My overall take on this film was I felt like I’ve already seen it a million times, even though this is the first time I’ve watched it. There are so many recent films similar to it: they are all set in high school with the types of people that we know, and with cliques that follow a specific hierarchy. Someone mentioned the comparison of Heathers and Mean Girls, and even though I actively hate Mean Girls I cannot get the comparison out of my mind. Where you are on the class scale is the most important part of your high school career, nothing else matters except doing whatever you can to be as close to the top of the hierarchy as possible. And I think that part of that is what makes Heathers post-modern. Nothing in the rest of society (in other words concepts of significance that really should matter) is talked about or has any value.
What is interesting about Heathers though is that it uses a significant matter to exemplify or even reinforce the hierarchy of the school. Committing suicide becomes something that the cool kids do. After Martha tries to kill herself and fails, she is only seen as just example of another loser trying to be like the in-crowd. It doesn’t matter anymore if she was trying to fit in or if she would have killed herself regardless just because of the meaning that the other “suicides” brought to the act. Heathers takes the meaning of suicide completely out of context.
I completely agree with you, Heathers does take the meaning of suicide completely out of context. It was crazy to see Martha's honest suicide be ignored and twisted into the reasoning of her wanting to kill herself only to be cool and follow the school fad. I couldn't believe how the authority figures were shown as a joke. It was as if they didn't matter and the only thing that did were these kids in high school. They seemed to have the upper hand.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you on the movie comparison with Mean Girls. Though the movie bugs me, you could line up character for character, everyone between the two films. However, there isn't exactly a parallel for J.D. which would probably have made that movie scary as heck. I think Mean Girls is more of a modern view on the hierarchy aspect while Heathers took that idea a little further.
ReplyDeleteFor a parallel to J.D., you should watch Jawbreakers. The main character (don't remember her name but she was played by Rose McGowan) is like a perfect mix of J.D. and Heather 2, and was probably very influenced by this film because I'm almost positive it came out a few years after Heathers.
ReplyDeleteI did find the representation of the adults to be very weird. Nowadays there are activists of some kind all over the place trying to get us to join any cause, but here the people who wanted to help other people were ridiculed, it was very bizarre. I think it was interesting that all the fake suicides were sensationalized but the only real attempt and the real cry for help was pretty much ignored, and the only real suicide (J.D.'s) wasn't even addressed, and I imagine that if it had been, the suicide would have been overlooked in favor of the fact that he tried to blow up the school.
It's interesting how you compare Heathers to Mean Girls. The two movies seem to have a lot of similarities. It seems like any movie where there are high school cliques you can almost take character for character and compare them because there are the same cliques throughout every high school. The hierarchy in these high schools are interesting and it seems that the adults really don't have a hold on anything that is going on. The students in these cliques seem to run the entire school.
ReplyDelete>>Nothing in the rest of society (in other words concepts of significance that really should matter) is talked about or has any value.
ReplyDelete_Nice_, Erin! Yes, exactly. So do you think that the movie is satirically pointing out the lack of values in 80s society, or do you think that the movie itself is empty of value? The reading makes the latter argument, though I'm not fully convinced.