Heathers is a dark comedy film that, through satire, challenges high school politics, social hierarchies, and the illusion of teenage depth. Gabe dives into this cult classic to unpack the weight of social hierarchies in school that mimic the big world outside. Kat gives us some background on why the teens in this film are so broken and what we need to do to avoid such a bleak outcome.
Sources in this Episode:
Other Reading:
'Heathers' - Washington Post
“Heathers” Blew Up the High-School Comedy - New Yorker
Heathers: Not Just Another Pretty Show - American Cinematographer
Media from this week's episode:
Heathers (1988)
At Westerburg High where cliques rule, jocks dominate and all the popular girls are named Heather, it's going to take Veronica and a mysterious new kid to give teen angst a body count.
Directed by: Michael Lehmann
When Your Teen Angst Bullshit Has a Body Count
by gabe castro
RED: Quotes, someone else's words.
Whether You Decide to Kill Yourself or Not is One of the Most Important Decisions a Teen Can Make. Hamlet juggled with it best, did he not? (To be, or not to be)
Heathers is a dark comedy film that, through satire, challenges high school politics, social hierarchies, and the illusion of teenage depth. Blending black humor with serious themes of violence, peer pressure, and the desire for acceptance the film is a spectacle of teenage darkness covering bulimia, suicide, date rape, homophobia, bullying, and self-harm.
The opening scene shows the Heathers, the social elite of this fictional school as delicate and well-mannered drinking tea before they step on and squash the roses, leaving destruction in their wake, setting a strong tone. The film follows Veronica Sawyer who is part of the most popular clique at school, known as the Heathers. The clique is led by Heather Chandler, alongside Heather Duke, and Heather McNamara. Veronica becomes increasingly fed up with the toxic and oppressive behavior of the Heathers. She rants in her diary about the lack of depth in her social circle and a desire to be more. As she tells her new beau, “Well, it's just like - they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit,” and after a particularly unpleasant fight with lead Heather Chandler, Veronica makes some bad decisions that lead to Heather’s death.
JD and Veronica “accidentally” kill Veronica’s best friend (and worst enemy) and to hide their crime forge a suicide note. This sets off a chain reaction of apparent suicides among the popular students, driven by J.D.'s growing penchant for violence and Veronica's struggle with guilt and complicity.
As the body count rises, Veronica realizes J.D.'s true nature and intentions, culminating in a showdown where J.D. attempts to blow up the school. Veronica manages to thwart his plan, resulting in J.D.'s death. In the aftermath, Veronica breaks away from the toxic social structure and decides to recreate the high school dynamics.
When Your Teen Angst Bullshit Has a Body Count
The 80s movie landscape is rich with stories of teen angst, with John Hughes creating films that delved deeply into the teenage experience. His movies depicted teens yearning for maturity, seeking to be treated as equals by adults, and striving to be understood in a world that often dismissed them. Heathers mocks this perceived depth, not only in teenagers but in society as a whole.
I didn’t initially care for or really “get” Heathers. I was put off by the disingenuous acting and the obnoxious language. It took some time for me to sit with the film and trust people who have deemed it a cult classic. I acknowledge the impact this film has had on films that impacted me growing up - Jawbreakers and Mean Girls. But it wasn’t until I understood that it was a direct response to the trend of teen films like Hughes is known for, films I was never entirely into, that I grew a fondness for it. A big thanks to The Take (which always has amazing and informative content!) for putting this film into perspective for me.
In their video, Heathers: High School is a Black Comedy, they say, “Heathers primes us to look for meaning in high school drama and pain, and then it reveals that there is none. 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.”
JD is already keenly aware of the superficial lives of his classmates. Bitter, disillusioned, and nihilistic, he believes Veronica needs only a slight push to fall under his spell. After forging Heather's suicide note, the school erupts in false praise and concern for someone who had seemed incredibly shallow to Veronica but was now being given depth. Later, other popular kids receive similar treatment, with their deaths transforming their legacy and image forever. Veronica writes in her diary, "Suicide gave Heather depth, Kurt a soul, Ram a brain." Their deaths romanticized them, but the truth is they weren't deep at all.
The suicides in Heathers become a joke, and even when they influence real attempts, there is a dark humor in it. This serves to critique how society often trivializes and misinterprets the complexities of mental health issues. By showing how easily the student body and adults accept these suicides as genuine cries for help or acts of desperation, the film underscores the superficial understanding and lack of real empathy surrounding such tragedies.
JD says he’ll underline “meaningful” passages in Moby Dick for one of the Heathers for her suicide note. Later, Veronica fantasizes about her funeral where they are blowing out of proportion the underlining of the word Eskimo. Searching for something in nothing. It’s essentially corn plating. (Corn Plate, is a slang word that is used to describe pointing out minuscule and meaningless details in the movie for the sake of keeping up the discussion about it. Spawned by a tweet about the movie Encanto in which a user points out the presence of a plate of corn in one of the scenes.) They want to put Heather C’s suicide note in the yearbook and pass it around in English class.
The Take continues explaining that, “With Heathers, Waters was actually making fun of the way that some 80s shows and documentaries, in his view, made suicide seem attractive.” In modern media, we’ve seen toxic approaches to suicide through the show 13 Reasons Why that is actually referenced in Heartbreak High, “Is this your 13th reason?” asks one character after another experiences essentially social ruin. For Gen Z, there is a flippant and accepting approach to suicide. For Gen X, it was laughable and dismissed.
However, the film’s approach to suicide has sparked significant debate. Some viewers appreciate the film's audacity and its ability to initiate conversations about the glamorization of suicide and the often shallow response to it in popular culture. Others find the handling of such a serious topic through satire and dark humor to be insensitive and potentially harmful, fearing it might downplay the gravity of real-life struggles with mental health.
The School Was Society
“Now there is a school that self-destructed not because society didn’t care, but because the school was society.” - JD
Thanks again to the Take that supplied some helpful insight into the film’s intention. They shared that “Screenwriter Daniel Waters says 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.’
At 14, we begin to imitate adulthood. School represents the same social structures we’re expected to navigate in the “real world.” It also trains us to become efficient workers, adhering to the capitalistic requirements that define our worth. Teenage years are among the most complicated times of our lives, as they encompass the various trainings and shapings of the individuals we will become. During this period, emotions are at an all-time high, and we learn either to wear our parents' identity like a comfortable coat or to reject it altogether. And we seek our place within the make-believe social hierarchies that mirror those outside of school.
The Take continues to explain this saying, “A 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. 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.”
A recurring theme in Heathers is the tendency to attribute teenagers' problems to societal influences. The film suggests that the root issue lies not in youth culture per se, but in young people mimicking the behaviors and attitudes prevalent in adult society. For instance, the seemingly innocent game of croquet symbolizes a cutthroat quest for dominance akin to societal power struggles. Veronica draws parallels between her friends and coworkers, highlighting how social dynamics mirror professional environments.
An impactful moment reinforcing this idea occurs when Veronica asks her mother to treat her like a human being. Her mother dismisses this plea, suggesting that teenagers only demand to be treated as human beings when they are already being treated as human beings or adults. This interaction underscores the film's critique of how adults and society at large often fail to recognize the genuine complexities and needs of teenagers, instead expecting them to conform to adult standards and behaviors.
Heathers uses dark humor and satire to glamorize suicide and youth imitation of adulthood. Its willingness to tackle uncomfortable topics head-on and its unapologetic portrayal of teenage life make it a provocative and enduring film that continues to resonate with audiences. It simultaneously critiques the fanaticism behind the teenage existence while treating them like actual human beings, flawed and -though not as deep as we imagine ourselves to be- still full of potential and life if only given the proper chance to grow. Heathers teaches us that social suicide and the death of your social standing, of conforming to society’s expectations is a freedom. You can finally live your life according to your own desires and depth.
Or as JD puts it, “Now that you’re dead, what’re you gonna do with your life?”
The Heather Hydra & 80s Mental Health
by Kat Kushin
RED: Quotes, someone else's words.
Heathers is a nice reminder that it has never really been a good time to be a teenager. Apparently teens are perpetually misunderstood and made out to be monsters. In watching this for the first time, and after Talk to Me, it was a little hard to compare the two as they had such different vibes/approaches to a similar message. I totally get the critique of society's manipulation of tragedy to serve or feed a narrative, and also how teens are generally misunderstood and not supported during the years where they need the most support.
The 80s and Mental Health:
Teen suicide drastically increased between 1950-1990 which is largely why a film like Heathers was made when it was. The peak of suicide rates for teens specifically took place between 1970-1980 and capped at 1990, and then from that point declined slightly. The largest contributors to increased suicide rates are multi-faceted. Like anything in America, the why is complicated and drenched in Capitalism, Racism, and misogyny. Essentially during this time there was a lot of social change, but this change was not accepted by the systems in play. So while there were major advances in civil rights, women’s rights, etc. The government was not about to start funding social supports to actually help this transition, because under capitalism in a racist and misogynistic system, we can’t be supporting our families. They were also winding up for Reagan, when any support that did exist was gutted.
Women were entering the workforce more consistently but without the social support needed to enact that safely. There was no guaranteed or free daycare, and many white men did not appreciate this change in dynamic that largely benefited them. Essentially when women more actively entered the workforce, misogynistic policies were put in place to discourage their success. Maternity leave, and protections for women workers were not supported, and wage gaps also were much worse. Also divorce was becoming more acceptable, so men were now allowed to be left for treating their wives and families poorly, which a lot did. The misogyny ingrained into social structures, made conflicts between men and women even more prevalent. Thus many more single mothers started to pop up, and both households single, and those that did stay together were stretched thin when it came to capacity for supporting their kids. As a result of all these combined factors, schools became more heavily relied on to raise children. They were not equipped for this, and did not have the training for teachers or funding to do this in a way that authentically supported all students in the very unique ways they needed to. The goal of schools before this was to keep kids busy, and prepare them for future factory jobs, to eventually become workers. Not to support their emotional wellbeing and self actualization as human beings. The economic stress of this climate, the lack of therapy, and the absence of governmental support for these changes, increased home stresses. This was the time period where commercials ran on television reminding parents to hug their children, and that their children were people too.
There were additional contributing factors like increases in in-home guns, the shifts of control placed on teens to conform to societal norms with schools being their only real place of guidance, and hatred and bullying towards anyone deemed “different” for both sexuality, gender, race, neurodivergence, etc. Because of all of these things, during the 1970s and 80s over 49,496 youth aged 15-24 committed suicide. Which comes from: Surveillance Summary Youth Suicide -- United States, 1970- 1980 | CDC. They continue in saying: “The suicide rate for this age group increased 40% (from 8.8 deaths per 100,000 population in 1970 to 12.3/100,000 in 1980), while the rate for the remainder of the population remained stable. Young adults (20-24 years of age) had approximately twice the number and rate of suicides as teenagers (15-19 years old). The western United States had consistently higher youth suicide rates from 1970 to 1980 than the other three regions (North Central, Northeastern, and Southern). However, this difference in rates had narrowed substantially by 1980 because rates for each of the other regions increased over the period. The method of suicide changed significantly from 1970 to 1980. The proportion of suicides committed with firearms increased for both young males and females (15-24 years old), and the proportion of both males and females committing suicide by poisoning declined. The changes were more marked among females, who, in the past, have most commonly committed suicide by poisoning (Figure 4). Data show that among persons 15-24 years of age, young white male adults (20-24 years old) have the highest suicide risk.”
There is also research from the National Library of Medicine that examines the data of different age groups and suicide between 1970-2002. The research analyzes the contextual factors that could influence increased suicide rates such as the economy, social supports, drug and alcohol availability and more. Suggesting that to improve economic stability and growth opportunities, would likely decrease the risk of suicide in teens and adults. Essentially linking back to what I said last week, that having supports, and social systems in place that actually support people and their needs decreases the chances that someone will come to the conclusion that they are a burden and don’t want to be here anymore. With our youth dealing with a somewhat hopeless future, rates like those seen in the late 1980s could rise again, as the economic burden of a failing economy, dying planet and dystopian future discourage people from wanting to be here. The data from recent years is showing a rise, not specifically with youth, but 48,000 died of suicide in 2021. They came to this conclusion because of the drop in rates during the economic upturn of the 1990s, where less people were unemployed and the economy was stable. Young people had job opportunities on the horizon, and hope for the future.
The Heather Hydra and Starting to pick up on Systemic oppression
What was really interesting about this film for me was that it made progress towards recognizing the impacts of systemic oppression but without quite getting there. Very close to the point but likely because of the time it was released just didn’t take it the next step. What I mean by this is there are so many calls out of society and how it impacts youth, as well as how participating in the system successfully requires burying others as well as your true self. Many of the characters are just performances of people who actively step on others to get ahead. Being popular is done the same way one would succeed in society within capitalism, by stepping on others and making others feel like they need to conform/fall in line. In the death of Heather, and the rise of other Heather, Veronica starts to point that the replacing of the Hydra heads is something that will keep happening within this social structure. That to eliminate one threat, you are just making space for another. What this film misses in some ways is that they only do the first step of what would be necessary to actually change the problems. In that Veronica stops being a passive and begrudging participant and starts actively contributing to her ecosystem, and of society. Some of this is done through murder, and it’s not until the end that she starts to realize she can stand up and say shes’s not going to do these things anymore. The issue here is mostly that she seizes power within the system, becoming a player in it but changing what is considered acceptable to be more inclusive of difference. It’s a very idealistic approach from such a nihilistic film. They treat it kind of how we would expect a teenager to, in that they are still looking at it on an individual level, keeping the onus on themselves to make the change, and not really calling attention to the root/cause. But again these are teenagers so I’m not expecting them to have these answers.
As unhinged and problematic as Jason Dean was, and I’m sure this was the point, he did in many ways call out real flaws within society. Much like comic book super villains, every evil character generally thinks they are doing the right thing, fulfilling some kind of necessary purpose. They kind of make him too evil/unhinged to be honest but I also get it it’s supposed to be a comedy, and each character is supposed to be dramatized representation of a person, not an actual person. But he makes valid points about how school is just a practice version of society, and that to do well in school, operates similarly to how doing well in a capitalistic society. To be popular and do well in school is to participate in a system that rewards cruel behavior. The issue with him mostly is that he did not have empathy. In fact many of the characters in this film deeply struggled with a lack of empathy. And that brings me to a line of the film that I think accurately sums up society during this time.
I’m gonna invoke the same quote Gabe mentioned above, where Veronica states “I just want to be treated like a human being” the mother responds that they are being treated like human beings. I interpreted this that the issue is that are noticing inequities in how humans are treated and want that to be different, want it to be fair and just. But the mother’s point imo is that we don’t treat human being fairly in a capitalistic system so the problem is that Veronica thinks being treated like a human being should be different. That the issue is not them being treated the same as adults but rather that society as a whole does not treat humans fairly, empathetically, or with any care for their individuality or authentic selves. She got the point without fully getting the point, that to do well in a society that prioritizes wealth and exploitation, being treated like a human being sucks! The characters in the film are calling out the flaws of society and the control and hypocrisy of society and are met with adults that basically say “that’s the way it’s always been, what do you want me to do about it?”. Anyone relate to the frustration of hearing that when presenting someone with valid concerns? The adults in the film are the same as the high schoolers. I think the fact that for much of the film Veronica is an unenthusiastic participant in the cruelty of her peers, kind of acting like the adults in her life who just take things for what they are. The shift away from just dealing with the atrocities of this world as a passive participant is also important here.
Also one thing that I really disagree with this film on is that they suggest teenagers are without depth. Misunderstanding their actions and their reasons for doing things, absolutely, but I don’t think that means teens are without depth. I think every human is unique and has a whole spectrum of experiences and emotions and motivations for their actions. Understanding that everyone has their own lives and frustrations and motivations is a large part of empathy, which is something this film lacked. There are absolutely exceptions to that rule, in that there are people who are so detached from themselves and their sense of why that they don’t have the capacity to authentically express that to others. Or also people who seek validation from the same system that harms them. If those people did not exist we would not have a system in the first place, so I think there is a problem with the perpetuators of the system and harm, and in the grand scheme of things their intent doesn’t matter more than their impact of harm. However to remove their depth entirely, you’re also kind of removing their ability to change or be held accountable to their actions.
I think it’s more accurate that society deeply misunderstands it’s youth, prioritizing them as workers and how they can contribute to those in power rather than focusing on them as people. Heather, Kurt and Ram were problems, absolutely, and the harm they perpetuated matters much more than their why, but to dehumanize them, in removing their humanity and their capacity for empathy we are basically saying the only solution for the Heather’s, Kurt’s and Ram’s of the world is to kill them. If they are without depth they are without redemption. There is no pulling them back in that understanding of the world. If we feel that way we might as well just be Jason Dean.
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