Designing for Heathers...post-modernism

Heathers presents me with an unusual challenge.  It is set in a typical high school in the 1980's. The kids are rebellious. The plot is a bit outrageous. The characters are colorful and extreme...


Design in the 1980's reflected these same characteristics.

In art, architecture, and literature, we spent the first half of the twentieth century bucking classicism and creating a new and modern aesthetic.  Gone were classical columns and arches. Gone were classical proportions.

Artists like Picasso and the other cubists explored ideas other than the realistic representations of their subjects.

In vogue were the ideas of minimalism and exposing the materials for what they were.  Initially, the buying public ate these ideas up as progressive.

After World War II, however, much of the public's reaction to these ideas were that they were brutal and created un-human experiences.

In the sixties, a new generation of designer emerged. These designers were educated in a post-war culture. They were young and hip and listened to the public outcry against "brutal modernism."  From the 1960's thru the 1980's, this generation of designer revisited the classics and turned them into pop culture.  They took the original forms and ideas, but with direct disregard for classic concepts of proportion and composition, the composited them into new forms.

These new forms were clad in bright, trendy colors, erasing the brutal concept of the white box building.

Designers such as Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Robert Venturi and Charles Moore created this new, post-modern style.


Eventually, even the classical forms of early post-modernism gave way to newer, more rebellious post-modern ideas.  Inspired by the industrial aesthetic, the second wave of post-modern designers "deconstructed" (a literary term that was adopted by the design industry) the classics and created yet another form.

In some ways, deconstruction took the early twentieth century modernism and applied post-modern ideas to it.  In many respects, this is were were are today in design.

But what does all of this have to do with Heathers?

The characters in Heathers directly reflect this same rebellion that we see in design.  The three Heathers, Ram, and Kurt are early post-modern.  They reflect a colorful, almost stereotypical reaction to their old-fashioned parents.  They talk back...they are rude to their parents and to each other...they are colorful.

Their parents and teachers are represented as clueless, old-fashioned, flat...white boxes.


Then we have JD... he IS deconstruction.  He takes this rebellion to a whole new level.

But, really, Veronica represents the ultimate post-modern girl.  She takes some classical values with her as she tries to become a new, more colorful character. Ultimately, she deconstructs and goes the direction of brutality, but ultimately allowing those classical values to come back and pull her to the middle and into balance.

With a study of this post-modern mindset, I decided that the scenic design should reflect the same dialog that was happening in the arts and design of the period.

Shortly, I will reveal the final solution for the set, but hopefully, this background will help everyone to understand the premise on which I made my decisions.
Rob