Heathers

I'm sorry about the late post, I had internet problems yesterday.

I really liked this movie, but I think the reading kind of missed the point about many aspects of it. However, it's very likely that I'm the one that missed the point. I didn't see any deeper meaning to many of the references in the film, either because I'm, not old enough to catch them or because they seemed so natural. For example, I heard them talking about Gilligan's Island on the radio, but I didn't feel like there was anything really important in it--it reminded me that I was watching an 80s movie because many things about high school haven't changed all that much, but I don't think we need to question the meaning of why some unrelated person would feel like they were on an island at that moment. Most of the cultural references in the film just added to the authenticity of it, I don't think we need to analyze it all. It wouldn't be all that accurate if those references were missing, because popular culture is a part of people's everyday lives (especially in high school), and to leave those things out would make the entire feel of it wrong. I thik the author of the article was trying too hard to fit all of those things into a neat little box that had some deeper meaning to the film, and the result, while somewhat helpful, feels inaccurate somehow.

I also disagree completely about the "causality" of J.D.'s actions. I don't think his ultimate goal was to blow up the school tocreate a new Woodstock, because I believe he is a sociopath with no rhyme or reason to what he does. I felt like the huge suicide note signed by the students was more of an excuse for his own actions and had very little to do with the world outside that school. I can't seem to figure out if his father killed his mother or if his mother went into the building to kill herself, but J.D. does have some morbid preoccupation with death and specifically suicide, and I feel like in the end it was all an attempt to give meaning to something he didn't understand. He made up suicides for his classmates and people take the clues behind the suicides and tried to give them meaning, but because the suicides were fake the clues were essentially meaningless, putting all those clues together led the adults to the wrong conclusion-- Heather wasn't a deep and misunderstood girl and the jocks weren't gay, and none of the killed themselves. In the same way, trying to take all the "clues" from the film to give it a deeper meaning seems wrong and will eventually lead to an inaccurate interpretation because the postmodernist references aren't actually clues.

When J.D. said he's been to 7 schools and nothing's really changed, I wondered if there were a string of "suicides" at his other schools as well--he's very good at it, he doesn't seem to have any kind of issue with it, his father doesn't have any kind of strange reaction which leads me to assume he thinks it's a normal teenage thing nowadays. I think the huge fake suicide pact was more of his own way to make things here different. Either way, I don't think his motivations really matter because he's a sociopath. I think the biggest point to J.D. is that there is no minimum age to be evil.

I have a tendency to overlook feminist themes because, to be perfectly honest, I find feminism really boring. I did notice something that seemed interesting though: This is the first movie we've watched where the women are cursing. Men haven't really cursed all that much in the other movies, but generally "foul language" seemed like a male thing until now. There must have been a reason women didn't curse often before and why it was so common in this film.

I also noticed something else and I'd really like your opinions on this because I want to know if there's something to it of if I'm imagining things. At the very end of the film, when Veronica walks out of the school before J.D., she looks like she's about to throw up and she's holding her belly in the way that pregnant women do, not someone about to be sick. I REALLY thought she was going to try to stop J.D. by announcing she was pregnant. Did anyone else notice anything like that?

Shaft

I really liked Shaft, although my reasons are probably a bit backwards. I found it very refreshing because the general setup was very different from the movies I'm used to watching today with one main male role.

Nowadays when you see a typical movie featuring a man, there's lots of violence and special effects and the main character is usually an actor we recognize. He has huge muscles and is so good at everything he tries and everything about him is so wonderful this he seems unreal. Most importantly, there is no one else like him--no other important male roles in these movies, and if there is another man he is usually a sidekick or not as impressive physically.

On the other hand, Shaft is filled with men, and these men aren't all wimps. The few women are little more than ornaments. The focus here is put on the main character in a different way--instead of being one-of-a-kind, he is the best of many. His character is almost too good to be true but remains within realistic boundaries, he still has faults, and he isn't bulletproof. However, he is clearly the dominant one. Watching him interact was similar to watching the alpha-male of a pack of wild animals on the Discovery Channel. He was very imposing, he never backed down from a fight, he protected those he considered friends, and he never doubted for a second that he was in charge.

Another typical thing in recent movies is that the hero gets the girl in the end. There's always one woman and he wants her more than anyone else and when they finally get together everyone assumes they'll live happily ever after. Shaft can (and does) have any girl he wants and it's considered cool that he does.

Vanishing Point

This movie was very easy to watch. Throughout most of the movie, I found myself simply enjoying the driving and the music and the strange people in the dessert. Occasionally something would catch my attention, but for the most part I just went with the flow. At the end, just before Kowalski crashed into the barricade, I felt a strange tension but I didn't know what was about to happen until I saw fire. After about 5 seconds, everything about the movie had changed because I had to ask myself why he had done that. There was very little that could give me a clue, but the more I thought about it, the harder it was to come up with a reason. That led me to wonder why I couldn't answer the question and I realized that was probably the point. Throughout the movie the audience just watches the action, but for the most part it's pretty shallow. As moviegoers we are trained to find meaning behind almost anything in a film, but when the main character kills himself in such a spectacular way there should be SOME meaning or reason behind it. If we can't figure it out, does that mean that his life had no meaning or his death had no meaning? Someone in class said that his death was the only thing that made his life anything interesting/meaningful (or something to that effect), but how can a meaningless death (because he really hadn't done anything wrong so there was no reason for him to die in a police roadblock) give meaning to a life that was at best mediocre?

I agree with the article's description of driving as a means for freedom. My favorite thing about my car is the fact that I can get in it and just drive, which I do a lot. When the author mentioned that driving offers great power but the speeding laws limit that power, even though I knew it was true to begin with, seeing it written down made me really mad and I wanted to rebel by driving 90. If Kowalski's life hasn't been great, and he can only feel power behind the wheel, so why would he want to slow down, especially because the police, who ruined him, want him to? I'm not sure there really needed to be a reason for his speeding, for him as a person or for the plot of the movie,because going fast seems reason enough.