Heathers: The Relationship Between Veronica and J.D
Published November 9th, 2022
Alexandra Castillo
This blogpost contains spoilers for the film, Heathers, as well as mentions of suicide, homophobia, and sexual harrassment.
The first time I watched Heathers (Dir. Micheal Lehmann, 1989), I was probably 15 or 16. At that point in my life, I had never seen a movie like Heathers before. It shocked me. Maybe Mean Girls (Dir. Mark Waters, 2004) was somewhat similar in its snarky biting commentary on High School life. And yet it was nowhere on the same level of Heathers. Because Heathers is a movie where teenagers are killed and their deaths are staged to look like suicides. Heathers is a dark teen comedy full of satire about how society reacts to teen suicide. And Heathers is a story where the main antagonist is also the main romantic interest.
Yeah. I had never seen a movie like Heathers before.
Time has passed, and the way I interpret the story and characters has changed a lot too. Today, I’ll be unpacking the thoughts I had on my most recent rewatch. Heathers centers on Veronica Sawyer, played by Winona Ryder. She’s a junior at Westerburg High and a part of the most popular clique at school. The Heathers. They’re a group of girls who share the same first name. Veronica stands out as the outlier in the group. We see this divide when Heather Chandler, the queen bee and a mythic bitch, goads Veronica into pulling a prank on a student named Martha Dunstock. Veronica isn’t happy with herself, but the Heathers find this act hilarious.
Here, we see Veronica is dissatisfied with where she is. She isn’t happy bullying others, but she does it anyway because it’s her part to play as one of the most popular girls in school. Heather Chandler keeps her in line and threatens to ruin her reputation if she doesn’t commit. But after a college party gone wrong, Heather disavows Veronica. She goes home and journals her frustrations regarding Heather, writing “I want to kill and you have to believe it’s for more than just selfish reasons.” This is one J.D. appears in her bedroom window.
J.D., played by Christian Slader, is a newly transferred student at Westerburg. He is constantly moving from school to school, due to his father’s demolition’s company. It’s also implied his mother committed suicide when he watched her walk into a library right before it exploded. J.D. is the archetypical bad boy love interest. He dresses in black. He rants about every high school being the same, filled with shallow vapid bullies, and homophobia, and a lack of regard for others. His real name is also Jason Dean, which is similar to James Dean. Yeah, James Dean, the actor famous for his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1955). That film practically invented the movie bad boy. Need I say more? I will. He also rides a motorcycle!
Veronica develops a crush on him fairly quickly. On my most recent viewing, I realized that this is because she feels a sense of comradery with him. He is able to sympathize with her, proclaiming his own dislike for Heather. He also talks to her in general about how the high school social hierarchy is cruel, which she certainly agrees with. We see throughout the film that Veronica is intelligent. When she was in the sixth grade, her parents considered moving her to high school early. And yet, the world around her sees her as nothing more than just another pretty popular girl. The jocks, Kurt and Ram, even talk openly about what sexual acts they would like to do to her. And here comes J.D. who talks big about destroying all the things she hates, unlike people like Heather who just urge her to fall in line. After feeling disrespected for so long, why wouldn’t Veronica feel drawn to that? In many stories with a bad boy love interest, he is often redeemed or made better through being loved. However, this film doesn’t do that. J.D. isn’t a sad boy who’s going to be saved and forgiven for his misdeeds. No, he’s a bad guy.
J.D. switches out the milk and orange juice concoction Veronica is serving to Heather Chandler, for drain cleaner. Heather drinks it, thinking it’s a hangover cure and dies. Veronica and J.D. cover the murder up as a suicide. From there, the film satirizes how teen suicide is often glamourized in American culture. This is an issue that we have faced for many years before the release of Heathers, and we still face it to this day. The most obvious example of the media romanticizing suicide would be Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why (Brian Yorkey, 2017). This is a series I do not recommend watching; I find it very exploitative. However, when the show first came out, I remember everyone in my circle talking about it nonstop. It felt like the shock of the subject matter drew us all in.
Heathers employs that same shock.
However, it is critical to how society reacts to suicide. Heathers says that in reality, suicide takes away your agency and you end up becoming another statistic. Veronica says this outright. 13 Reasons Why, on the other hand, depicts suicide giving a character more agency which is not something that should be depicted. In that sense, Heathers is ahead of its time. In Heathers, we have Pauline Flemming, one of the teachers who says she wants to help students heal. However, what she really wants to do is sensationalize the matter, and she makes the decision of suicide seem like a viable option to take. She calls it “One of the most important decisions a teenager can make,” and makes it seem that through suicide, only then can a teenager’s pain finally be understood. J.D. is shown enjoying the chaos she causes, unlike Veronica who is greatly disgusted by the ordeal.
They end up staging another suicide to get back at Kurt and Ram, the same jocks who sexualize Veronica. Veronica is under the impression that they’re conducting a harmless prank involving tranquilizer darts that will make the two look like they planned a double suicide to hide their homosexual affair. Being two bullies who use homophobic remarks to ridicule their targets, this will bring them great shame. However, J.D. is bringing real bullets and fooling Veronica into his scheme. Once they’re dead, Veronica becomes furious and her relationship with J.D. falls apart. This is when Veronica learns that J.D. is not just a danger to bullies. He’s also a danger to everyone at the school, including her.
She voices her frustrations to him, and he doesn’t listen. Instead, he forces Veronica into multiple kisses she doesn’t reciprocate. Watching this scene again, I realized that J.D. was just as bad if not worse than the people he murdered. He spoke about how Kurt and Ram had nothing to contribute to the school except for date rapes and aids jokes, and yet here he was forcing himself onto Veronica. He denounced Heather Chandler, yet he goes on to enable Heather Duke to take her place as the school’s next queen bee. Heather Duke, while subservient to Chandler, becomes just as big a bully in her absence. She drives Heather McNamara, who was her friend, to attempt suicide. Veronica manages to interfere, but Heather Duke’s actions are egregious. I realized that J.D. didn’t actually care about removing the bad people from high school to make it a better place. J.D. was lashing out at a world he deemed unfair, but he was also enjoying the resulting chaos. The first time I watched it, I thought he actually believed he was doing something righteous.
At the end of the film, J.D. attempts to blow up the school to demonstrate to the city that society is self-destructive and will always implode in on itself. Veronica learns of his plot and rushes in with a gun to put an end to his scheme. They fight, again, he kisses her against her will, but she shoots him and manages to stop the bomb. She exits the school, and J.D. follows her out, with the bomb tied to his torso and he blows himself up in front of her. Veronica just watches with a smile and lets the explosion light up her cigarette. This scene is pretty iconic. Earlier in the movie, J.D. does something similar, lighting his cigarette on Veronica’s hand. She had burned herself out of guilt for what she did to Kurt and Ram. It was meant to demonstrate visually, how J.D. was harmful to her. However, she has taken back that power he had over her, using his explosion to light her own cigarette. He no longer controls her or can hurt her ever again. She has won, not just physically but also in her philosophy.
On this most recent viewing, it became clear to me that the school was a metaphor for society. I mean, J.D. states it pretty clearly, but as a teenager I always thought he was just being dramatic. The school is society, and J.D. and Veronica are both people who see very clearly that it’s flawed.
J.D.’s appeal comes from his ability to take action to remove the evils from society.
While he’s initially alluring and seems understanding of her, he’s constantly lying to Veronica and using her to carry out his schemes. I remember this conversation I had with a friend about J.D. and Veronica’s relationship after I watched the movie the first time. She said something akin to “You kinda want them to be together, but you kinda don’t.” And I agreed with her! I fell for that allure too! But I don’t want them to be together at all, nowadays. J.D. is just another evil in society. He doesn’t care for helping out people who fall victim to it like Martha Dunstock, a person bullied by the Heathers. Or Heather McNamara who feels depressed after all the ‘suicides.’ Veronica does, though. She reaches out to both girls, and helps them.
Veronica falls for the big words J.D. says initially, sure. But she turns her act around and she doesn’t give up on society. She doesn’t want to destroy it. She doesn’t want to give into chaos. She wants to help people. She wants to reform society. To rebuild. She dethrones Heather Duke from the spot of Queen Bee, by taking her red scrunchie she wears, the one that initially belonged to Heather Chandler. And that’s Heathers. It’s a good watch, and I highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t already. Or give it a rewatch.
There’s a lot of fun stuff about the film, such as the color coded costume design for the Heathers and Veronica. The lighting gets intense at various dramatic points during the story, a la Suspiria (Dir. Dario Agento, 1977). The dialogue is snappy and fun. There’s other readings of the film one can take away too.
But yeah, that is my latest reading of Heathers. Do you agree? Do you have a different perspective? What do you think of the performances in the film? Which Heather is your favorite? Have you listened to the musical adaptation?
That’s all for Heathers, folks.