1988 New World Entertainment, Inc.
"Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!" Few films speak so tellingly of a decade in the manner that Heathers speaks of the 1980s. These were ten years filled with egregious clothing, horrible music, the impending doom of a Cold War turned into a true war, and teenagers that really, really just wanted to kill their parents. Heathers came almost at the end of the decade, in 1988, and it launched or solidified the careers of its two main actors: Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. For better or worse, several of the people that read this may only know the film because of its coverage in the latest season of RuPaul's Drag Race, but Heathers is a film that still manages to be relevant today, at least in a comedic sense, and deserves to be watched at least twice. What makes so Heathers so meaningful? It was a film that managed to capture the emptiness of American life in the 80s in a tidy little package of the teenage angst film. Indeed, Heathers was certainly more meaningful to the adults that viewed it than it was to teens.
Veronica (played by Winona Ryder) embodied the iconic image of the pissed off American teenager.
Heathers revolves around the social life of three popular high school students named Heather, as well as another teenager named Veronica (Ryder), who is only barely saved from being a social outcast. Veronica finds her existence as a punching bag for the Heathers to be superficial and intolerable, but manages to find a new spark when she meets J.D., a mysterious transfer to Westerburg High School. Veronica's relationship with J.D. proceeds forward at a furious pace and he manages to tap into her desire to kill her friends by tricking her into doing just that. The first to go is the leader of the Heathers: Heather Chandler, who uses her popularity to enforce the exaggerated high school caste system and terrorize her frenemies. The next to go are jocks Kurt and Ram, whose suicide is staged as a humorous and unlikely gay love affair. One of the more memorable characters is a teacher in the school who tells Veronica: "Whether or not to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make." Things come to a climax when Veronica averts J.D.'s attempts to blow up the high school, somehow managing to break free from his nihilism. She rides off into the sunset, after what is almost a life time of experience, with the high school fat girl.
"They seem to have an open door policy for assholes, though, don't they?"
What is fascinating to me about Heathers is that it follows that 80s trend of books and films in which the theme it presents is bleak and lacks a feel good resolution. In its exaggerated depiction of high school life in America, Heathers really represents a microcosm of life in America; as J.D. tells Veronica: "school is society." Certainly, there are no thinking machines in Heathers, unless one wishes to construe the high school students as robots, which is a fair comparison. Even without robots, the film has that quirky quality, which makes for interesting watching for fans of science fiction. Watch Heathers if you are looking to imbue your life with creative catch phrases or if you are bored and looking for inventive ways of killing off your friends. Both are good reasons in my book.
"I love my dead gay son!"
J.D. and Veronica kill their first "Heather"
