Heathers

Heathers is a movie from the late 80s that seemed to speak to the teenage generation of the time. It's about a group of popular girls, all named "Heather," who accept a new member into the group. I don't know how it comes about, but the new girl gets sick of their attitude, so she plots to kill her and plays it off as a suicide. The movie is dark, but it really seemed to connect with an entire generation. We get so sucked into these roles that society labels us as, but breaking out of it can be quite liberating. This movie uses extreme actions to show the struggles of society and the youth. When I went to look up movies relating to suicide, so it could coincide with Suicide Prevention Week / Month, this was one of the ones most repeated on those lists.

Although it's not actually suicides causing the school to lose students to begin with, it does show the struggles that the youth faces which causes them to make decisions like these. I am one of the people who had to recover from the loss of a brother due to suicide, so I am a bit invested in this topic. People don't always talk about it and sometimes they throw out small hints that you may not even realize that it's what they're hinting at. Just listening to someone and letting them know they're not alone can help. If you know someone who seems to be leaning into a darkness or depression and you don't know what to do to help them, advise them to seek the help you feel you can't give. There are people willing to listen and help if they just ask for it. It's tough losing someone to suicide because you're left wondering what you could have done differently. You replay conversations in your head where you think they left you an opening to talk to them, but you missed the cues that would clue you in to what was running through their mind. I've had to learn to forgive myself for not knowing he was suffering and not broaching the subject when he gave me the clues for it, for being too young to have the knowledge I do now and for feeling like I failed him somehow. I still don't know all the right things to say or the best way to approach those conversations, but there are hotlines out there to help. Sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear to turn the decision away for one more day. Sometimes they just need to know that someone cares about them. For more information on what you could do to help, check out #BeThe1To for advice and guidance to show you could "Be the 1 to help save a life."

So, this movie helps break the ice on a tender subject and helps to create a conversation about it. It's sometimes necessary, even if it's hard. So, on that note, time to watch the movie and see how the school copes with the loss.

This was a bit more than I expected it to be. I knew it was a dark comedy, and it was definitely that, but I didn't expect it to turn into more of the students attempting suicide after the first few not-quite suicides. Although they make mention of it being the "cool thing to do," I can tell that it was more about how the option of ending things was more accessible to those suffering under typical high school bullshit. Bullying and high expectations set by peers, parents and teachers put a large amount of strain on a developing mind and the pressure can definitely get to a boiling point. Girls that are picked on for being not pretty enough, not skinny enough or being too vulnerable. Boys that are not macho enough, smart enough or not cool enough. They all have their own pressures from differing people and it makes life in high school tough. I had a classmate who committed suicide while we were in high school. I always saw her as a fun, funky, and unique chick. She always had a smile for everyone and I still don't know what in her life was so heavy that she couldn't bear it anymore. It was a shock then and yet in my high school mind, the depth of her decision and the reality of it was a little lost on me. I was told she committed suicide and I understood that meant her life was not going to continue any further than this point, but I couldn't truly understand what that meant for her. What her daily life must have been like, what inner turmoil she must have been living through. It's something that no one can truly empathize with unless they've been in the same place. This movie also shows someone trying to break the cycle of high school abuse. We all could learn a lesson in what our actions towards other can really mean to them. And whether that's what we want our lasting legacy to be in their minds.

Winona Ryder's character, Veronica, Is a bit of an outsider, even in her own group of friends. She's not the perfect oddball, but she's just enough outside of the box to feel like she doesn't fit in completely. She doesn't understand their motives for the things they do and their ease with being cruel. It gets to her a little, but not enough to want to change their ways or paint a target on her back instead. She meets JD, Christian Slater's character, and they immediately feel a connection to each other's weirdness. That's something I can totally relate to. In high school, I was in the group categorized as "freaks" and we wore that badge proudly. If that meant we were non-conforming and allowed to be our unique selves, then we were all for it. So, we connected with others of a like mind and embraced our inner weirdness. Although I went to high school a decade after this movie was made, I feel like it was very similar to my generation. In some aspects, the schools of today are still somewhat similar, just with extra layers of complications that we didn't have back then. It's funny that you can watch a movie about high school and all it does is remind you of your days in high school. If you haven't gone to high school just yet, this may be a bit of a warning for you. It's not easy, but the bonds we make in those years can be the most amazing relationships that last through the rest of our lives. Even when we don't see each other except for reunions, it's like no time has separated us and we reconnect easily. With Facebook, our connections stay even stronger because we keep up with each other between reunions. It's really nice.

JD is a bit of a psycho that you don't see coming. He's dubbed a Dark Horse by Veronica at one point early on, but you don't even realize how literal that comment is until later in the movie. It's like he had the pent up aggression but never acted on it until someone accepted him with all of his faults. Although Veronica makes comments about killing her classmates, she really doesn't want to act on them. She wants to play a prank on her "best friend" by mixing milk and orange juice, which is pretty gross, but not the most vicious thing someone could think of. JD, on the other hand, decides to give her straight Drano. Her death is sudden and immediate, which still has me concerned. Even swallowing that straight would have just caused her to get violently ill in minutes or hours, not seconds, and she should have shown signs of ingesting poison, like vomiting. She does none of that. Just does a belly flop onto a glass coffee table and that's the end of her. I realize it's a movie and it's more of a statement piece than a literal representation of reality, but still. It could have used something more. They go after two more classmates because JD decides that they need a bit of humbling and Veronica naively goes along with it. Now she's in it elbows deep and there's no going back. He's the cause of two of the murders and was the guiding influence on the third, so he's definitely the more culpable of the two, but she isn't without blame. These actions have consequences, though, that neither would have thought of.

Each of the deaths caused the other students to see more into each victim's personality than was actually there. A suicide for the most popular girl in school showed a level of depth she didn't show in her life. The jocks' deaths and staged love showed a tenderness that they didn't truly possess. The students saw a commonality between themselves and those lost. But for some, it only made their situations seem like more than they could handle and they started seeing suicide as an option. Veronica is constantly writing in her diary and at one point writes, "Dear Diary, My teen angst bullshit has a body count." There is so much depth to that one sentence and it resonates with many who lived through difficult times in high school. When you think of all of the school shootings that have happened over the years, that single sentence hits even harder. High school is more of a dog eat dog world than our adult lives and we tend to forget that as we get older and high school seems further away. Veronica is caught trying to appease the "cool crowd" to avoid being the target, but it's not really enough to avoid the sharks these girls are. When one goes down, another rises up to take her place. JD goes completely against the grain of typical high school hierarchy. He reminds me a lot of the crowd I hung out with in high school, though we didn't have the psychotic need to actually murder our classmates. It's more about his blasé attitude and need to stay outside of the "in crowd" that reminds me of our gang. I thought he was a pretty cool guy, myself, until he started killing off his classmates. Then, my entire attitude changed towards him and he only got worse as he killed more.

It felt like there was a lot of bits in this movie that was more of a figurative statement than a literal one and I found myself appreciating the movie's underlying theme of judging society as a whole. We put so much weight into some things that have no real meaning or substance in our lives, yet we ignore the things that matter most. They focus so much on staying popular that they forget a simple human need to connect with others and they miss out on the people that could give them more meaningful relationships in their lives. This is a movie I'll probably watch a few more times since I enjoyed it so much. I also really happen to like seeing Christian Slater at that age because it reminds me of the things I liked in high school. The clothes/styles, the attitude, even the angst because it completely encompasses everything that I took joy in during high school. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a good one to watch at least once. You might even find you connect with it like I did.

My next movie will be West Side Story in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. Stay tuned for the next post! I have a DVD of it, but I also found it on Hulu, if you want to watch it along with me.

For more movie love, check out my other blog, "You're Watching That Again?!"