Friday, May 9, 2014

High School Sucks

Every time I watch Heathers it blows my mind that a film with all of the gratuitous violence, bullying, school shooting, building exploding, suicide vest wearing ever got made. I mean come on, JD brings a gun to school, draws it on the two jocks, and fires blanks in their faces and all Veronica says is he may get suspended for a couple of days and she laughs it off imagining the two jocks soiling their drawers. Now a days, especially since Columbine and every other school shooting that has happened, a kindergartener can't even play cops and robbers with a finger gun with out getting a SWAT team called on him. I just wish I could have lived in a time when people weren't so up in arms about every gosh darn thing these days. Everyone has to be nice and politically correct and if you are not you are publicly scrutinized until you release an apology and sent to some reeducation program for your misconduct. It makes me sick that we live in a world where we can't offend anyone anymore. What's the point of living in one of the "freest" countries in the world if you can't speak your mind every now and again.

The plot of Heathers was something that I am almost 100% sure everyone who saw it in 1988 and even today has thought about doing at least once or twice. Murder all of the kids that mess with you and then you will be free to roam the halls of high school in piece. And the way most of the characters were portrayed was fairly accurate to every high school in America. They showed the brutality that was High school. Like the article says, "it’s the superficially flip manner with which it treats those subjects that really stands out. Heathers doesn’t do heartwarming messages. Glee is modeled on Heathers in so many ways — from the evil of the popular people, to the zingers, to closeted bully Karovsky — but when the TV show is held up next to its forerunner, the feel-good Glee feels like a tour through a Hallmark card factory." Nothing these days could even come close to what Heathers did back in 1988 because if it did it would get cancelled or picketed by some organization against something pointless and stupid. Heathers was in your face and honest and that is what I loved about this film. Like JD says, "The extreme always seems to make an impression."

That statement is the best way to describe this film. In a film with dialogue like "fuck me gentle with a chain saw" and where mineral water makes you gay this film keeps rolling out the punches and you're sitting their with your eyes glued to the screen taking the hits because you want to see what they are going to do next. We as students now especially do not see things like this on a daily basis in films these days. It is invigorating. I really loved this film and how it tackled issues that we fight so hard to keep quite these days. Bullying especially. My mom works in an elementary school and kids throw the word "bullying" around FOR EVERYTHING! A kid won't get off the swing for another to use and it's "teacher, teacher I'm being bullied." I would love to see these kids end up in High School where the Heathers were because I'm sure it would be very interesting.




4 comments:

  1. I like your commentary on bullying, I think the term has been diluted to mean any slight against a child, however physical and emotional torture is still present in our school systems arguably all the way up into college. I think that Heathers could be viewed from a modern standpoint as a retaliation against the dilution of bullying.

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  2. Heathers also blew my mind because of the aspects you described. That scene where J.D. pulls out a gun was the first thing that really startled me about the film. Since I had never seen it I didn't know J.D. was such a psychopath. I think I was expecting something way different from the film and that character. Maybe something more like Mean Girls. But I also remember after Columbine, some grade school kid getting suspended for using a chicken finger as a fake gun just messing around with another student and I was just like "..wow. really?" I think everyone did get paranoid after that so anything anybody said or did that was politically incorrect could get them into MAJOR trouble. It was crazy.

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  3. I thought Heathers was very enjoyable to watch and its brutally honest take on some issues was refreshing. We don't get to see movies like this in today's society, and issues like suicide and bullying can't be talked about in any other way but serious. When you mentioned JD firing blanks on the two jocks and Veronica just saying that if anything he'll get suspended a few days was RIDICULOUS. That would never fly in ANY school today and that's because too many school shootings have happened. The world is too corrupt today to create a movie such as Heathers where things are shown in a comedic and lighter way.

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  4. Something that you're touching on, that's worth further exploration because we didn't quite work this out in class, is that so much of what we perceive as happening depends on narrative. And there seems to be a lot of competition for control of the narrative with regard to teen suicide, violence in schools, etc. Somehow the narrative--who's telling the story, how they're telling it, and what larger cultural anxieties they tie it into, is more important than the events themselves. Maybe it's _that_ that Heathers satirizes, and maybe that's its true value as satire.

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