at long last, my official complete (probably) thoughts on lesbian jd (part two, act two) its a long read, so click at your own risk
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extra credit reading here: heathers and feminism, about stanford 2021 heathers, all changes in stanford 2021 heathers, about every song in heathers
JD is originally written as a male character, so there are some questions as to how easily he could be translated to a female character. If you are interested in movie JD's role in patriarchy I recommend reading part two of the Heathers and feminism analysis I posted here a bit ago. Unfortunately I have nothing musical specific for your reading.
But I do have something interesting about the movie for your consideration. The Heathers movie manuscript was adapted from Dan Waters first manuscript which was about a lesbian couple. So in a way, JD and Veronica have always been somewhat related to a lesbian couple.
Waters had a couple of ideas for his first screenplay—a lesbian version of Badlands, Terence Malick’s stunning 1973 debut in which love-struck Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek embark on a murder spree (like Heathers, Badlands is anchored by its lead female’s narration), and another in which an alienated high school girl starts to fall in love with the Antichrist.” – “Heathers: A Novel Approach to Cinema” by John Ross Bowie
I also want to remind everyone that the straight version of the story still exists and will always exist. Male JD still exists and always exists. And lastly, a female version of JD should not be thought of as a one to one translation. She is a complete reinterpretation of the character and should be seen as re-written instead of a simple genderswap.
That out of the way, we pick up at the beginning of Act II, which is heavier than the Act I. Right off the bat Veronica is writing in her diary that she's scared for the fate of her soul. And it's for sure about the murders, no dispute on that.
But while we are here, talking about gayness in the first place... When she asks if they are going to prom or Hell together, does that not echo the weight queer kids feel just simply going to prom together in a homophobic society? Yes, these two have done more than go to prom together, but if God was really going to damn them to hell just for being gay, why shouldn't they kill a few assholes on their way down?
Regardless Veronica and JD are at odds with each other. Veronica is firm in her belief that murder is wrong, and JD refuses to understand that. JD being controlling and toxic is not changed by her being a woman. She's still just as bad of a person even if some audiences may sympathize her just a bit more. The relationship is still toxic.
When JD says "good may come" from murdering Kurt and Ram, and Veronica disagrees, it takes on more meaning. Since they are queer in this version, JD delusionally wanting the false suicide pact to fix Sherwood is as childish as it is narcissistic. Janie Dean still doesn't understand that the system is bigger than Heathers or Kurts or Rams, that much is consistent with her male counterpart.
Veronica is realistic, but mournful. Her guilt doesn't let her hope for even a moment that Sherwood would change it's mind about gayness just because of some dead kids. She doesn't want her murder to be rewarded, so she has to stay grounded and believe it could never happen.
Veronica believes personal gain doesn't justify murder, JD disagrees. JD is self serving to a lethal degree.
Again, I have to admit, I prefer the movie's version of the funeral to the musical's. But I will talk about Dead Gay Son to stay consistent.
Playwright commentary on the song: "Rather than write these dads as goofy and out of touch, we tried to explore the real emotions of fathers processing horror and grief, struggling to overcome their own fear and shame and replace it with love and kindness."
The spectacle of a dual suicide was enough to make the residents of Sherwood, Ohio rethink their homophobia. I really, really wish they kept the line from the movie where JD asks if they would have loved their gay son if he were alive. Agh! That would've meant so much in this context, but, alas, we are in the musical.
So instead JD and Veronica reconvene post funeral to talk. JD, who still cannot ever read the room, starts gloating. She goes on saying, "Let's give it up for queer Ohio! What's that I smell in the air? Tolerance? Inclusion? Love? You're welcome, town!"
Veronica doesn't want to hear it. She's sick with the idea that killing anyone could ever make "good" come of it. It's the final straw when JD threatens Heather Duke, frustratingly lighthearted about all of it.
She pushes JD to the ground, and she's nearly at her wits end. What can she do? JD knows everything and is her protection at school. And that's not even to mention that despite it all somehow Veronica still loves JD and knows how hard it would be for them to go on their own. They are still both outsiders in a world that doesn't seem to have a place for them except for with each other.
Playwrights notes on Seventeen: "She gives J.D. an ultimatum: Stop murdering people and try to be a human being, or you lose me forever. What would be Veronica’s best argument to wake J.D.’s humanity up and arrest his slide into rage and madness? You have to offer hope of something better. We recalled some of our personal high school histories, when as teenagers we’d had to intervene to try to save people although we weren’t qualified and the job should never have fallen to us."
It's a horrible situation that a kid her age should never be put into. And she knows she's too young to deal with it. By itself, we all know that it's tragic. Veronica trying to introduce JD to normalcy that he's clearly never known but proposing high school clichés. However, in context, this song hurts even more.
When it's a lesbian couple, their hope for normalcy is damn near impossible. They can't go on dates like every other kid, they can't go on dates in public. Veronica is trying to promise JD a life that they can never have, and she has to give up trying to throw their lives away to make a stand against society.
Do you understand? It is no future vs. no future. These kids who have no idea what it looks like when lesbians are in love and grow old together are imagining nothing because of compliance, or nothing because of violence. You have to wonder, when they ask, "Can't we be seventeen?" are they also begging for their peers to treat them normally?
The depth it adds to Seventeen alone has me foaming at the mouth, just by the way. I know I would cry if I watched it in person. I'd cry so fast.
Well, then it's time for Martha to accuse JD of murder.
As a side note, complete tangent with Martha. Martha consistently referring to JD as Veronica's friend and insisting Ram could never be gay makes her seem so homophobic. Like it's just a funny accident but it cracks me up. Like even Kurt acknowledged that JD and Veronica were dating before he died. #JusticeForMartha #MyGirlIsNotAHomophobe
This is Veronica's final link to her past being considered at odds with JD. And to me, this scene is Candy Store again. She mistreats Martha, not to be a Heather, but to align herself with JD. Veronica is seduced by the Heathers at the beginning of the play, and then seduced by JD in the other half. Both try to strip away her individual identity.
Both Martha and Veronica are devastated by the fight. Veronica has isolated herself to be with JD, a telltale sign of a toxic relationship.
Shine A Light, Lifeboat, and Shine a Light's reprise all stand to serve the same purpose in this analysis. Adults are useless when it comes to the interpersonal struggles between teens. Playwright's notes on Lifeboat: "Researchers in adolescent psychology have described being in high school as being like trapped in a very small lifeboat. Crammed in a tiny, unstable space with far too many of your peers, you’re trailing behind a huge ocean liner containing all your teachers and parents. The grownups are tethered to you by a thin rope, but too far away to appreciate the danger you’re in."
The stress of the bullying and the fighting and the pointless assembly come to a head when Veronica confesses to the murders in front of everybody. No doubt it's an outburst fueled by grief, and guilt, and just hoping she can close Pandora's box. She wants to put all of the strange ideas and suicidal thoughts resulting from the murders back in the box. But no one in Westerburg respects her enough to listen to her, particularly Heather Duke.
Veronica rushes to save Heather McNamara because she believes of her classmates have value and can grow and be forgiven no matter how badly they've wronged her. She doesn't think violence makes change, she believes uplifting her peers does.
Now that she's reinforced that, it's time for her and JD to fight again. They really do represent battling philosophies. JD wants to treat injustice with vigilante justice while Veronica believes in rehabilitating her peers and controlling her own life to change the world with a humble ripple effect.
Veronica watches JD fight with her father and it gives us key insight into Janie's upbringing. Bud says, "Plenty of pretty women out there, sport. I can make a new child anytime I want. Maybe that will be a real boy."
He resents having a daughter. He views women as walking baby machines that he can use at any time. He views his own child as easily replaceable. JD considers shooting her father in the back, killing him then, but she knows she can't. She shoots the TV instead.
She can't cover that up. She can't kill someone in front of Veronica after promising they'd be normal, or at least as close as they can get to it. She can't hurt her dad, the man who has been tormenting her her whole life. It's a complicated feeling of powerlessness that all abused kids relate to.
And what about Veronica asking her to be normal anyway? Veronica, who is supposed be the only person that understands Janie is pressuring her to try and fit in with Sherwood, Ohio's conformist society. And not even that can make them happy because outside pressure like Bud Dean, and Ms Fleming, and Heather Duke will always get in the way of them being truly happy.
JD's frustrated. Veronica's terrified. Using a gun so recklessly out of anger then trying to play it off as a joke is so scary. It's obvious that they can't go on ignoring their problems and that JD's not going to get better.
In I Say No Veronica has to stop being short sighted and love addicted and has to finally break up with JD. The ultimatum was a cute idea, but it didn't work. I have some good quotes on this.
So, as touched on above, I Say No is Veronica finding her independence. She's done Heather's way, she's done JD's way, and now she has to figure out her own way in the world. She seeks genuine, good friendship with Heather McNamara, hoping to finish school as a normal teenager.
JD's angry. Veronica knows everything, and the school is still getting away with mistreating her, and society is still getting away with mistreating everyone, and it's still Veronica's relationships with other students that's keeping them apart.
So she uses her cold-blooded fake suicide skills to put a plan in motion. The petition to kill the entire school, and a marked up Moby Dick to get Veronica committed. It would also be remiss to not mention that JD is directly threatening Veronica's life by implying that Veronica is suicidal when we know JD considers herself an expert at faking suicides.
Martha's suicide attempt is basically a sign that a world free of bigotry can't exist with the way the kids are conducting themselves at the moment. It's also Veronica's truest best friend feeling like life isn't worth living. Veronica is alone. No one knows what she's going through and her greatest friend has attempted suicide. The threat on her life, being isolated from her parents, and her continued feud with Heather Duke? This is Veronica's new lowest point.
The playwrights discuss Yo Girl and Meant To Be Yours together: "For the musical adaptation, we felt we needed to dig deep into J.D.’s psyche, to find the core of grief, loneliness, wounded pride, rage, and desperate love that could drive a teenage boy to kill dozens in an insane attempt to remove the obstacles (i.e., people) he thinks are preventing his beloved from loving him. Even though in the movie J.D. thinks Veronica is dead at this point, to amplify the urgency, we had J.D. start the song thinking Veronica’s alive, still trying to win her over to his awesome romantic murder plan. J.D. sings his monstrous manifesto to a Veronica who has locked herself in her closet. Only at the end of the song does J.D. kick down the closet door, discovering Veronica (apparently) dead."
Meant To Be Yours is violent entitlement, and a threat, and a manifesto, and an extremely lonely cry for help all rolled into one. It's a song all about JD framed as a love song for Veronica.
It's JD thinking that the only good thing that's ever happened to her has to be her promised fairy tale ending. It's her thinking that it's Westerburg's hierarchy and homophobia that keeps JD and Veronica apart, not JD's own behavior.
She's delusional enough to think the plan would actually win Veronica back.
It's sort of like what I was getting at with Dead Girl Walking. It's worse being a loser when you know how to miss popularity, and it's worse being alone when you know how to miss Veronica. She was the first thing that JD has ever wanted to live for, and now she's desperate to get Veronica back even if it's by force.
Then the reveal that Veronica has "hanged" herself. Saletan plays this scene as a near Romeo & Juliet. Veronica's fake suicide almost makes JD actually kill herself out of grief. But no, it's a twisted version of Romeo & Juliet. The Montagues and Capulets shouldn't learn their lesson after Romeo and Juliet have suffered, they need to learn the lesson by suffering themselves.
Veronica goes after JD so she can attempt to save the school. The return to Dead Girl Walking is only right. Veronica is celebrating her life one last time before she dies, but literally this time. Veronica is going to sneak up on JD and make fireworks, but literally this time.
And it's the moment where JD and Veronica bonded in a way that none of their peers could understand, so now it's time to dismantle it right at the root.
It is Veronica understanding that she has to fight for herself, and save her school herself, and stand by her own morals. It's Veronica claiming her own identity.
The playwrights have notes on this song, of course: "Here is where we really tried to write a Heathers for our current era. The original movie did a great job blowing the whistle on the lies and self-deceptions of the Reagan era. But once you’ve blown the whistle, what then? It wasn’t enough for our stage version to just replicate those criticisms. We needed to take a further step, and clarify that we, and Heathers The Musical, abhor violence, and we have to keep looking for ways to help angry people before they lash out in anger; and that we have to change the ways our schools and communities are run and prioritized. And so in these angry and often brutal times, we try to remember that Veronica believed that J.D. was redeemable all the way to the end. She reached out to him instead of pushing him away. It seems a good way to live."
Veronica and JD fight it out. JD respects that she's been beaten and then offers to take the bomb away. Many see this as a sacrifice. I do not. I think it's JD's suicidality that she has had the whole runtime of the play coming to the fore front. She has no future, she has no desire to live in this world, but she still loves Veronica and gives her one last goodbye.
And it's the same violence that killed JD's mother that kills JD. A cycle of violence from parent to child that becomes only slightly more personal when it's from mother to daughter. It could definitely be used in a feminist essay.
So yes, this doomed relationship does fall into the bury your gays trope. However, it is kind of an accident and still makes for a good albeit tragic story.... Just food for thought.
But Veronica doesn't let any of her peers die for nothing. All of this violence was truly senseless if she doesn't at least try to honor their memories by healing her school and community. She trips Heather Duke of the red scrunchie and offers to hang out with Martha.
It's optimistic and sweet. In the face of everything, Veronica doesn't lose her optimism for her school.
So yes! While the straight version of Heathers is in no way less than this queer retelling, I believe the queer aspect only adds to the story, and loses nothing.
