Sometimes I just don’t know where my mind is.  A few months back my wife and I decided to watch Heathers for the first time.  It got a bad rap when it came out but we finally gave in because there were so many cultural references to it that we felt we had to be informed.  Now none of that makes it worth comment.  What does, in what’s left of my mind, is that I was sure I’d written a blog post about it.  I hadn’t.  The thing is, I even thought I remembered some of what I wrote about it.  Uhn-uhn.  Didn’t happen.  So I guess I can trawl my memory and see if I can recollect what I thought I had already said.  Here goes.

The movie is a disturbing and funny look at growing up and its hard lessons.  Everyone said that it glorified suicide, but that wasn’t what I saw.  One person attempts it, and the others are all actually murdered and made to look as if they died by suicide.  Not a lighthearted topic, I know, but the students pretty much all want to live.  J. D. (read into that what you will) is the real criminal.  An outsider with a chip on his shoulder, and who has no problems being (or associating with) a criminal.  Or making others into criminals.  

As with many, perhaps most, adults, I remember the confusion of puberty quite well.  I wanted to be liked in school (I never had many friends) but I was quiet, bookish, and very religious.  Having grown up feeling generally unliked, I found acceptance, for a time, at church.   This movie captures that aspect well—the desire to fit in with a cohort that is particularly hostile (teenagers).

What brought Heathers back to mind after these few months was the fact that some classify it as a dark academia movie.  Dark academia generally has some schooling involved, sometimes directly, sometimes as implied.  There is a natural kind of darkness in high school and into college years.  This is something we may be in danger of losing with universities becoming glorified trade schools.  Not all of life is about finding a job.  The humanities suggest that being human is sometimes enough.  Heathers seems to have aged pretty well, being over thirty at this point.  Some of us took three decades to see it.  And if we feel like we’re losing our minds from time to time, at least now I’ll know I have indeed posted upon this movie.