heathers 2018 thoughts after a Heathers movie rewatch.
The Heathers were both privileged and were also disadvantaged by their lack of freedom aka being women who had to put up with abuse by each other/ the guys to keep their popularity.
So actually making them minorities for the 2018 reboot wasn't as far from the original Heathers format as people think. Both are privileged due to class, but disadvantaged due to being minorities.
Their also not the villians, relatible every day girl Veronica sawyer was actually the villian. People just reconstructed Veronica as the herowine because of her not like other girls vibe. The musical didn't help with this but I do like how the 2018 version made it clear Veronica and JD are the villians.
Yes, the whole cast is mean because teenagers are mean but Veronica and JD are the only ones who feel justified in takeing others lives. They aren't justified and that's the point!
The 2018 reboot captured several of the 1980s Heather's themes such as alienation, toxic complicated friendships, adults not listening, fear driving teens to cruelty, and people useing suicide for fame/ stroking their own egos. They didn't always hit the mark with every issue they covered but to pretend they did nothing well. Just shows a lack of anaysis skills.
Also, I love the decostruction of JD who was a played with archetype of the 1980's bad boy steriotype by being the villian of the story. By pointing out JD is in fact a Heather. A wannabe hungry for fame and attention who pretends to be acting for some greater social cause. Who is driven to seek attention by his own personal pain.
I'll take that JD over the wobbied musical version who is killing for love. (rolls eyes).
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Heathers Opinons Survey
Hey y'all, so I'm looking to get back into Youtubing and am planning a script about the 2018 Heathers reboot. For some background, I have a short Google form I was hoping to get a good amount of responses on, just to test a little theory I have about general opinions on the show and each Heathers adaption in general. It's only 4 multiple-choice questions, then some optional demographics questions. So if you've seen any version of Heathers--but especially the reboot--please give it a quick response if you have the time! The survey is completely anonymous. It'd be greatly appreciated. And share if you have friends that like Heathers too! Thank you!
Survey link: https://forms.gle/FJvBaBFZ4xwAFEAY6
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Thoughts on Heathers (2018)
I am someone who doesn't really mind the existence of bad media, even legendarily bad media that exists in proximity to media that I hold dear. The Last Airbender is one of the worst movies of all time, but it does not offend me that it is an adaptation of a beloved animated series. At the end of the day, it's just another version of the story which did a few things differently. ATLA wasn't a story about bad guys who can shoot fire from their hands. It was a story that used those bad guys as a force of nature to oppose the heroes to say something about characters I identified with, and so it is not an affront to art that the film version takes away the bad guys' ability to generate their own flames. M Night Shyamalan thought those changes could make for an interesting alternative take, and it did not work for me. Oh well. At the end of the day, it is just a bad version of a good story.
I'm bringing up this extreme example of my being unfazed by a bad adaptation to demonstrate how serious I am being when I say Heathers 2018 is my new least favorite piece of media, and I feel genuinely hurt from having watched the entire thing.
Going in, I was only faintly aware of the show's reputation as a conservative comedy. The Heathers are reimagined as a gang of performatively woke progressives who use their clout as minorities to harass the white boys of Westerberg High with the threat of cancellation in order to secure their positions of power in the culture. This is a pretty big plot point in the first episode, and it is cringe, but it does not actually bother me very much. Past the first episode, the diversity of the Heathers isn't even really something that comes up all that often.
To be clear, I do hate how the Heathers are treated, but it goes a lot deeper than the show not being woke. Heathers 2018 hates humanity. Every single time a Heather experiences a genuine emotion, the show pretends that maybe this time, someone is going to learn a lesson. Every single time, it's a trick. Heather Duke faces transphobia and none of her friends stand up for her. She still yearns for their approval, and she is still denied. Her boyfriend Kurt is the only person on the show who gives her any respect at all, and she gets blackmailed into breaking up with him. She is malicious and insulting both in the moment and afterwards when she tries to backtrack on the breakup. When she thinks he's killed himself, the show pretends it might let this effect her in a real way for all of two minutes before she goes right back to her old self, exploiting Kurt's death in a power play against Heather Chandler. The notion of Heather Duke breaking away from Heather Chandler and forging her own path to fulfillment in Westerberg's social ecosystem is brought up constantly, and every single time, Heather Duke goes right back to this bullshit cat and mouse game. In the end, she dies alone and scared in a field of corn, with no friends, having learned nothing.
Heather Chandler is the same way. We see glimpses of empathy somewhere deep inside her a few times throughout the show, but it never goes anywhere. No matter how low she is brought down, she never gains the ability to empathize with anyone or care about anything in an authentic way. Heather McNamara kills herself and Brianna Parker attempts the same as a result of Chandler's bullying, and it doesn't faze her a bit. In episode 7, she enters a dissociative fugue state from the trauma of public embarrassment and begins trying to make amends to everyone at Westerberg, even taking Brianna Parker out for dinner.
Now, because this is a deeply misanthropic show, Brianna is constantly mocked for being poor. And because this is a deeply unfunny show, it comes across as strictly hateful. Still, it's obviously an improvement over Heather's behavior up until now. And it lasts like ten minutes before she's right back to her old self, worse than ever before. Her first reaction to what she believes to be a mass suicide is to leverage the opportunity to make one final claw at fame. And it doesn't even work. She is reduced to a footnote in Veronica's legacy, and everybody who ever thought of her as anything else is dead. One last spit in the face for the show's only survivor.
To put it bluntly, Heathers 2018 is a show about awful people suffering pointlessly. Any shadow of an implication that it might get better is only there to service the the Shepard tone of misery.
The character whose treatment hits me the hardest is Veronica. Veronica means a lot to me in the original film. I appreciated seeing a character with these horribly violent intrusive thoughts treated empathically by the narrative and have a rich internal life. When JD enters her life, he indulges these intrusive thoughts and attempts to make her believe that these thoughts define her, but in the end, she rejects him. She does not accept that some scribblings in her diary make her a bad person, and chooses instead to reach out to the people around her and have a positive influence in her community. It's a beautiful story. It makes me feel seen and cared about as someone who has struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts.
It's a huge change from the original, but the choice to make Veronica a more proactive killer in Heathers 2018 initially struck me as exciting. If the original film says that your thoughts do not define you, perhaps the reboot could take it a step further. As a young child with no emotional regulation skills, Veronica let the intrusive thoughts win, and she murdered her best friend. As a young adult, these same dark impulses still linger, and JD is the voice in her head telling her to say fuck it, indulge yourself. She does so, she likes it, and she has become even worse than JD by the time of this reveal.
Sure, I thought. The Heathers are being treated like absolute punching bags with no care given to their internal lives outside of being vehicles for pain, but surely Veronica, the main character, will have her emotional journey taken seriously. If Heathers 2018 is even distantly interested in respecting the spirit of the original film, Veronica will find some healthy avenue to be understood and redeemed. She will learn that she is not defined by the worst thoughts in her head, her worst impulses, or her worst moments of indulgence. Somehow, she will make it.
Of course, that's not what happens. The show teases out the possibility, of course. She essentially comes out as a psychopath to her friends, and they accept her. She tries to use her impulses for good. For about half an episode, it seems like she might be okay. And then the last episode happens. She becomes a monster, perpetrating one of the deadliest mass killings in American history more or less on a whim. There is no redemption. In the afterlife, she is totally alone, a lost soul wandering Hell forever, without even JD to accompany her.
Cool.
Look.
I love a good tragedy. I have been posting about how much I love Saw III (the one where everyone dies at the end) for as long as I been online. But there's no catharsis in Heathers 2018. It doesn't even feel like it's trying to have any. Everyone is awful, they're all awful to each other, and nobody deserves better than what they get. It wallows in this cynicism.
The Last Airbender is a bad movie based on a cartoon I like a lot. Metroid Other M is a bad game in a franchise I like a lot. Animorphs is a bad TV show based on my favorite childhood book series. I do not feel like any of these were made with malice. None of these stories hate me.
Heathers 2018 hates me. It feels like it was made with the intention to hurt anyone who ever identified with Veronica Sawyer.
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Heathers, Buffy dark comedy AU for Halloween.
So I was thinking about how Buffy was the popular girl changed by being the slayer.
What if Heather Chandler is a slayer due to season 6 creating multiple slayers with forty-year-old Xander and Cordelia acting as her Giles in 2010.
I'm thinking of a combo of the 2018 reboot in terms of the Heathers as a whole mixed with the eighties movie and a sprinkling of a few musical traits.
Heather Chandler
2018 Heather C has a lot of baggage and i think a lot of her characterization was very interesting. She is more feral than previous heathers. (She uses a cigar and hair spray on JD and nearly fries his face off!) So I think she could work as someone who slays vampires.
I also want to add some elements from the eighties movie. She's never seen in anything but red. And she does get taken advantage of/ used by others.Probly perfers Mov cocktails to stakes as weapons.
Heather Duke
The genderqueer icon of the 2018 reboot with the sassy one liners. But with their 80's movie/musical role as Heather C's punching bag. Rather then the favorite role. With them bearly makeing the cut as a heather due to being a gay nerd deep down. Their intelligence makes them quite the threat ,when it comes to dastardly plans aginst the forces of darkness.
Heather Mcnamara
Looks like her 2018 reboot self, but with the sweet, niave personality of the eighties movie/ musical. She can be mean but does it as part of the group and or joins the crowd in mocking someone. But on her own she is not going to be cruel. Also restoreing her staus as Chandler's favorite friend, right hand. Yes, she's also a cheerleader! And her flips come in handy aginst demons.
Veronica
She could be another member of the team. But, I'm leaning towards her getting turned and becoming the Heathers personal Angelus/ Faith. All the darkness and resentment from both 2018 and eighties Veronica coming to the surface. She'd be worse then JD knowing all their insecurities. She'd weaponize the crap out of their former friendship.
(I like the idea of her killing JD, i've had it with cool guys like you indeed! Because Vamp Veronica realizes JD is an abusive shit whose useing her.) Vamp Veronica still wants to distroy the system of westenberg.
Bonus, if its partically the Heathers fault Chandler made her get out of the car and walk home alone. Duke and Mcnamara never spoke up aginst this.
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