Niall (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coalescent) wrote2004-10-08 10:25 pm
coalescent) wrote2004-10-08 10:25 pm
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Best Teen Movie Ever?
A little while ago, I happened to mention that I've recently seen Bring It On. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ninebelow opined that it was the best teen film ever; I rejoined that in my opinion, the crown belonged now and forever to Clueless. At this point, flickgc and danmilburn, with backup from applez, put a strong word forward for Heathers. Now, I'd never seen Heathers, and said as much, so danmilburn offered to lend me his copy. Tonight, I watched it.
The first thing to note is that comparing Clueless and Heathers is comparing chalk and cheese, or at least chalk and some other form of calcium carbonate. Yes, they're both 'teen movies', but where Clueless is witty and frothy, Heathers is cynical and black. It's the story of Veronica, a smarter-than-average high-school student who's somehow become an honorary member of the pre-eminent school clique: the Heathers, so called because all of the other three girls in the clique are called Heather. They are brutal and crude, in a way that the PG-rated Queen Cs of the cinema world could never get away with (and indeed, you imagine would be too classy to stoop to). It's not clear how Veronica, who is deeply uncomfortable with the group, has become a member; it's even less clear why.
Relatively quickly, Veronica falls into the world of the latest school rebel, all Spike-like black coat and red shirt, JD--Jason Dean. After one particularly humiliating night out, Veronica confesses to JD that she wishes the Heathers, or at least the lead Heather, were dead. You can see where this is going: without quite knowing how (the film frequently has a dreamlike, vaguely surreal air to it), Veronica ends up an accomplice to Heather's murder. At JD's prompting, she fakes a suicide note that puts them in the clear, but has the unpredicted side-effect of making Heather even more popular in death than she was in life. And that's just the start; increasingly, Veronica finds herself drawn into JD's bleak, sociopathic undertow.
Heathers aspires, in a way that Clueless does not, to social critique. The school, says JD at one point, isn't ignored by society; it is society; so of course another Heather moves into the power vacuum left by the demise of the first. And now and then, this metaphor throws up what I think are moments of real wisdom. For example, when Veronica is trying to describe the Heathers, she says 'it's like they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit!' Or there's Veronica's mother's acute observation: 'when teenagers say they want to be treated like adults, it's usually because they are being treated like adults.'
In the end, though, my suspension of disbelief snapped. Partly (oddly, because I'm not usually bothered by such things) because there were some obvious moments when logic was ignored for the sake of the plot--in the final confrontation, why doesn't Veronica just trip the fire alarm to evacuate the school?--but mostly because, well, it's not an accurate match. A high school is not really much like wider society. There are certainly similarities, and it can be a rich source of comparison, but the environment is too artificial, too subject to external control, to be an exact match.
Mind you, at times I have difficulty believing I actually know what an American High School is like. For all I know, the self-perpetuating presentation of them on television and in films--cheerleaders and jocks and nerds and all--may just be as inaccurate as a myth. It's hard to tell, and maybe that affects my perception of Heathers, because maybe it bleeds into my reading of the film's metaphor. And I'm not saying it's a bad film--it's not. It has mesmerising performances from Christian Slater and Winona Ryder, and a number of interesting things to say, and I'm glad I've seen it.
In the end, though, I prefer Clueless. I could wax more pretentious, and say that I prefer it because it targets the larger-than-life myth of high school directly, rather than trying to use it as a metaphor for something else; or I could keep it simple, and say that I just prefer it because I enjoy it more. The truth would probably include elements of both.
So: any other nominations for the accolade of Best Teen Movie Ever?
ninebelow opined that it was the best teen film ever; I rejoined that in my opinion, the crown belonged now and forever to Clueless. At this point, flickgc and danmilburn, with backup from applez, put a strong word forward for Heathers. Now, I'd never seen Heathers, and said as much, so danmilburn offered to lend me his copy. Tonight, I watched it.The first thing to note is that comparing Clueless and Heathers is comparing chalk and cheese, or at least chalk and some other form of calcium carbonate. Yes, they're both 'teen movies', but where Clueless is witty and frothy, Heathers is cynical and black. It's the story of Veronica, a smarter-than-average high-school student who's somehow become an honorary member of the pre-eminent school clique: the Heathers, so called because all of the other three girls in the clique are called Heather. They are brutal and crude, in a way that the PG-rated Queen Cs of the cinema world could never get away with (and indeed, you imagine would be too classy to stoop to). It's not clear how Veronica, who is deeply uncomfortable with the group, has become a member; it's even less clear why.
Relatively quickly, Veronica falls into the world of the latest school rebel, all Spike-like black coat and red shirt, JD--Jason Dean. After one particularly humiliating night out, Veronica confesses to JD that she wishes the Heathers, or at least the lead Heather, were dead. You can see where this is going: without quite knowing how (the film frequently has a dreamlike, vaguely surreal air to it), Veronica ends up an accomplice to Heather's murder. At JD's prompting, she fakes a suicide note that puts them in the clear, but has the unpredicted side-effect of making Heather even more popular in death than she was in life. And that's just the start; increasingly, Veronica finds herself drawn into JD's bleak, sociopathic undertow.
Heathers aspires, in a way that Clueless does not, to social critique. The school, says JD at one point, isn't ignored by society; it is society; so of course another Heather moves into the power vacuum left by the demise of the first. And now and then, this metaphor throws up what I think are moments of real wisdom. For example, when Veronica is trying to describe the Heathers, she says 'it's like they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit!' Or there's Veronica's mother's acute observation: 'when teenagers say they want to be treated like adults, it's usually because they are being treated like adults.'
In the end, though, my suspension of disbelief snapped. Partly (oddly, because I'm not usually bothered by such things) because there were some obvious moments when logic was ignored for the sake of the plot--in the final confrontation, why doesn't Veronica just trip the fire alarm to evacuate the school?--but mostly because, well, it's not an accurate match. A high school is not really much like wider society. There are certainly similarities, and it can be a rich source of comparison, but the environment is too artificial, too subject to external control, to be an exact match.
Mind you, at times I have difficulty believing I actually know what an American High School is like. For all I know, the self-perpetuating presentation of them on television and in films--cheerleaders and jocks and nerds and all--may just be as inaccurate as a myth. It's hard to tell, and maybe that affects my perception of Heathers, because maybe it bleeds into my reading of the film's metaphor. And I'm not saying it's a bad film--it's not. It has mesmerising performances from Christian Slater and Winona Ryder, and a number of interesting things to say, and I'm glad I've seen it.
In the end, though, I prefer Clueless. I could wax more pretentious, and say that I prefer it because it targets the larger-than-life myth of high school directly, rather than trying to use it as a metaphor for something else; or I could keep it simple, and say that I just prefer it because I enjoy it more. The truth would probably include elements of both.
So: any other nominations for the accolade of Best Teen Movie Ever?