Heathers 1989- US release date
Director: Michael Lehmann
Lauren Potts
Unexpected
Having never seen this film and only
hearing about it, I thought Heathers
was a teeny bobber cult movie about high school girls. Boy was I wrong. Yes this movie portrays the lives of four
popular girls going through high school, but never did I think teen suicide, conformity,
and peer pressure would play a major theme in this picture.
Heather, Heather, Heather, and
Veronica are high school best friends, the most popular girls in school and the
meanest. Veronica out of the three Heathers
seems to possess a mind of her own, to a certain point by not going along with
them all the time. She meets the “new
kid” J.D who eventually becomes her boyfriend.
While talking about her hate for one of the Heathers J.D. gives her the
idea to kill her in jest. Heather ends
up dying from J.Ds joke and Veronica fakes a suicide note in Heathers
name. With that, certain characters are
killed by Veronica and J.D and faked as a suicide. The irony in these faked
suicide deaths is, once the school is aware the deceased teen they become more
popular in death. Its treat suicide as a
fad; like the new pair of shoes that everyone has to have, not thinking of the consequences
it will have in the long run.
In this film everybody wants to be “popular”
by any means necessary, but why? What is wrong with being yourself? Conforming to what is socially normal and acceptable is a cop-out
of yourself identity. By the students desperately
wanting to be popular sheds light on the fact that teens struggle with self-identity
during the late 80’s.
In dealing with conformity, peer pressure
is an aspect that can associate with it.
The saying goes “if your friends jump off a bridge would you.” This was true in the character Martha
Dunnstock falling under the peer pressure she attempts to commit suicide for
the sake of popularity.
This movie was disturbing to me; I
did not know it would be this dark. I understand
it was trying to make light of teen suicide, but to me the dark-comedy/drama
was too dark for me. Even with the dark situations
in this film I took a lot from it. Being
yourself is the best thing you can do; you don’t need anyone’s approval to be
who you are.
I like how the camera was used to
show the point of views of the characters.
It would start out as a wide shot then zoom in for a close up, this was
used a lot for Veronica; her voice was narrating the movie. When she is in her room writing in her diary,
there would be an over-the-shoulder shot, so you can see what she is writing in
her diary. It gave the sense that the
audience was ease dropping on a private moment she was having. In J.D. character he shots to bullies in the
cafeteria, when he pulls the gun out and points it, the camera is right in
front of the gun this intense close made the gun bigger than its actual size
and made the audience feel as if he is pointing the directly in my face. I noticed there were not as many close up
shots of him, his character is disturbed so, I took that as he doesn’t want the
audience to know him or see his emotion.
Even though this movie came out in 1989,
the topics still current in today time.
It reminds me that these problems still occur in my society by becoming
more educated in these topics I can better serve my community.
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