Heavenly Creatures Discussion Qs (plus a schedule change)
Added 2024-01-28 21:21:38 +0000 UTCHi, all. I decided the best way to share people’s thoughts on Heavenly Creatures would be to pose some questions here and have you respond in the comments. Please respond to one or all, with the agreement that anything posted here might be read in the episode. And remember, you can watch Heavenly Creatures here.)
But also a quick programming note: While we originally planned to post this episode this week, we’ve pushed it back a week to allow for more comments.
- How did you first hear about Heavenly Creatures? What was your understanding of what it was before you saw it? Queer movie? True crime? Fantasy? Horror? All of these?
- How would you classify it now? Like, how would you describe it to someone who had never heard of it?
- Did you watch the SImpsons episode we’re covering, “Lisa the Drama Queen,” before you watched Heavenly Creatures? Were you surprised that this movie would have inspired a Simpsons episode?
- Is it weird if the Simpsons was inspired by Heavenly Creatures but then scrubbed out all the queer stuff and dark stuff?
- If you’re ranking Peter Jackson’s movies, where would you place this one?
- Do you have any questions for Brian Kelley, the writer of the Simpsons episode?
- This is not the only episode to layer some kind of queerness on Lisa. How canon would you consider he queerness?
Of course, feel free to post anything else you'd want to share as well!
Comments
I'm probably too late for this, but I first heard of Heavenly Creatures sometime after LOTR, which is around the time I came out and started gobbling up queer media. I did not see this at that time though. With how much I love Melanie now, I wish I had watched it sooner. I saw the Simpsons episode before the movie. I watched more seasons than I'd like to admit during the pandemic. I watched it again immediately after watching the movie tonight. It is strange but not surprising that the really watered it down and removed the queerness. Maybe if they had Juliet be queer, but then Lisa would have to either be queer as well or reject her. And maybe they didn't want to be so definitive with Lisa, so they skipped it entirely? I don't know what the Simpsons Show Bible says in regards to Lisa's queerness, but my headcanon is that she is definitely some form of queer. Theres lots of small references through the years, and in an episode from last December she mentions her dolls 'from Malibu Stacey to Fire Island Frank'. That has to be a queer reference, no? Either way, I don't think they show will give a definitive answer.
JonJamesM
2024-02-02 04:57:51 +0000 UTCThe first time I heard about Heavenly Creatures was in Brian Sibley's book "The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy." I still have my copy, but recall a copy of the movie was sent to Tolkien illustrator John Howe to convince him to get on board with creating conceptual art for the Middle-Earth films. It got a huge spotlight in Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings, an unauthorized biography. The book mainly turns into a "making of" for Jackson's pre-Lord of the Rings movies (and a bit about the making of that as well). The fact that it was based on a true story was used to go on several tangents, such as someone who'd known Juliet Hulme noting how much Kate Winslet actually looked like her during filming. It eventually jettisoned the making of format to follow the press tracking down the women at the heart of the story. That dressed it as Peter Jackson's first "serious" film, a drama inspired by a true story with a wicked murder at the end. I don't recall it touching much on the queer angle. I eventually rented the DVD from Netflix years later and now own a Blu-Ray copy. I recall I rented it twice as the first time I got the DVD, it had snapped in half. I'd think of it as a drama in which a friendship turns into obsession with the queer element almost being shown as a negative thing as it basically shows the girls fully unified and at their darkest after sleeping together. I don't think I've seen the Simpsons episode that took some inspiration from the movie. It's a little surprising as the episode came out 15 years after the movie, so the writer really must've been a fan or it had really stuck with them. ("Why Heavenly Creatures?" would be my question for the writer.) I'm not surprised that the Simpsons didn't use this as one of their instances of Lisa being queer or making it dark. As it wasn't an alternate continuity, walking Lisa back from actively harming someone would be hard. And showing a minor being queer intimately would not go over well. There's been hints Lisa might be queer given, probably bisexual or pansexual, I guess her having a very close relationship with another girl would play into that. The "future" episodes rarely commit to that, with a succession of family photos showing her with one or two girlfriends, but she gets with a guy in the end. I think they MIGHT be at a place where a future Lisa could be depicted in a same-sex relationship. As for ranking Peter Jackson's movies, I haven't seen them all, with Braindead/Dead Alive having a gross out moment early on that upset me enough I just stopped and never went back. I've seen all six Middle-Earth films, King Kong, They Shall Not Grow Old, Forgotten Silver and The Frighteners. The Frighteners is one of my favorite Halloween movies and Forgotten Silver was great. I would put this as one of Jackson's best, maybe just under Lord of the Rings, which is up there just because of how complex the story was to adapt. Frighteners would be next, and I'd put Forgotten Silver above the Hobbit, and They Shall Not Grow Old under that.
Jay
2024-01-29 23:42:12 +0000 UTC
