Heathers: Painful Satire

Heathers directed by Michael Lehmann satirizes at great length the social issues and systems within High Schools as well as teen suicide and homicide.  As controversial issues that affect society to perhaps a larger degree today, such as how to approach teen violence and suicide and how to react to it, there is not a universal reaction or response.  Heathers approaches the topic of teen violence with unapologetic satire and jokes a-blazing.

            As the audience watches as a joke goes too far and the main characters Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder) and Jason Dean (played by Christian Slater) begin to kill other students who they deem to be awful people.  Veronica and Jason begin to kill not only to rid the school of bullies, but also to advance themselves higher socially.  They begin to take their anger and channel it in to violence in order to accomplish a higher order, which is to make the school a better place.  The issue with this is as soon as the main “Heather” is killed another takes her place and is just as ruthless as a bully, as soon as one of the other “cookie-cutter” Heathers is gone, than another steps up.  One criticism this movie takes in general is its lack of sensitivity to the killing and the deaths of the dead teenagers along Veronica’s and Jason’s path.

            Heathers addresses this very sensitive issue of teen violence with zero sensitivity, with over-the-top humor as the butt of the joke often falls on the victim.  While, this disturbs many people (and I quite frankly don’t blame them) this presents the audience with the perspective of the murderers and the psychopathic and joking manner of the crime.  This also provides the audience with the sarcasm and flaws of potential coping mechanisms of different people as we see the different adult reactions and ideas they have to console the students.  Heathers interestingly enough post-modernly references the outcast and angry character of Jason Dean to actor James Dean.  The Rebel without a Cause actor who often played confused and angry teenagers, provides the audience with a foundation and immediate reference point in relation by Jason Dean in Heathers.  Leading the audience to not demonize him as he immediately pulls a gun out in a cafeteria and shoots blanks at a bunch of jocks.  This connection has taken a legendary and fondly remembered actor and twisted the character in order to make the evolution of outcast child to become complete, causing the audience to not only relate to the character, but also to each viewer’s own personal experiences to the film.

            One reason many react very negatively to the film, is because the events in the movie hit too close to home.  A disturbing aspect of Heathers is that nearly any event in the film could be grounded in realistic terms today.  Willa Paskin in her article Nostalgia Fact-Check: How Does Heathers Hold Up? makes the point that  “The notes that the girls use as instruments of torture could just as easily be text messages; Veronica’s diary sure seems like a blog; Heather Chandler’s suicide note makes the rounds just like an e-mail; and all that bullying.”  Where anyone who had any form of the movie affect them in their actual personal life could react very poorly to the jokes and satire humor of Heathers and take the joke to heart, but the jokes seem to be merely a method of coping.   

            As most contemporary High School students have teen violence shoved down his/her throats, Heathers does not take a direct route in forcing a message down our throats, but rather makes jokes at the expense of the deaths of the victims.  Watching this movie with a contemporary audience many would be baffled and also likely to be upset to a degree; I think there is significant reason for this.  As teen deaths have affected many people today, reactions vary.  For some death needs to have a coping people, where others find it comforting to deflect, whether it be catharsis in some other activity or making a joke to ease the tension in order to achieve a level of comfort.  While the latter of the two may offend others, I think it is just a way to cope with issues.

            As the issue of violence surrounding schools has not deteriorated much since Heathers release, the film provides viewers with an interesting perspective and focus, which may upset with its unrelentless attacks on the issue and how it’s handled.

Wall Street: Doctor Faustas Meets Stock Exchange

            Oliver Stone’s Wall Street takes the audience through the intricacies of crooked Wall Street trading as we observe unethical action after unethical action.  At the core of the film the audience truly begins to understand the twisted ideology of those who take great pleasure in ruining other’s hard work.  Gordon Gekko’s of the world control typically engage in little risk of his or her own personal fortunes and relies on others to receive a large profit.  Of course what is Wall Street but greed mixed with post-modernity.

            In an inconceivable world of fixed exchanges and controlled information, and in order to attain and garner more potential wealth individuals such as Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) go to extreme versions in order maintain extravagance.  Ethics are surely out the window as spying and insider trading occurs frequently, and as Gekko says in his iconic speech “The new law of evolution in corporate American seems to be survival of the un-fittest…Greed, for lack of a better word is good.” meaning, that in order to survive in big business one must use others as a stepping stone in order to attain true greatness.  In Jack Boozer’s article The Commodification of Perception he says that “Gekko wants neither the responsibility of ownership nor the burden of management.” One of the most interesting ideas of the film is how risky and lucrative the business transactions are for the high-profile Wall Street traders. 

               High profile traders such as Gordon Gekko allow themselves to attain great amounts of wealth at incredibly low risk.  Often to gain startup funds, many companies at one time or another sold junk bonds to individuals wherein a stock-broker would sell an uneducated individual bad stock in order to gain a large commission while the investor lost nearly all of his or her personal money.  Little changes at a higher level, in terms of justice.  As seen in the film, Gekko controlled both the supply and demand of the stocks as information was leaked and demand either rose or tanked.  Gekko, also being the majority shareholder in a company also controlled the supply after he leaked information, as he bought or in turn sold stocks to make a profit.  It’s at this point where the market seems to be prejudiced in terms of the Wall Street traders who make large amounts of money considering the little personal investment, (and in the film’s case criminal activity that had occurred) where justice has eluded contemporary real examples of felony in terms of wall street traders.  An interesting story ark is where the audience follows Bud Fox down, dare I say it ‘the fox hole.’

            Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) is seemingly an everyman who only wishes to fulfill his ambition of being a major player in the stock trading industry and take not only himself, but his family out of poverty and personal debt.  Bud Fox similarly follows his ambition and follows the father-figure Gordon Gekko to ultimately betray his real father Carl Fox (also played by Charlie’s real-life father Martin Sheen).  Bud, similarly to Doctor Faustas follows his ambition and is carried away as he signs a deal with the devil.  This post-modern/post-structuralist relation to the two allows the audience to make immediate judgments of characters and their actions, also while we relate to Bud on a visceral level of wishing to attain some ambition.  Although, unlike most real-life cases Bud grows a conscience and turns Gekko in saving the day and many people their hard work.

            Wall Street becomes an observation of never-ending greed as people use one another as stepping stones while putting up little personal risk.  As Gordon says as his stock begins to plummet and looking as though many will lose their jobs “So what if we only make 10 million dollars.”  It becomes essential that the illusion of power becomes a crooked Wall Street trader’s greatest tool, where they can fool an individual in to the idea where they control the power and their own money, while all the time power is in a crooked Wall Street trader’s back pocket.