The Toxic Relationship Between Power and Strength in Heathers

Within the quotable lines and iconic fashion, this cult classic has a lot to say about interpersonal relationships.

Author’s note: This essay contains major spoilers for the movie Heathers. Please watch it!

The 1989 black comedy Heathers saturates the high school teen flick genre with sardonic themes of psychosocial macabre. Despite being a commercial flop at its release, the movie gained a cult following in the decades afterward and remains beloved for depicting the turmoil of adolescence with piercing wit and humorous aplomb. It lobs commentary upon the typical high school movie themes: identity, relationships, hierarchy, and so on, but adds in a heavy dose of grimdark with depictions of murder, suicide, and sexual assault. While many choose to focus their praise and critiques on its campy visuals or Daniel Waters’s unforgettable script, I personally believe one of the film’s core messages is often lost among the discourse around its shock-factor cynicism. Through the events of Heathers, we get to learn about different approaches to interpersonal relationships as a young person, and how some of these lifestyles can cause deeply destructive consequences.

 Westerburg High is ruled by the Heathers, a group of girls (three named Heather and one Veronica) who embody the peak of teenage style, prestige, and hotness. They’re your typical mean-girl clique, both adored and feared by their classmates. The queen bee, Heather Chandler (referred to hereafter as Heather C.), rules over Heather Duke and Heather McNamara, rallying them together to bully their perceived inferior peers. After being picked up as a pet project by Heather C., Veronica Sawyer transforms from loser to beauty queen, becoming the fourth member of the Heathers. Veronica resents the cruelty her friend group perpetuates, and, after hooking up with a bad boy transfer student named Jason Dean, accidentally follows through on her vow to dethrone Heather C. by poisoning her with drain cleaner. While Veronica only intended to give her a milk-and-orange juice cocktail as a means of vomit-inducing revenge, Heather C. dies immediately, and JD convinces her to frame the death as a suicide. The affair throws Westerburg into chaos, creating a power vacuum in the social hierarchy, which envious Heather Duke eagerly fills.

After star athletes Kurt and Ram spread a distasteful rumor about an alleged sexual encounter with Veronica, JD stages another fake-suicide to get back at them. This plot ends in Veronica real-life shooting one of the boys, and JD killing the other. A furious Veronica dumps JD after realizing that he lied to her about his true intentions of killing Kurt and Ram. JD retaliates by building a bomb that he plans to detonate during a school pep rally, killing everyone at Westerburg High. However, his scheme is thwarted after he accidentally reveals it to Veronica via monologue. She finds JD underneath the school as the pep rally continues and destroys the detonator. Realizing he has nothing left to destroy and armed with a bomb strapped to his chest, JD commits suicide. Veronica returns to the school and finds one of the victims of the Heathers’ bullying, inviting her to watch movies that weekend.

Heathers excels at presenting the already trifling emotional landscape of high school and turning the stakes up to a cynical, in-your-face 11. Adolescent identity is, to put it mildly, complicated and confusing. Where Heathers branches off from your Ferris Buellers and your Sixteen Candleses is by allowing the standard pitfalls of teenage behavior to deepen straight down to Hell. No one in high school knows who they truly are. Everyone is just looking to find a sense of autonomy in a world that constantly denies it from them. That’s why they boast and bully their peers: to gain a sense of control over the uncontrollable. Each member of Heathers’s central cast pursues this goal in line with the traditional archetypes of the teen comedy. The pretty, popular girl, Heather C., antagonizes her unpretty and unpopular classmates and abuses her friends to keep them from objecting or usurping her position. The second-in-command Heather Duke attempts to overtake her powerful friend, but fails, ultimately turning her anger inward by developing an eating disorder. Misfit Jason Dean copes with his father’s cruelty and the loss of his mother by reenacting that violence in spiteful murder plots. Kurt and Ram exemplify the entitlement that accompanies white male athlete status by sexually assaulting their female peers. Many of the students we see at Westerburg are so lost, so confused, and believe, implicitly or otherwise, that the only way to resolve their angst is to take advantage of the people around them.

Except for Veronica. She does not purposefully seek out the subjugation of others to improve her standing. As the film’s protagonist, the audience receives insight into her perspective on the whole high school topography. Through diary entries, we learn of her hatred of Heather C. and the Westerburg nightmare at large. She expresses this disdain more confidently than the two underling Heathers, but still ultimately capitulates to the high school hierarchy. Veronica states that she wants to kill, but hell, what teenage girl doesn’t? The urge is present but passing, and it isn’t until JD enters the picture that she acts upon her desire to rid the school of its tormentors. But while JD takes joy in destroying others, Veronica is horrified by the consequences of her actions and quickly attempts to right her wrongs by stopping her fling from destroying the school entirely. Curiously, none of these people end up in jail, but I digress. DNA evidence must not have been popular at the time. 

Veronica is easier to identify with than her peers because she is the outsider who gained access to the cool crowd. It’s unclear whether she was a target of bullying before being picked up by the Heathers, though she was (is?) friends with geeky Betty Finn before becoming popular. Veronica spent time learning who she is before joining forces with those who clearly do not. Still, she is a high schooler, rendering her easily swayed by the glorified lifestyle of the popular girls. The film does not indulge the egotism of the Heathers, choosing instead to portray the darker, “behind the scenes” moments of these suffering it-girls, which range from self-induced vomiting to date rape. 

Yes, if we’re talking about the difference between power and strength as it’s depicted in Heathers, I believe the Remington University party scene tells us all we need to know about Heather C. and Veronica. Heather C. lords her faux-generous invite over Veronica’s head, as if hanging out with 19-year-old drunk frat boys was equivalent to attending the MET Gala, yet her demeanor switches up as soon as they arrive. Instead, the girls are let loose in a foreign realm, where nobody knows who they are, much less worships them. They are left to fend for themselves in a world of (relatively) grown-up guys who Heather C. desperately wants to impress. Both girls break off to hook up with their respective beau; however, as the audience might have expected, neither of them are into it at all. These dudes are sleazy. What college guy really finds a 16-year-old girl attractive? In the world of Heathers, the answer is obvious: a man who isn’t interesting enough to bag a woman his own age will always pursue someone who can’t identify how much of a loser he is. Which is another way of saying someone who is easily manipulated.

The difference between Heather C. and Veronica is that Veronica is capable of firmly telling her suitor “no” when he attempts to pressure her. She does not, in fact, want to have sex with a stranger on a grimy couch. In the scene before, Heather C. asks the guy she’s with, David, to go back to the party with her. But David doesn’t listen. Instead he tells her that he “can’t control himself” and pushes her head into his lap, the sound of a zipper confirming the dangerous implications of his manipulative words.

I want to be explicitly clear in stating that Heather C. is NOT responsible for David coercing her into oral sex. Sexual assault is never the fault of the victim. Her reaction to the situation illuminates the person underneath the almighty bitch image: a teenage girl who is insecure and vulnerable. Heather C. tells herself that she rules over the students of Westerburg, and perhaps she does, but once she faces a serious threat with age and experience on his side, she is unable to wield the power she clings to at school. 

We’re given a glimpse of Heather C. in the moments after she is assaulted: in a cramped, dingy bathroom, she rinses out her mouth with water and spits angrily at her reflection. For once in the film, she takes out her rage on herself, privately, because there is no one else around to torment. Heather C. still tries to guilt trip Veronica after learning that her friend successfully rejected Brad, trying to frame the situation as Veronica merely being “uncool” rather than holding strong boundaries. When Veronica drunkenly pukes on the floor, Heather C. threatens to tell everyone about her embarrassing behavior. She has to restore the balance of power in the only way she knows how. This bluff might be obvious to the audience, but Veronica seems to take her seriously, which prompts the series of events that cause Heather C.’s death.

Heather C.’s short character arc demonstrates that power is a vessel that must be filled over and over again without any possibility of actualization. Once the dominating force in Veronica’s life shifts to JD, the stakes of stabilizing the Westerburg hierarchy only mount higher. Jason Dean’s involvement in Heather C.’s death is the impetus for his power-high that sets the film’s second act in motion. 

Of the main cast, Jason Dean is given the most detailed backstory to explain his disturbing behaviors. His father, Big Bud Dean, owns a demolition company, and takes borderline orgasmic glee in watching tapes of the explosions and discussing his targets. It’s implied that Bud had a hand in the death of his wife, JD’s mother, in one of these explosions. The demolition company prompts his endless series of relocations from high school to high school, leading to Jason Dean developing an aloof disdain for the adolescent social hierarchy. While JD brushes off these incidents, it is evident to the audience that his penchant for violence was learned behavior modeled after an abusive parent. His desire to dominate other people and the world at large has been ingrained in him since childhood.

This tumultuous upbringing likely inspired his manipulative behavior toward Veronica. It’s unclear whether Heather C. was his first murder (Veronica even asks him this directly while writing the fake suicide note, to no reply), but JD succeeds at roping Veronica in for an unwitting killing spree with complete confidence and control. The lustfulness of their relationship keeps her attached, of course, but Veronica receives validation from JD that she doesn’t get from any of her peers. When Kurt and Ram hurt her reputation, JD offers a way to get back at them, which is covertly rooted in his thirst for blood. Veronica is kept dependent on him by orienting her new desire for power around his will. When she cuts ties with JD after Kurt and Ram’s deaths, JD makes several attempts to keep her in his orbit. Immediately after Veronica dumps him, JD tries to physically restrain her and forcibly kiss her. Later, he witnesses a fight between Veronica and Heather D. and asks his ex if she wants to stage another fake suicide; when all this fails, he sneaks into her room with a pistol with the intent to kill her.

 These are the typical tactics of an abuser when their victim intends to leave them. They’re pretty obvious when JD employs them, but it’s not much different from Heather C.’s behavior, or Heather D.’s after the former Heather dies. But as time goes on, Veronica learns to evade the manipulation and stay true to her values. She keeps her peers from killing each other, literally and figuratively, in the horrific world of high school. 

When discussing the expression of internal identity in Heathers, the film’s costuming and production design are essential to the conversation. I watched this movie at age 15, and when I made the connection between Heather C.’s signature red and its connotation of superior social status throughout the film, I thought I was a genius. Heathers really beats you over the head with its color symbolism, but I believe the highly-stylized visuals perfectly supplement the film’s writing and acting to flesh out the hellscape that is Westerburg High.

So let’s talk about colors. Give Heathers even a cursory glance and you’ll learn everything you need to know about its main cast: Veronica is sad so she wears blue, JD is edgy so he wears black, Heather C. is powerful so she wears red, Heather D. is envious so she wears green. Duh. But it’s the way these color schemes morph and exchange between one another that adds a layer of depth to the message of identity that lies at the core of the movie.

The most obvious example of this visual metaphor is the red scrunchie. At this point, the red scrunchie is a definitive representation of the film itself. It even has its own page on the Heathers Fandom Wiki. It is literally as simple as this: whoever owns the red scrunchie is the top dog at Westerburg. In the film’s first act, the red scrunchie is exclusively Heather C.’s possession; she is never on-screen without it. In fact, the only time she takes it off is right before JD manipulates her into drinking the drain cleaner. 

While Heather C. protects her red clothes and red croquet ball in life, she is unable to retain that power in death. When JD blackmails Heather D. with childhood photos of herself and one of her victims, the overweight Martha Dunnstock, he gives her the red scrunchie as a bargaining chip (it’s unclear how he got the scrunchie and frankly I don’t want to know). After this incident, she begins incorporating red into her wardrobe; at first it’s just a belt over her blazer. Then it’s full red outfits, stolen accessories from Heather C.’s locker, and a demand for the red croquet ball.

It’s only at the very end of the film that Heather D. is relieved of the scrunchie, when Veronica returns from stopping the basement bomb and literally rips it off her head. Then Veronica utters one of Heathers’s most quotable lines, overtly telling-not-showing the final message of the film: “Heather, my love, there’s a new sheriff in town.” After donning the scrunchie for herself, Veronica destroys the queen bee status of the accessory by immediately befriending the former lowest of the low. 

Red saturates the signature colors of other characters as well. Veronica is depicted wearing blue (or sometimes white and gray) in almost every scene she's in, only wavering the day after Kurt and Ram die. While she still clings to her signature blue, the infiltrating red in her purple blazer signifies her growing power as more of the bullies of Westerburg die by her hand. Jason Dean, who always dresses in edgy all-black trench coats and T-shirts, wears a red button-up that same day, signifying his growing control over the student body. In addition to Heather D.’s red takeover, she also wears a black jacket when collaborating on JD’s petition. Conversely, when JD and Veronica are at the height of their Bonnie and Clyde romance, planning the fake suicides of Kurt and Ram, he dons an all-blue outfit to match her energy. 

Veronica’s visual portrayals of inner strength exceed the color of her clothes as well. The three Heathers wear their hair long and big, 80s classic, as do many of the students of Westerburg. But Veronica chooses to keep her hair shoulder-length and rarely teases it up. While she’s seen wearing a blazer with big shoulder pads in the iconic opening scene of the movie, she progressively exchanges them for more toned-down silhouettes. The style seen in the movie is not only iconic, but tells us a lot of information about the characters’ inner worlds that they refuse to speak aloud.

In the grand scheme of Heathers, there is no one to root for. Teenagers are complicated like that. But by watching these children torment one another, love one another, tear each other down, and build each other up, there’s a lot to be learned about human relationships. I somehow identified this message as a teenager watching this movie for the first time but truly failed to incorporate it into my own life. Now with an adult’s perspective I can see the message that the events of Heathers successfully affirms. The value of knowing and trusting oneself and following your values is the key to remaining invulnerable against the violence of insecure people. Veronica survives the trials and tribulations of high school because she does not seek to dominate others for the sake of power and does not allow herself to be overpowered by others. A healthy sense of internal strength is something we can all aspire to, and while we might not be fighting off teen girl bullies or sociopathic edgelords, that ability to protect ourselves from harm will always be beneficial.

---