Heathers

Sorry for the lateness regarding this post, I lost track of time and with all the events going on this weekend (Jamnesty, Relay for Life etc.) I lost track of time. Anyway...

I must say that Heathers is probably my favorite movie we watched in this class so far. Frankly, if I ever make it in the film industry this is the kind of movie I'd want to make: something that takes a fairly common premise and completely flips it on its head in such a chaotic and post-modern fashion.

For this film, I want to concentrate on its use of "blank parody" as described by Nick Burns and how it jars the expectations of what one would expect from a teen comedy by flipping the genre's cliches upside down. During our talk on thursday, someone discussed how they were almost disappointed in the character J.D., hoping he would be more of a traditional heroic male lead. Such a disappointment is exactly what leads to the idea of this film as a blank parody.

The first 10 or so minutes of the film are almost exactly like Mean Girls: protagonist befriends the most popular girl at school, said popular girl hurts her, protagonist seeks revenge. The audience probably assumes what will follow will be a series of pranks and gags to get back at the popular girl. The popular girl's popularity will decline, popular girl seeks revenge, emotional chaos will erupt in the school, protagonist feels bad, protagonist seeks redemption, the high school will be at peace once again, the protagonist will fall in love with J.D. and everyone will live happily ever after, more or less. This basic plot line was my assumption of what will happen in Heathers... and then J.D. kills the popular girl.

Then what follows is a satirical tale that slowly unravels its own sanity until Veronica is watching J.D. blow himself up in front of the school. The whole narrative completely throws the audience out of their expectations by ultimately creating an extremely dark and morbid version of a John Hughes coming of age teen comedy; the genre this film is "blank paroding".

However, Burns is wrong about one thing, stating that it is "nothing more than purely formalistic cinematic considerations" and that characters show no real psychological motivation. The lack of motivation is however why the satire is so effective. These characters do have purpose for what they do, as proved with J.D.'s final monologue before attempting to blow up the school, but this lack of motivation Burns talks about only adds to the pure insanity this school is being shoved face first into. Ultimately, Heathers is about a high school literally going mad over the constant "suicides" and how many of the characters, particularly the teachers and parents, are completely incompetent to handle the situation in a mature fashion. It's a metaphor for how adults, for the most part, are unable to connect with their youth.