Volume, which makes me think of MY sister – but only because her face was on the entire screen for that milli-second. For the record, I had my 14 year old daughter watch it this year.
Tully It’s funny you mention VHS, because I just tried to watch my old copy of it (taped from cable back in the early nineties, naturally) and it’s nearly unwatchable because I’d worn it out. Ahh, videotape.
It’s also funny you mention Doherty; when reading stuff about Heathers while writing this, I found a mention of interviews with the writer (then 24, fer chrissakes!) and the director, and they both kept laughingly implying that she was a raging bitch. ;) But, it must be said, “Veronica, why are you pulling my dick?” is said with great aplomb.
Rory I was totally thinking of you while writing this – I think we probably watched it together more than once. And yes, the crush on Slater was universal, I think, for our generation. And YES, I think of your sister as well… and her full-screen close-up with the ankh painted on her face. Just… takin’ in his deep, deep words at the climax of Pump up the Volume. It was so honest and important. We were so misunderstood. ;)