No, just no. 24 year old man fails to understand Heathers…

@herself I’m 54 and inclined to agree with him. I had some thoughts about the existence of a musical version recently.

What do yo see as wrong with his analysis?

@devilgate well, I really do think he missed the point completely. When Heathers came out it was considered “shocking” too. It took the teen film genre, cheesily adopted by John Hughes as his vehicle of choice, and turned it on its head to make a point about violence and suicide and sexual assault—how desensitised teenagers have become and how unhealthy that can be. The bullying of Martha Dumptruck (one of the examples the reviewer uses to prove his point) I see rather as being portrayed in such a way as to make the audience uncomfortable, even though this is done while most of the kids in the lunchroom point and laugh. The audience is meant to feel uncomfortable. With all of it. That’s what black comedy is for. It holds the mirror up to society and we laugh, because otherwise we’d scream. That doesn’t make the point any less valid. I actually think it’s a shame movies like this arent being made today. The subject is distasteful, yes, but surely if people are now saying a work of satire is “too real” that means some self-reflection might be in order, rather than trigger warnings so we can instead avoid the topic completely? For the reviewer to go on to suggest (the incredibly shallow) “Mean Girls” as a viable alternative is bizarre to me as well. Anyway, rant over, hehe. Hope I didn’t blow your hair back too much :))

@herself @devilgate

Whoah; I could not agree with you more here.

That "reviewer" and his sneering condescension make his article almost unreadable, however I read it and have many comments.

I think it is difficult for such a pampered and privileged child to imagine the cultural landscape of the late 1980s. No matter what your own cultural tastes were, every where you looked we were served milquetoast. From bland corporatised music to bland television to utterly bland films, everything was just the same.

John Hughes ruled the world with such "teen" drivel as Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, movies in which submission to authority and acquiescence were the key to the character's eventual fulfilment and happy ending.

Even the "rebel" films of the era - Breakfast Club, Better off Dead, Ridgemont High - the protagonists won by either becoming part of the mainstream or, for the women, becoming sexually available, then subservient, to their male counterparts.

Then came Heathers, which just blew all of that shit right out of the water. The bullying of Marsha Dunnstock isn't held up as a "good thing", in the way that Hughes' early films would have done. The film explores the consequences of that bullying, both in her suicide attempt and her later use of a mobility device.

Even the handling of the sexual assaults aren't as described by this terrible reviewer. Yes, they exist, but, brother, you should see Grease, Pretty in Pink, or Revenge of the Nerds, which has a straight-up rape played for laughs!

Yes, Veronica is assaulted, but the assaults do not define the character. She does not acquiesce to them, she retains her agency, this is a key element which sets Heathers apart from, well, everything that came before and much of what came after. (Note: yes, she retains her agency by killing three people, but you can't have it all)

It is that fact of her retaining her agency which make the movies denouement; Veronica, having refused to be defined by men who assaulted her, refuses again to be defined by JD and his assaults. This sets up the climactic explosion, followed by probably the best scene in the film as Veronica, bloodied, dirtied, burned, cigarette in hand, meets Heather Dukes:-

H: Veronica, you look like hell
V: Yeah? I just got back.

kisses her, and takes her scrunchie, the totemic symbol of the Heathers' power.

Its hard to comprehend, if you weren't there, how radical, how subversive this moment is. Teen films always ended with the good guy (redeemed or otherwise) kissing the good girl (erased of all agency). Even more important is what comes next.

Veronica informs Marsha Dunnstock that her date for the prom isn't available, and asks her to spend that night with her watching videos. The Prom, that supposed cultural institution, is dismissed as an irrelevancy by two women who've been through hell.

Maybe that's why this child was incapable of appreciating Heathers. His apparently claimed feminism barely passes muster, he seems incapable of understanding the cultural history which the film turned on its head and pumped full of Ich Luge bullets. He has, somewhat incongruously, supplied a perfectly mediocre milquetoast critique.

@dgold @herself @devilgate I think that the 24-year-old reviewer, in his heavy handed, inept way, is making a valid point: that removed from its specific cultural context Heathers does not really stand up on its own. When it came out, I was in my early 30s and living in London, having been educated in the Irish school system. From what I could tell from Heathers and other films, Irish secondary schools resembled the American high school hardly at all, so the cultural context was certainly missing in my case. I hadn’t seen either Pretty in Pink or 16 Candles (still haven’t, though Ferris Bueller’s Day Off finally caught up with me just a few years ago). Characters like the Heathers themselves were completely alien to me. I’m fairly sure I thought of them as caricatures rather than as believable characters.

As you might expect, I found the film baffling, for the most part. The other film it reminded me most of was Cutter’s Way, which I’d hated on first viewing. (I still haven’t seen Cutter’s Way a second time, but I think I’m ready — as, indeed, I’m ready to rewatch Heathers.) Now that I think of it (and bearing in mind that it must be nearly 30 years since I’ve seen either film) it seems to me that what Heathers and Cutter’s Way have in common is that the potentially revolutionary “heroic” characters get diverted into pointless and ultimately unsatisfactory adventures that leave the status quo undisturbed. Realistic perhaps but not very encouraging.