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Social Psychological Themes In The Film 'Heathers'

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The film “Heathers” illustrates numerous social psychology themes. This coming of age film, starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, uses crude humor and terrible 80’s fashion to make murdering your peers and stopping your ex-lover from blowing the school up entertaining. This film emphasizes social psychological themes such as stereotypes and prejudice, group influence, and conformity and obedience. Stereotypes played a huge rule in this film. In the beginning of the film you see The Heathers giving their weekly lunchtime poll. The Heathers include Heather Chandler who is the leader, Heather Duke who is the smart one, Heather McNamara who is the dumb cheerleader, and Veronica Sawyer who is the outcast and the newest member of the clique. They are stereotyped as the pretty, popular, and rich. Asking different stereotypical cliques random questions. The cliques include …show more content…
Deindividuation occurred in the beginning of the film when Veronica and The Heathers decide to pull a prank on Martha Dunnstock aka “Dump truck” by forging a love letter from a popular jock in school. The Heathers and Veronica know that no one will ever know that they actually wrote the note, so Veronica complies and writes it.
Another social psychological theme in this film is conformity and obedience. Conformity which “refers to the act of changing ones behavior to match the response of others” (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004).
Conformity also occurs in this film when Martha “Dump Truck” decides to commit suicide. The factors affecting Martha’s decision to conform is that all of the “popular kids” are doing it, she has a low social status at school, and the media are glorifying suicide with songs about suicide on the radio, and programs showing party-like

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