Heathers and Mental Health Part 4: Beautiful

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

            Despite everything though, there still is a positive ending with an alternative to everything that has gone wrong.  Though more prevalent in the musical than the film, there are another three possible actions that can be taken to counteract the darkness in the story.  They are important to keep in mind, though, if any positive effect is going to happen. So this little trip will end with a discussion on those approaches and how they can help.

            The first approach is empathy.  Veronica Sawyer emulates this multiple times throughout. For example, she actively chases after Heather McNamara to stop her from committing suicide.  Also, she reconnects with Martha at the end of both the film and musical to make up for her own many mistakes.  This is in opposition to Jason Dean’s desires as while Dean believe deaths like those of McNamara’s or potentially Duke’s would eliminate many of the school’s problems, Veronica know they’re flawed humans no worse than themselves and killing them would be both inhumane, that they don’t deserve it, and would make the two what they despise.

            The truth is, the average person wants to feel valued and appreciated.  Sure, there is a point where that can get enabling (as proven earlier).  However, most people going through anxiety or depression hate themselves enough already. Reaching out to them does have the potential to reconnect with them and make them feel wanted. Again, it won’t solve everything, but it does help.

            Second is taking initiative.  Most of Veronica’s involvement in the deaths was purely accidental.  However, she is given multiple opportunities to either go along with JD’s plan or get out of his way.  Instead, she actively refuses to help him with his schemes and then stops him from blowing up the pep rally.  In addition, she (symbolically) removes Heather Duke as head of the Heathers and attempts to act kinder to others to make the school a better place.

            Every problem in one’s life is an obstacle to be overcome. Mental health problems will still need to be addressed.  However, it is up to the individual who has them to pursue help if they are to ever overcome them.  It obviously isn’t going to be easy as there isn’t always an easy answer, and the world can seem unsupportive.  However, the journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step and not taking that step means the journey won’t happen.

            The final goal is living in the moment.  This is a larger theme in the musical than the film, but still extremely important to this.  Throughout both, everyone is terrified about their social status, how they’re viewed, what the future holds for them, and getting to the top. However, the truth is all that is fleeting and always changing.  This is why Veronica, after a while, just wants to enjoy being seventeen and knows there’s still a chance to improve later.

            There is evidence that living in the moment has a positive impact.  Studies have proven that living in the moment can reduce anxiety and stress significantly.  After all, the past is unchangeable and the future is unknown, but today can always be addressed.  Focusing on the here and now offers chances to improve, start fresh, and take initiative. So that only reduces problems.

            In the end, just deciding to be kinder to others today is the most one can do.  No one has the power to truly control and rearrange the entire world.  However, you can do a lot of good in small ways for other people.  Maybe then we can make the world beautiful.  So on that note, I will end this and close off with lyrics Heathers’ Finale:

I can't promise no more Heathers

High school may not ever end

Still, I miss you, I'd be honored

If you'd let me be your friend

We can be seventeen

We can learn how to chill

If no one loves me now

Someday somebody will

We can be seventeen

Still time to make things right

One day we'll change the world

But let's kick back tonight

Let's go be seventeen

Take off our clothes and dance

Act like we're all still kids

Cause this could be our final chance!

Always be seventeen

Celebrate you and I

Maybe we won't grow old

And maybe then we'll never die

We'll make it beautiful

Heathers and Mental Health Part 3: The Tiniest Lifeboat

Part 1
Part 2

            There is one more interesting fact however about Heather McNamara that is worth considering in relation to her mental health. Heather wears yellow, the color of sunshine and happiness.  This reflects her personality well as she is the head cheerleader which implies provoking cheer.  She generally has a positive personality, and in the movie was the only person who seemed sad when Heather Chandler died.  However, yellow is also the color of fear and caution.  That ironically also makes it the perfect color for her depression and lack of will.

            Heather would suffer from what could be called “Smiling Depression.”  Often, people who struggle with mental problems or even just unhappiness will try to mask it with different emotions.  The hope is to either become those emotions or just hide them in the hope of being seen as normal.  Often though, this can feel like who we project ourselves as is a lie because we are not what we try to present and that only furthers us down a self-loathing path because we cannot be what we want to be.  So for Heather that just leads to furthering her own dissatisfaction and even makes her feel unworthy to be head cheerleader.

            Masks are a common theme throughout both versions of Heathers.  Heather Duke is actually a bulimic yes-girl with no personality, but after she becomes queen bee she tries to emulate Heather Chandler (to the point of wearing Chandler’s signature color red in the film) to pretend she has Chandler’s strong will.  However, she still gets slapped around by JD and then Veronica when she’s finally dethroned. JD meanwhile presents himself as an aloof, emotionless bad boy, but that’s just to hide that he secretly hates himself and feels like nobody cares about him, including his parents. Finally, Veronica tries to present herself as the popular girl, a member of the most important clique in school, but in reality she’s just an average girl who just doesn’t want to be picked on. In the end, all these mindsets just end with the character denying their own pain and distancing themselves from who they are.

            The truth is that happiness comes from withinand an acceptance of who we are.  Sure, as previously stated, it is a mistake to wear your emotions on your sleeve.  However, the truth is constantly denying your emotions only causes them to bottle up. The more one tries to be someone else, the less they will be able to live with their selves.  Inevitably, it will only hurt more.

            So those are three key mental health themes Heathers discusses throughout its story.  There is the apathetic approach, the coddling approach, and the masking approach.  All three of them only lead to more misery. There is of course much more to talk about such as JD’s utilitarian approach to societal reorganization and the significance of Heather Duke’s color green, but those will have to wait for potential future blogposts as this has gone on for long enough.

Part 4

Heathers and Mental Health Part 2: Shine a Light

Part 1

            Of course, apathy is not the only response that the film sees.  After JD tricks Veronica into covering up two more murders as suicides, the school principal realizes there may be a serious issue at the school and invokes the guidance counselor to take a more proactive role into stopping the mental health problems at the school.  As a result, she commences this big student assembly and campaign to tell all the students how special they are and how loved they are by their peers.  Her approach is actually best represented in the film by the quote: "Suicide is the most important decision a student can make and we need to make sure we get it right."  In the musical, this approach is also presented with the lyrics:

Deep inside of everyone

There's a hot ball of shame

Guilt, regret, anxiety,

Fears we dare not name.

But, if we show the ugly parts

That we hide away,

They turn out to be beautiful

By the light of day.

Why not,

Shine, shine, shine a light,

On your deepest fears!

Let in sunlight now.

And your pain will disappear!

Shine, shine, shine.

And your scars and your flaws,

Will look lovely because you shine!

You shine a light.

            In the musical, Ms. Fleming tries to get the students to come out and admit their feelings and mental health issues in the hopes that openness will end in an outflowing of love and support.  So Heather McNamara, the weak willed head cheerleader, inspired by the guidance counselor’s ideas and promises, comes out and admits that she’s been depressed and suicidal due to a combination of problems in her personal life, and the recent “suicides” of the people she knew.  In addition, she’s been having to put on the front of perfection to avoid getting mocked by her classmates.  The fear of that possibility is eating her alive.  Yet despite being thoroughly advised to stay quiet by the new head of the Heathers clique, Heather Duke, McNamara is finally able to admit her personal struggles to the entire school assembly.  That goes about as well admitting your insecurities to random teenagers usually does.

            In both the film and the musical, Heather Duke leads the school in mocking and ridiculing McNamara for her problems with depression. In response, McNamara proceeds to run to the bathroom to commit suicide.  In addition, Martha Dunnstock has also been driven to attempt to kill herself due to her bullying experiences, with the line “suicide is the most important decision a teenager can make” playing in her head, effectively glorifying the act.  Even after she survives, Duke mocks her for failing to rip-off the popular kids since the two jocks and Heather Chandler all supposedly went out via suicide. Ironically, what was supposed to actively prevent suicide instead encouraged it, which is why Heather McNamara’s self-loathings thoughts are the reprise or Shine a Light, instead saying:

Whine, whine, whine all night!

You don't deserve to live!

Why not kill yourself!

Here have a sedative

Whine, whine, whine!

Like there's no Santa Claus

You're pathetic because you whine!

You whine all night!

            Inevitably, what the guidance counselor was telling students was a lie in the first place.  Opening one’s self up to the world isn’t necessarily going to be met with warmth and affection.  The world is full of flawed and unkind, broken people who hurt others to deal with their own insecurities.  Ideally, psychology does recommend finding a support network, a close group of people who can be supportive when one is hurting.  However, expecting the world to be like that is always going to be a mistake.

            That largely brings the key problem with this mindset: there are always going to be struggles in this world and sadness is an inevitability.  The Christians call it original sinwhile the secularists call it human nature, but the inevitable is that there never will be perfection and therefore never eternal happiness on this earth.  Yet, it is from struggle we gain experienceand grow as people.  Acting like this isn’t the case only leads to severe disappointment and an inability to grow.

            This has slowly become society’s reaction to all of this in the last few years.  The self-esteem movement started decades ago, but instead depression rates went up.  An entire generation was told that college will lead to a job, it can be a safe space, that life will be easy, and that everyone is special.  However, the market changed and several degrees became worthless, safe spaces actual stunt personal growth, the way to get to a financially successful in life required a lot of commitment, and “everyone’s special...is another way of saying no one is.”  With all that in mind, the fact that easy expectations not being met start to add context to insanity like the increased depression rates.

            So that’s the sad irony: constantly coddling people and condescending them leads to steeper disappointment when reality sets in and only makes mental health struggles worse.  It can also glorify unhealthy attitudes which is why both McNamara and Martha attempt suicide.  The irony is that the people who cause that unhealthy mindset never get punished. Ms. Fleming only gets called out by Veronica in both versions, but nothing comes of it.  In the end, she keeps her job and keeps pushing other platitudes.

Part 3

Part 4

Heathers and Mental Health Part 1: Die Alone

            As my closest friends can tell you, I usually have an obsession with some piece of entertainment or another.  Recently, my obsession has been with the cult classic 80s film Heather and its 2014 musical adaptation.  Subtext tends to fascinate me and this film has a lot of symbolism that I very much relate to in my own way.  However, in this particular instance, one fascinating topic Heathers discusses is mental health, depression, suicide, and our own thoughts on this topic.  In this spoiler filled post, I am going to discuss the themes brought up by the story and some of my own thoughts based on my experiences.

            We’ll start off with a brief synopsis of the first third of the film so that everyone is caught up and will continue discussing events as they become relevant to the discussion.  Essentially, our story starts off with a high school being dominated by various cliques and social hierarchies.  At the top are the group known as the Heathers, which includes the Queen Bee Heather Chandler, the “mythic bitch” who dominates the school, Heather Duke, her pathetic yes-girl lackey, Heather McNamara, the head cheerleader, and Veronica Sawyer (yes, her first name isn’t Heather), the fourth member of the group who joined late in order to advance her social status in the hopes that she could get above all the unpleasant bullying those on the lower spectrum of the high school hierarchy have to face.  Over time though, Veronica begins to feel out of place and uncomfortable in this position as she is required to do things she finds unspeakably immoral such as helping Heather Chandler bully other students.  Eventually, this leads to a confrontation between the two that ends with Veronica trying to unplug from the high school insanity.  However, on accident Veronica and her boyfriend JD murder Chandler and make it look like a suicide.  So, the rest of the film follows the school as it deals with the unexpected “suicide” of the most popular girl in school as the threads that hold the social order of the school slowly unravel.

            In order to hide the actions of JD and herself, Veronica has to fake a note in Chandler’s handwriting to convince everyone it wasn’t murder.  As a result, she writes it to make it look like Heather was going through major personal problems with her sense of self-worth.  As a result, her death is no longer the passing of someone in the school (generally unliked as a person) but a tragic cry for help from someone close to the other students.  As a result, just about everyone has their own perspective in relation to the events of the death and what has caused it.  This is best exemplified by the funeral scene where the inner prayers and thoughts of each student are revealed, but also by the different actions of individuals throughout.  However, there are actually two general approaches that particularly stick out.

            The first is to genuinely ignore it and pretend nothing is wrong.  This is actually the approach of the adults throughout the film as the principal initially doesn’t even want to cancel school the day after Chandler’s death as the potential backlash from parents would be an annoyance.  Veronica’s own parents meanwhile check to see if she’s alright and then immediately change the conversation after they get a response.  There is some show of concern as the students try to leave a sympathetic portrayal of her in the school yearbook and the local pastor makes references to Christ’s love as an alternative to death, but both fall hollow and disingenuous as the students always hated her.  Thus, covering up Chandler’s unkind reputation does little while the reference to Christ is (intentionally) superficial.  In short, most people try to treat it like nothing is wrong or out of the ordinary.

            This is tragically similar to the history of mental health as it has been terribly stigmatized.  Historically, those suffering from mental illnesses were considered extremely abnormal in society, being compared to animals, talks of demon possession or opposition to God, and so forth with these views daing back to even before Hippocrates.  The answer to deal with this was largely to lock those with mental health illnesses away in asylums, a place where they wouldn’t have to be dealt withor addressed and could be easily ignored.  Stigma against it even continued into the 2000s with a 2010 studyfinding that 46% of adolescents “described experiencing stigmatization by family members…62% experienced stigma from peers…and 35% reported stigma perpetrated by teachers and school staff.”  Bottom line, treating mental illness like an outside abnormality that can’t really be addressed has been a continuous problem for a while.

            The apathy and disinterest stigma causes results in the impact of reducing improvement.  One study found that the stigma regarding it lead to “exclusion, poor social support, poorer subjective quality of life, and low self-esteem.”  Another study found that stigma was the fourth highest reasonwhy people do not seek the help they actually need. Honestly, it can be scary to admit that there’s something bad going on in one’s life and people not being supportive can actively prevent those who need help from wanting to admit there is a problem.  However, this all only further reduces the ability of people to get help or overcome this intense struggle.

            Before continuing, there is one last thing to keep in mind about why apathy may be the main approach to mental health.  Honestly, mental health problems are harder to understand as unlike physical illnesses, they cannot be seen or do not present obvious symptoms as they exist in the brains of those who have them.  This can make them hard to relate to and scarier due to a lack of a frame of reference.  As a result, it may be easier to just avoid it all together instead of addressing it. However, as said, this is counterproductive and makes things much worse.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4