Tara Shilkret #4

How Very: Heathers Over Time

If you thought the classic trio was Harry, Ron, and Hermione, think again--it is clearly Heather, Heather, and Heather. In the 1988 teenage cult classic movie Heathers, these three girls dominate Westerberg High School with their shoulder pads, college parties, and unforgiving pranks. But unlike descendants such as Mean Girls, the movie touches on more than just social cliques and image issues. The central plot follows a popular girl, Veronica, who has long been absorbed into the Heather posse and recognizes its toxicity. She sees a way out through the mysterious JD, who becomes her lover and partner in crime as they begin to murder and feign the suicide of many of Westerberg’s populars. However, this sardonic comedy is not just commentary on teenage suicide; it takes on issues of rape, mental health, eating disorders, and descrimination based on sexual orientation (just to name a few). As director Michael Lehmann explains, “‘It’s a satire about all sorts of things, but not teenage suicide. The movie is about the general perception of teenagers and the speed at which a community is able to believe that murders are suicides’” (Jones, 2018). So in addition to bringing up social issues in a teen-friendly way, this movie is intended to show adults their own gullibility and the flaws of a society where the alleged suffering of anyone under 25 is taken with an undeserving grain of salt. In this way, the film abides by John Storey’s definition of pop culture as a “site of struggle between the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups in society and the forces of ‘incorporation’ operating in the interests of dominant groups in society” (Storey, 2009, pp. 11). This is true in both Heathers’ content and its intended meaning. We see a nice girl and a loser boy fight against the cliquey high school “system,” but Lehmann also intended the film to showcase the marginalized teenage voice in the face of society’s ageism. Whether in the plot or in its real-life context, the social struggle exists between an outside group and the dominant ideology. This message continues to thrive in the 2014 off-broadway musical adaptation of Heathers. However, while the movie unabashedly satirizes many controversial aspects of society, the remake is much more sensitive in the wake of the current era.

            There are quite a few indicators of the age of Heathers the movie (beyond the 80s hairstyles). One of these is evident in the film’s content revolving around high school power dynamics. This is reflected in the costume color-coding of the Heathers and Veronica throughout the movie, most notably with the alpha Heather in red and Veronica in blue. One theory as to this color choice is tied to Reagan-era politics, with red representing oppression/communism and blue representing freedom (Natadee, 2018). These associations also reenforce Heathers as a site of political struggle, following Storey’s definition of pop culture that we discussed previously. Another indicator of the movie’s age is its boldface controversiality. Lehmann seemed unphased by any protest of the film as “taboo,” stating that “‘part of why you’d make a satire is to rile people up a bit and look at things in a different way, so I wasn’t too bothered when people were offended’” (Jones, 2018). Casting aside criticism would be much more difficult today, with the current push for the politically correct and the advent of social media. Surely, a film that almost normalizes suicide and rape through comedy, riddled with clever profanity, is unexpected and different from other social commentaries. But according to John Fiske, that which is different is powerful and “strangely attractive precisely because it is forbidden, taboo, threatening to cultural order” (Fiske, 1989). Fiske postulated this in the context of portraying racial minorities in works of popular culture, but it can be generalized to any “abnormality” in the content of a cultural text. The shock factor associated with the content of Heathers is what enabled it to gain momentum, spread its message, and last as a cultural artifact 30 years later.

            Walter Benjamin believed that the original form of a cultural artifact represents a specific moment in space and time with a particular aura, and “to pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased” (Benjamin, 1936, pp. 52). In other words, not all reproductions are equal in quality, and none can match the aura of the original. Our 2014 reproduction of Heathers is no exception to this rule. First of all, the color-coding holds over into the musical, where the political implication remains unchanged but has lost significance since the 80s. This is the most clear-cut example of holes in the story’s aura from its original context. The decision to convert the movie into a musical also harms Heathers’ raw power. According to many critics, the musical does not hold up to its “genius bleakness” (Duca & Marcus, 2017). One reason for this is that the movie’s content was too controversial, so it needed softened by some cheerful musical numbers. This seemed to be the only way to make this social commentary more palatable in the current age of mass shootings in the US, many of which have been linked to bullying and mental health issues. With this in mind, media psychologist Jennifer Johnston deems the story “a perfect recipe to inspire would-be shooters” (Jones, 2018). Therefore, the musical puts efforts in place to sterilize the subject matter and de-romanticize JD’s violent tendencies. We hear songs that spout togetherness and hope for humanity, such as “Beautiful” and “Shine a Light.” In the movie, a teacher’s efforts to unite Westerberg students after a “suicide” were rejected, but in the musical they are embraced. In addition, the theme of rape is downplayed in the musical adaptation, with the original song “Blue” that satirized the matter eventually being removed from the score as a sensitivity issue (Duca & Marcus, 2017). Instead,we hear Veronica adamantly protesting against JD in songs like “Seventeen” and “Dead Girl Walking (Reprise).” These pure and heroic moments are definitely emphasized more in the musical than in the movie. Overall, the remake of Heathers in 2014 disrupts the original’s satirical purposes with an almost-futile attempt to become politically correct.

References

Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.

Duca, L., & Marcus, S. (2017). 'Heathers The Musical' Is Not 'Heathers' The Movie, But It's Still Pretty 'Very'. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heathers-the-musical_n_5064485.

Fiske, J. (1989). Commodities and culture. In Understanding popular culture. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 23-47

Jones, E. (2018). Culture - Is Heathers too shocking for 2018? Retrieved October 8, 2019, from http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180803-is-heathers-too-shocking-for-2018.

Murphy, K., O'Keefe, L., & Amendum, D. (2014). Heathers [sound recording]: The musical. [New York]: Yellow Sound Label.

Natadee. (2018). Heathers: Movie vs. Musical vs. TV show. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://criticofeverything.com/2018/03/18/heathers-movie-vs-musical-vs-tv-show-coming-soon/.

Storey, J. (2009). What is popular culture? Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, pp. 1-16.

Waters, D., Di, N. D., Lehmann, M., Ryder, W., Slater, C., Doherty, S., Falk, L., ... Anchor Bay Entertainment, Inc.,. (2008). Heathers. Burbank, Calif: Anchor Bay Entertainment.