Give it a Listen, It’ll Be Really Very
Lady P, Emma Guerard, and Andy Theiss are back for another installment in the Flixwise Teen Moviethon. Each episode in the series features a panelist pitching their favorite teen movie for inclusion in the Flixwise Favorites List. The roundtable carefully weighs the faults and merits of the film, to determine if it is worthy of inclusion in the Flixwise pantheon.
Last week the panel reviewed John Hughes’ SIXTEEN CANDLES, and despite Andy’s impassioned and thoughtful analysis, Emma and Lady P both gave it the gong. This week it’s Lady P’s turn to pitch her favorite teen movie. Listen up to find out if her appeal to include Michael Lehmann’s 1989 black comedy, HEATHERS, hits the final stake.
Let us know what you think of HEATHERS, or any of the films we discuss on the podcast in comments section below. Also, if you have a film you’d like to pitch to the Flixwise Favorites List just email us at info@flixwise.com
Corn…Nuts!
How about a movie from another era for your Teen Movie Marathon? I think American Graffiti has a good reputation that needs to be either torn down or lifted to new heights. Maybe Dazed and Confused if you want something more recent?
Also, it occurs to me, Pauline, that if your dream in high-school was that you wouldn’t have to go to school the next day, then shouldn’t Ferris Bueller be your ideal movie?
FERRIS BUELLER is fun, in an irritating sort of way. But HEATHERS just warms the cockles of my cold homicidal heart in a way that the sweet natured John Hughes movie can’t. Way to expose me as a lying psychopath.
Shmary, I almost picked Ferris Bueller as my favorite teen movie, but ultimately decided on something else (I’m not going to spoil it without Lady P’s permission, but it is a more recent movie). But I think Lady P made a pretty good choice in picking a film from the same era as Sixteen Candles that contrasts so much in its depiction of teen life. I also have a feeling Winona Ryder might have had something to do with it.
Oh yeah, I also feel kind of bad about not talking more about Gregg Araki’s films. Nowhere, The Doom Generation, and Totally F***ed Up [asterisks IMDb’s, not mine] are easily some of my favorite movies and we really did fail to represent depictions of queer youth in our choices. I think it was also really a bummer we didn’t get to talk about anything by Larry Clark.
great episode! i must say, comrades, i might have to challenge andy to verbal fisticuffs.
one thought i had about heathers: its surreal treatment of situations, its funhouse mirror characters, its wry/snippy/slightly impenetrable dialogue, its use of color (compare with john hughes’s color palette) all seemed to detach the movie’s consciousness at a distance from the subject matter, at some length like a little diorama. by doing this i think it’s trying to foreground the banality, the absurdity, and the sheer constructedness of that power structure, the manipulated texture of the post-Reagan era sexual politics and desires, and to me it didn’t even seem to be about high school, just that it was an especially ironic subject matter, with a convenient set of widely understood shorthands that can be subverted again & again.
anyway, great pate, but i gotta motor.
Mimi, I hear what you are saying – to me you are describing a Wes Anderson movie.
I have to say that the guy that directed “40 Days and 40 Nights” “Hudson Hawk” and “The Truth about Cats and Dogs” probably wasn’t thinking as deeply about Heathers as you want him to be.
Andy, do you really think Wes Anderson’s aim is to detach the viewer from the subject matter? Yes, his films are meticulously composed so colored like a diorama, and yes there are instances where his films can feel aloof, but the majority of the time his characters and stories seem very sincere.
I agree with Mimi, that HEATHERS purposefully maintains at an ironic distance which serves to highlight the absurdity of the power structure in the film. Though, while I do think that the satire of the film can read as a microcosm for the sociopolitical hierarchies of the post-Reagan era, I wouldn’t go so far as to completely divorce it from the high school context. In addition to lampooning society on as whole, I think it also serves as a potent send-up of other teen movies.
Also Andy, I don’t think Michael Lehmann’s post-HEATHERS career output should be used a critique of the film. First of all, everything I’ve ever read or heard Lehmann say about HEATHERS indicates that the film’s overall message was carefully considered before they ever went into production. Second, even if Lehmann is/was a total hack, I don’t think his intentions for the film should be the final word. Once a movie is released, it is up to the viewer (or more likely film theorists) to think critically about what they’ve seen, and place the events and characters of the film in a larger societal context. I don’t believe that the aims of the filmmakers should play much of role in this interpretation. The film should speak for itself.
99.98% of the viewers were not thinking about (or have thought about) the analogy of Heathers compared to the sociopolitical atmosphere of the time. Most of that is done in much later retrospect and shoehorning the views into a movie that was better remade as “Jawbreaker” 10 years later.
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