What's your damage, Heather?
Rose DommuNo one was really gagging for a Heathers reboot, right? Like Mean Girls and Clueless, Heathers is nothing if not a product of its time, a razor-sharp look at teen life — as its imagined by adults, anyway. But sure, a Heathers TV show for the modern era, why not?
Related | Watch the Diverse New Heathers Cast Pile up Bodies and One-Liners
But when the trailer for Heathers dropped this week, some of us were not only skeptical, but outright flabbergasted. The choice to reboot the Heathers as a trio of nasty teenagers each hailing from a marginalized group — a "body positive" overweight girl, a genderqueer character that would fit right in as the token gay best friend on literally any TV show, and a young queer woman of color — is baffling.
Showrunner Jason Micallef told Entertainment Weekly that he doesn't actually see the Heathers as villains. “The three Heathers are incredibly powerful and ruling the school; they’re the people you would want to be. In the original film, the Heathers were the ones I always loved, and it’s the same with the series. The Heathers are the aspirational characters. [That the Heathers are the villains is] the underlying thesis of the small segment of people that have an issue with it. The villain is J.D. — and that’s the same in the movie and same in our show.”
“The reason I changed the Heathers surface identities is I think today [the characterization] rings true," he added. "Today, all different types of people are more aspirational. People that wouldn’t have necessarily been considered the most popular kids in school in 1988 could very well be — and probably most likely are — the more popular kids today. And also because it’s a TV show, we have so much more time to explore their characters and get behind it. Of course, no one’s seen the show yet. Once they see it, I think they’ll get what we’re talking about.”
Sure, Jan. The angle that those who would once have been bullied are now those in power is a nice way to spin this show, but it also goes completely against the reality of teen life, which is what the original Heathers skewered so brilliantly. The reality is that pretty blonde girls have always ruled high school and still do today. No one remembers the original Heathers and thinks that Winona Ryder was anything but the person we were supposed to sympathize with, even if we loved how terrible the Heathers were. The movie makes it very clear that these mean girls get exactly what is coming to them. In 2018, by making a trio of teenagers from marginalized groups the bitchy, popular girls and making a thin, white blonde girl the protagonist, this show still sets up a Heather as a hero.
Why Are Marginalized Teenagers the Villains In the New Heathers TV Show?
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