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As black as night, Heathers, a twisted comedy of high school horrors, is a work of genuine courage. Veronica (Winona Ryder) is an apprentice member of the ultimate clique at Westerburg High School in Sherwood, Ohio. The three most popular girls, all named Heather, have let her join their group. Veronica is at first pleased to be accepted by this “bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads.” Still, she is ready for a sinister avenging force in her life who turns out to be J.D. (played by Christian Slater), a new boy in town who is itching to make trouble. Veronica realizes that Heather One (Kim Walker) has become so autocratic and believes she must be stopped. One morning, when the Heather is sure to be hung-over, Veronica intends to wake her up with a concoction of milk and orange juice which is sure to make her vomit. J.D. proposes liquid drain-opener instead, saying, “I’m a no-rust-buildup man myself.” When Heather One crashes through the glass coffee table, the shocked and seemingly innocent J.D. coaxes Veronica into forging a suicide note. Needless to say, the plot does not end there. J.D. becomes more deadly, Veronica more guilt-ridden, while high school suicide becomes the hot topic in Sherwood, Ohio, and the coolest thing going at Westerburg High. “My teen angst bullshit has a body count,” Veronica moans, as she begins to realize that she’s the one who has to be stopped, along with her thrilling but psycho boyfriend. Freud and Fromm, two of the psychoanalytic theorists we have studied in class, would have a heyday with the characters and events in this movie. Freud would probably have described the character of J.D. as possessing a death instinct. That is Freud’s idea that people have an inherent drive for destruction and death. In his book, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud (1933) says If it is true that . . . life once proceeded out of inorganic matter, then according to our presumption, an instinct must have arisen which sought to do away with life once more and to re-establish the inorganic state. If we recognize in this self-destructiveness of our hypothesis, we may regard the self-destructiveness as an expression of a ‘death instinct’ which cannot fail to be present in every vital process (p. 107). J.D. exemplifies Freud’s statement when he asserts his belief that death is the answer to society’s problem of stereotyping.
Approximate Word count = 1597
Approximate Pages = 6.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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