GC Event Write Up

On the night of the 22nd of February, me and my roommate went to go see Georgia College’s production of the musical Heathers. Heathers is a Broadway musical based on the movie Heathers which was produced in the 1980’s. It is based on a girl named Veronica who wants to be popular at her high school, so she associates herself with the most popular group of people there is—the Heathers.

I didn’t think that going to this event would relate to this course in anyway, but surprisingly it did. It opened my eyes in seeing how stereotypical they made each character based on their gender and personality. The Heathers were air heads and the bitchiest women EVER which is a stereotype of popular people in high school. The other example was the football players—they were dumb and all they wanted to do was have sex with the women characters… a typical stereotype of a horny teenager. These stereotypes helped me realize how social constructs are so engraved in our society still to this day.

I took a lot away from this event. I loved the music from this musical before I saw it, but seeing it in action gave the lyrics much more power. The songs talked about real mental health problems that were portrayed in the musical—I did not realize this until I saw the songs acted out. The play books even had every topic about mental health they talked about, and a help hotline for each. This made me realize how glossed over these issues are in movies, plays, and musicals because they are so normalized. Watching Heathers made me realize that in high schools, there should be emphasis on mental health because right now there is a large stigma attached to it and it is going to take a very long time until that stigma is gone.

-HH :)