Profiles in Ontological Rebellion: The Presence of Moby-Dick in Heathers

I t is common internet knowledge that Daniel Waters, screenwriter for the indie cult classic Heathers (1989),1 about a disaffected high school girl whose ennui gradually evolves into mass murder, had originally intended to use Catcher in the Rye as the principal literary motif in the movie, but could not because of the famous copyright taboos that envelope J. D. Salinger’s writings. Thus thwarted, he turned to that other omnipresent article of the high school object-scape, Moby-Dick. However, nothing about this choice seems arbitrary or unfortunate. It is difficult to imagine Holden Caulfield’s voice poking into Heathers. Holden’s rhetoric is too personal, too humanly resonant and vulnerable, to reflect the operatic, archetypal cartoonishness crammed into this movie. Holden’s voice in Heathers would emit an aura of real worldliness and an echo of real shootings that would unbalance the knife-edge tone of rampant zaniness that the movie achieves. But Moby-Dick is perfect. On the one hand, Melville’s world is full the same blend of strutting satirical types, rhetorical indulgence, manic pathos, cryptic wisdom, and panoramic inclusiveness that characterizes the movie. And on a second hand there is Moby-Dick’s status, even and perhaps especially for those who have never read it and never will, as the Archetypal American Novel. The namedropping, in collusion with the allegorical fairy-tale sheen of the filmmaking, elevates the plane of discourse the movie engages. Furthermore, Heathers goes backwards and rewrites Moby-Dick as a rock video, a zany jaunt into the heartland of the American apocalyptic wet dream. Conversely, something of Melville’s profound moral vision trickles into Heathers, complicating its conventional Hollywood ending. Heathers is a black satire of John Hughes-style high school movies which de-sentimentalizes the cliche of “teen angst bullshit.” Veronica Sawyer is the fourth member of a coven of merciless bitches (the rest of them all named Heather) who tyrannize their school’s loose assortment of nerds, jocks, stoners,