HEATHERS was definitely different. yeah that perfect to start off saying. I can recall myself thinking that this movie seemed like it was going to have the same feel to say the Breakfast club or even Faris Bueller's day off, with the whole upbeat mood , but I was mistaken. I mean don't get me wrong there were a lot of moments where i thought that it looked exactly like these other movies, because the director was the same, but this one seemed like it was supposed to be taken as the same idea as one of these upbeat films, with just a dark side.
The overall film I thought was really nicely done, the story really caught my eye because as I said earlier I wasn't really used to this kind plot from this point of time. Over all I would have to say that my most favorite part would be the character of JD. Now a lot of people don't really like this character because he was the antagonist, and a bit crazy, and at times seemed "insignificant", but the overall tone to Christian Slater's character was...amazing. I personally would have to agree with the half of my class that believes that he was a type of anti hero, even though it may be hard to believe. The reason I say this is because like in the Third man we are given a character that is portrayed in a certain way to the audience, in this case an attractive, smart, witty, relatively likable character that we can generally recognize with, like Henry Lime. I mean like deep down JD does have justification for what he is doing, come on he says it, but like the way he says it just makes it wrong, I have this basic theory that I use to try and figure out if a character is really bad or not at that is called the ratio rule. now the basis is that if you take the three basic meanings behind the character and ask yourself if at least two of them are "negative" then he probably is bad. Alright so J D, kills people...bad, has reason to fix society...good, is a psychopath...bad, thus he must be bad haha . Alright now take Walter White from Breaking Bad.
Married for 20 years with familly always played by the rules...good, becomes a methamphetamine cook...bad, has cancer, so he is making drugs to take care of his family when he is dead...good. Walter is a good man doing a bad thing for a good reason, but JD is a bad man doing a bad thing for a good reason. 2 are bad so in my view he just doesn't make the cut no matter how well he is portrayed.
I thin that the perfect comparison to JD's character would have to be like it was said in class...the Joker. Reall both of them didn't really have a great excuse to why they were commiting such horrendous acts, but they still did them for there own personal pleasure. I thought that both of these characters had some sort of mental illness, but in Heathers, nothing was explained, and in the dark knight he changed his reasons every time. I think the quote from Alfred in the Dark Knight explains it perfectly. "Sometimes there are men, who just want to watch the world burn."
Some formal elements that I really liked would have to be the different things that you would see on the set, for instance while watching JD, he always seemed to have this blue light on him for some reason and it wasn't soft at all it was really noticeable. Now it could be because he was tightly bound to the character of veronica who is always wearing blue for some reason. I guess whet it was were the colors in general... I know it was an 80's film so the colors were bold but that's not what i mean. why did all the Heathers and Veronica have all different colors that they had to stick to? The only reasonable explanation that I could think of would be because it had to do with the pecking order of the school. Even in croquet each girl was a certain color, and if one wanted to change it up then she would get harassed.
The reading that went along with this film really was enjoyable to me, A. because it was really easy to understand compared to a lot of the other readings, and B. it really put a lot f meaning behind some of the images that were scene on screen when viewing the film Heathers. Now it really talks about the post-modernist themes in the movie like repeated references, but to be honest that was interesting to read but not very useful in breaking down the film. What i did find interesting though is when the author said that in the end nothing really changed. This I would have to totally agree with. I say this because nothing really did change, except 3 kids are dead. sure we have this new leader of the school , but we always had a changing role for leader in the film. I guess I really enjoyed it because it just pointed out the obvious to me when no one else in the film really was.
Overall thought it was a really great film i definitely recommend it, see y'all next time.
I do like when anyone makes a joker reference, but you contradict yourself when you do your ratio rule and then say he just did it for his enjoyment. I do not understand why people think that nothing changes at the end of the movie. We see Victoria, who is abused by the Heathers, despise what they do, and wanted to be friends with people who were not even in the popular clique. She takes command and everyone thinks she will be just like the Heathers. We see her intelligence and genuine care for others throughout the movie. I think that things are definitely different.
ReplyDeleteI also disagree with your views about whether or not things have changed in the end, but I'm sick of that topic so I'll focus on other things...
ReplyDeleteI really see where you're coming from, and the conflict you have, with JD's character. I wanted to love him, I really did. And definitely the way Slater played the character made him somehow creepily charming; we want his actions to be justified. It's so weird how what we expect and what we see collide, and how even after all the discussion our class had about the character we still want reasons to like him and to justify him.
Good job on noticing some of the extra little things within the film-- the lighting on JD, colors, etc.
Yeah I agree with the comment above that Veronica does sort of change in the end. She does fill that role of the lead Heather but we see her using her power in a way to unite different cliques. Again, I think JD has the right idea but def the wrong tactics to make his points.
ReplyDeleteAlright maybe some of the themes of the film were changed, but wasn't veronica generally a nice person in the beginning? i mean she didn't want to write that awful note, and in the end she showed that same compassion toward that same character and was nice to her, so what we get from her character development is that she was nice to the underdog and always will be...so i see no change, even if she took charge of the school in place of the heathers it showed that the general good person inside of her would come out through her friendly act.
ReplyDeleteAs for the whole contradiction I really don't see how i did contradict myself because doesn't killing people in general and out of enjoyment still fall under the category of killing people? which is generally a bad thing? sooo idk someone explain it to me please lol
I really liked your comparison of J.D. to Harry Lime as well. It wasn't just the fact that he plays this anti-hero or that he was charismatic with an evil side to him. It was his whole philosphy on life and human beings. I could definitely picture J.D. asking Veronica, "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?"
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your ideas on the colors of the film as well. That topic is always interesting to me but for some reason with Heathers I really don't know what they're doing and almost think that it's just this splah of various colors for the sake of being colorful. However, as you mention, they do use it in order to differentiate the characters from eachother. What those colors say about them I don't really understand and really don't think we have to.
I really liked your comparison of J.D. to Harry Lime as well. I agree that he is an anti hero and is similar to Lime not only in that he is charismatic with an evil side but also in his philosophy on life and human beings. I could definitely picture J.D. asking Veronica, “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed reading your discussion on the color palette of the film. I’ve tried to figure out the significance of colors but have come to the conclusion that it is just splashes of color for the sake of being colorful. However the film does, as you point out, use color to differentiate characters. But what these different colors say about the characters I have no idea and don’t think we have to know.
Sorry the last two responses are confusing Mike. I thought it didn't take my first response so I retyped it and re-commented. Just in case you were wondering.
ReplyDeleteI have a serious soft spot for JD myself. Christian Slater's performance of him is fascinating and charismatic--very comparable to Welles (also Jack Nicholson, whom he was apparently channeling on purpose). But I don't think the movie is ultimately so much about him, or whether or not the school changes, as about the entire genre of teen movies, and the expectations set by directors such as John Hughes (it was Michael Lehmann who directed Heathers, incidentally, not Hughes). That's the part that arguably makes it postmodern. This isn't so much a movie about people as it is a movie about movies. You can also read it as a social satire with a very pointed message, counter to the argument Burns gives in the reading. But it does become hard to say much about the movie if you're just focusing on the characters and how seriously to take them.
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