Friday, May 9, 2014
Heathers
Heathers genuinely surprised me! I thought it was going to be a Clueless clone but i was very mistaken. It seems so strange that a movie like this exists to a post columbine kid. This movie is brutal in it's satire and it's style is impeccable. The color coordinated outfits and lighting give the film an awesome theatrical style. The reading mentions how the film creates it's own slang. I think it's interesting as someone who never directly experienced the 80`s I recognized terms like "fuck me gently with a chainsaw." It got me thinking about how the decade is colored by popular perception. When I think about the 80's all I can think is shoulder pads, the word "RAD" and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Heathers feels like a movie from the future that is mocking 80's sensibility and style except for the school violence.
The school shooting/ bombing aspect of the film was interesting because of it's flippant treatment. Now, that would all be treated very seriously and the film would be a tragedy about poor Veronica who got pushed too far and became a monster, probably a lot of stark colors and handheld camera work. There would be outraged mothers groups and local politicians spewing about it for two weeks and everybody would forget. The film is a mean spirited, cynical and the reading put it;s finger on it by calling the film nihilistic and I greatly enjoyed it. This movie spits on all that preoccupies our news cycle today and it gave me a great big laugh. This film's moral code resides strictly in the grey, the idea that in school if you die everybody whitewashes you down to saint was an awesome angle of attack because it's true. People tend to forget what a person was truly like once they are in the ground, it's the great revisionism of life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You make an interesting point about Veronica being portrayed as a monster if this film were made today. I think because there are many real cases like this in the national news today, our anxiety about this issue as a culture is so high. I think that's why people don't want to joke about it. I also agree that this film does have an element of nihilism to it, but after JD kills himself at the end, Veronica redeems herself by hanging out with the unpopular kid at prom night and blowing off Heather number two.
ReplyDeleteI also expected the movie to be similar to Clueless prior to watching it! I didn't really know what else to expect. The slang in the movie was definitely amusing. Although this film was created in the eighties, the stuff they were saying throughout the film is actually quite similar to how we hear people talk today (young adults, that is). I like how you mentioned that the movie almost felt like it was from the future--mocking the eighties. It definitely had a different feel to it than any of the other films we have watched in class throughout the semester. It was enjoyable, just a little strange haha.
ReplyDeleteThis movie feels more like the end of the 80s and the end of the 90s to me too, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on--probably something about the style and the deep nihilism. You're touching on the postmodernism of the 80s when you consider that the whole decade comes to you in pop culture media bytes rather than actual events. You could have played with that a bit more.
ReplyDelete