“Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast? It’s been almost 30 years
since Heathers transformed teen comedy with its morbid, biting satire
of high school. “[BLEEP] me gently
with a chainsaw.” In the John Hughes era of perfect movie endings
and fun teenage shenanigans, Heathers heightened
adolescent cruelty and darkness and made them very funny. “Grow up, Heather. Bulimia’s so ’87.” Heathers still feels edgy
and daring today, and it continues to resonate
because it exposes a timeless truth -- that high school,
like the society it prepares us for, is a twisted black comedy. “If everyone jumped off a bridge,
would you?” “Probably.” Before we go on, if you're new here
be sure to subscribe and click the bell to get notified
about all of our new videos. Heathers primes us to look for meaning
in high school drama and pain, and then it reveals that there is none. “Dear diary: my teen angst
bullshit has a body count.” The movie’s stroke of brilliance
is the way it mocks the takeaway of almost all other teen movies,
and that’s the idea that our high school peers
have a secret depth we’ve overlooked. “What we found out is that
each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case,
a princess, and a criminal.” Heathers is saying no,
they don’t have hidden depth -- they’re just as bad as they appear. “Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing to offer this school
but date rapes and AIDS jokes.” And there is no profound takeaway
to the high school experience, other than realizing it’s all nonsense. “Are we going to prom
or to hell?” The character who understands
this from the beginning is JD. After he kills Heather Chandler, he convinces Veronica
to help craft her fake suicide note, knowing that people will eat this up. “I die knowing no one
knew the real me.” Sure enough, people start acting
like they had Heather all wrong. “I thought she was
your usual airhead bitch. Guess I was wrong. We all were.” And they idealize the idiot
football players, too, after JD frames their murder
as a gay suicide pact. “Suicide gave Heather depth,
Kurt a soul, Ram a brain.” The joke is that the community
romanticizes these people because of their fake suicides, but we know they actually were
just mean and dumb -- they were in no way misunderstood. JD underlines passages
in Heather Duke’s copy of Moby Dick when he’s planning her murder. “I’ve already stared
underlining meaningful passages in her copy of Moby Dick,
you know what I mean?” And later Veronica dreams about everyone overanalyzing
the word she underlined. “But I believe the word ‘Eskimo’
underlined all by itself is the key to understanding Heather’s pain.” so the use of Moby Dick
epitomizes the way that society will search to create a deeper meaning
when it’s not there. “I must say that I was impressed
to see that she made proper use of the word ‘myriad’ in her suicide note.” But at the same time, Heathers
is rejecting JD’s version of nihilism. In a cast of characters where everyone’s a stereotypical
high school type, JD is the “bad boy”
taken to a grotesque extreme -- he’s so bad he wants to kill everyone
and blow up the school. “You’re not a rebel,
you’re [BLEEP]-ing psychotic.” JD’s full name, Jason Dean,
associates him with James Dean and the iconic Rebel Without a Cause. He seduces Veronica with the appeal
of a Bonnie and Clyde-style rebellion “Listen, my Bonnie and Clyde days are over.” and the adolescent fantasy of
a great love pitted against society. “Our love is God. Let’s go get a slushie.” But JD’s god is not love—
he worships chaos “Chaos is great. Chaos is what killed
the dinosaurs, darling.” and he respects only
the rule of strength. “I want your strength.” JD only “loves” Veronica
to the extent that she submits
to what he wants. “I loved you. Sure, I was coming up
here to kill you.” Veronica’s anger at Heather Chandler
draws JD to her. He appears at her window as almost this instant response
to her throwing her diary, after she’s written the words
“I want to kill” so it’s as if he’s summoned because she wants to kill Heather
and the others -- “You believed it because
you wanted to believe it.” But ultimately she sees
through the bad boy appeal and she rejects his choice
to turn against humanity itself. “You know what I want, babe? Cool guys like you out of my life.” Yes, Heathers is saying that high school and our society
are dark and meaningless. “I’ve seen JD’s way, I’ve seen Ms. Pauline Fleming’s way,
and nothing has changed.” But it’s not saying
that life is meaningless and not worth fighting for. JD’s nihilism leads him
to literally self-destruct. But Veronica finds real strength within. “You got power --
power I didn’t think you had.” She might begin the movie as
a “cool girl” in her school, but to us, this iconic shot
of her disheveled at the end is the real image of
the ultimate cool girl. “You look like hell.” “Yeah? I just got back.” At the end, Veronica reaches out
to the only other person who truly understands how stupid
and pointless social dynamics actually are -- and that’s the girl that the students
cruelly call Martha Dumptruck. “I was wondering, if you aren't
doing anything that night, maybe we can rent some new releases,
pop some popcorn.” “I'd like that.” It’s significant that Veronica
goes off with Martha and not her childhood friend Betty -- sure, Betty’s sweet, but Betty totally respects the rules
of the social hierarchy. “I know I’m not as exciting
as your other friends.” “Do you think,
I mean do you really think, if Betty Finn's fairy godmother
made her cool, she would still hang out
with her dweebette friends?” But Martha wouldn’t try
to be another Heather. She’s seen into the emptiness
at the core of high school society; and she’s experienced real pain,
so she has depth and character. Heathers isn’t just saying
that high school is a vacuum -- it’s using the school
to represent society at large. “Now there is a school that self-destructed
not because society didn’t care, but because the school was society.” Screenwriter Daniel Waters
said the film’s message is a variation on something
Ally Sheedy’s character says in The Breakfast Club. “When you grow up, your heart dies.” So, according to Waters,
the Heathers version of this is “When you’re 14, your heart dies.” Heathers observes that the reason our teen years are such
a dark, difficult time is because this is when
we start trying in earnest to approximate adulthood
and its social structure. There’s a recurring joke
of people blaming society for these teens’ problems. “I blame not Heather, but rather
a society that tells its youth that the answers can be found
in the MTV video games.” And JD gets away with everything
because he understands this blind spot in how society views adolescents
as if they’re strange freaks of nature. “Society nods its head
at any horror the American teenager can think to bring upon itself!” But the culprit here according
to Heathers isn’t youth culture -- it’s youths imitating adult society. There’s a key moment
when Veronica says to her parents “All we want is to be
treated like human beings.” and her mom’s answer
tells us everything. “Just how do you think adults
act with other adults? You think it's all just a
game of doubles tennis? When teenagers complain they
want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are
being treated like human beings.” Veronica even compares
her friends to coworkers. “It's just like they're people I work with
and our job is being popular and shit.” The girls play croquet throughout the film,
and this represents the civilized facade hiding a cutthroat game of domination. “Go ahead, knock me out. It's the only way to win.” It doesn’t matter which individual
is in charge, because they’re all slaves
to the toxic structure. “I’ve cut off Heather Chandler's head
and Heather Duke's head has sprouted back in its place.” The hierarchy and desire for power
corrupts people. “Heather, why can’t you be a friend? Why are you such a megabitch?” “Because I can be.” The question that Veronica
is wondering all along is -- why does it have to be like this? Why can’t her friends just
be friends instead of monsters? And the best answer is probably
that a strict caste system distracts everyone from
the realization that it’s all meaningless. Popularity is a proxy for things
that we think would make us happy. “I’d probably miss my
own birthday for a date.” In the same way in the adult world,
we fixate on status, money, and career achievement, and we try to climb the ladder
instead of reflecting on what it all means. The real question of our existence
is captured in the lunch poll Heather Chandler conducts
near the beginning. “You win $5 million in
the Publisher Sweepstakes and the same day
that whatshisface gives you the check, aliens land on earth and say they’re
gonna blow up the world in two days. What are you going
to do with the money?” And this is is echoed in JD’s
question to Veronica near the end. “Now that you’re dead, what are you going to do
with your life?” So the constructs that we fixate on
are pretty worthless if we think about the fact that we’re going to die
a relatively short time from now. In the end, the movie
gives us a little bit of hope that there could be a new
rule of law in the school, and by extension,
a better society could be possible. Veronica seizes the red power scrunchie
from Heather Duke, and she says “Heather my love,
there’s a new sheriff in town.” But it’s worth noting that the filmmakers originally
had a much darker ending in mind, where Veronica killed JD,
blew herself up, and the movie ended
with a prom dance in heaven, just like JD envisioned. “The only place different social types
can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.” Heathers also plays on
our cultural fascination with the spectacle of teenage darkness. The movie involves bulimia,
date rape, bullying, and suicide. It might be true
that some of Heathers’ humor would be hard to pull off today
in the post-Columbine era and in the wake of
the Parkland shootings -- but it’s worth noting
that the humor in Heathers is never really at the expense of
victims of bullying or cruelty. Instead, it’s frequently using
its dark topics to poke fun at society’s flippant, ignorant
attitudes towards teen problems. “Whether to kill yourself or not
is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.” With Heathers, Waters was
actually making fun of the way that some 80s shows and documentaries,
in his view, made suicide seem attractive. “She was so pretty. And so popular. I thought she had everything.” The high school performs concern
about the wave of student suicides, but really everyone’s enjoying
the drama and excitement of it all. We can even connect this sick fascination
to the problematic impact of a current show like
Thirteen Reasons Why, which was accused of
inspiring copycat suicides. “Can’t you see these new programs
are eating suicide up with a spoon? They’re making it sound like
it’s a cool thing to do.” One of the most profound moments
of Heathers is when we see
Martha actually attempt suicide. After all the comedy that’s come before
it, this moment is a reminder that teen pain
and the risks of suicide are incredibly real and tragic. And amidst all of its humor
and farcical pageantry, the movie drops in some
kernels of truth about teen anguish. “Her soul was in Antarctica,
freezing with the knowledge of the way fellow
teenagers can be cruel... the way that parents
can be unresponsive.” It’s a ridiculous moment,
but there’s some truth in the words. We’ve seen nothing but
teens being cruel, and parents being unresponsive. “Turn that back on.” But what happens in the society
of Heathers is that real pain and problems
are co-opted by the powers that be and they get turned into spectacle
to reinforce the status quo. It’s a huge giveaway that none of the popular kids
actually killed themselves, but everyone is obsessed
with their supposed pain, while nobody cares that Martha
actually did try to kill herself. “It’s just another case of
the geek trying to imitate the popular people of the school
and failing miserably.” It’s still about popularity—
there’s no genuine concern for people who are suffering. “Heather Chandler’s more
popular than ever now.” The film’s memorable style
comes from juxtaposing bright, cheery All-American surfaces
with a dark underbelly. This is epitomized in
the climax sequence, which intercuts Veronica’s and JD’s
brutal fight in the boiler room, and the All-American pep rally
that’s happening right above them. The recurring references
to the croquet and paté “Great paté, but I have to motor
if want to be ready for that funeral.” emphasize the frilly, trivial surface
of Veronica’s life, compared to the anger
and discontent she feels. And you might be surprised to hear
that Waters actually conceived Heathers as a teen movie in the style
of Stanley Kubrick. The screenwriter even wanted
Kubrick to direct it. The film definitely does reflect
a Kubrick-ian view of society as rotten to the core. The cafeteria scene was influenced
by the barracks sequence at the beginning of Full Metal Jacket. “Sir, yes sir!” “Bullshit, I can’t hear you.” and Christian Slater was channeling
Jack Nicholson in his performance as JD. “You’re distracting me. And it will then take me time
to get back to where I was.” “Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag!” Heathers was one of the first movies
to really investigate the trope of the pretty, popular mean girl. “Does it not bother you that everybody in this school
thinks you’re a piranha?” “I could give a shit. They all want me as a friend or a [BLEEP].” We can see the film’s influence
on so much that came after it in the comic portrayal of superficial
or cruel girls who run their high school, in stories about the darkness
of teen female friendships. The most obvious descendant of Heathers
would probably be Mean Girls -- which was actually directed
by Waters’ brother Mark. “Hi Courtney, love your cardigan.” “Oh my god, I love your skirt. Where did you get it?” Gretchen trying to make “fetch” happen “So fetch.” reminds us of the characters in Heathers
making “very” a stand-alone adjective. “How very.” The slang and dialogue in this movie
is endlessly quotable. “What is your damage, Heather?” Waters actually invented the lingo because he thought that copying
actual teen expressions of the time would make the movie outdated before long. “Why are you pulling my dick?” But as much as Heathers
has influenced everything since, the film was daringly dark
in a way later movies haven’t been -- to this day, no high school comedy has really matched Heathers
in fearlessly going there, and pulling no punches
on the popular kids, high school, and society itself. “I just killed my best friend.” “And your worst enemy.” “Same difference.” Hey guys, it's Susannah and Debra here. Thank you so much for watching. If you're new here, please subscribe,
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