Antisocial Justice Warriors SPITE AND PERFORMATIVITY IN HEATHERS

In both the original Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1988) and Jason Micallef’s 2018 television reimagining, the student body of Westerburg High are faced with an unexpected quandary. Heather Chandler (Melanie Field in the series / Kim Walker in the film), like most queen bees in cinema, television and literature, rules her school with an iron fist, maintaining her power through bullying and nastiness hidden under a thin facade of good intentions. So, when it is announced that she has apparently taken her own life, the student body is left scrambling. What is the right way to react? Am I demonstrating the correct amount of grief? Then, less visibly: Will things perhaps get better now that she’s gone? And who will fill the power vacuum? At the core of it all, however – underneath all the chest-beating and platitudes and group counselling – lies the question that no-one admits to holding dearest: How does this impact me?

While the original Heathers and its 2018 remake are superficially quite different, they share the same skeleton. Both feature a triad of popular high-schoolers, all called ‘Heather’. Both follow the protagonist, Veronica Sawyer (Grace Victoria Cox / Winona Ryder), a girl who is simultaneously accepted by the popular clique and disgusted by them. And both versions start to take a darker turn when Veronica and the angry, cynical new student JD (James Scully / Christian Slater) embark on a relationship that rapidly devolves from drinking slushies together to committing murders.

The main differences between the two works lie in the power dynamic between JD and Veronica and in the casting of the Heathers. The remake’s Veronica is a little more morally dark, while its JD