At first glance, Maya Ishii-Peters (Pen15’s co-creator and showrunner Maya Erskine) and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), as well as the works of onscreen art they hail from (heartfelt puberty cringe-comedy Pen15 and teen suicide dark comedy Heathers, respectively) have little-to-nothing in common. Maya is an unpopular Japanese-American tween growing up in Southern California in the early aughts. Heather is the Caucasian blonde Queen Bee of her Ohio high school in the late eighties. Could there be two less similar characters in film/TV history? (Probably. But these two certainly rank.) However, there’s one connection between these two different characters; one shot from each work that links the two of them and suggests a universality in what both characters are experiencing in the moment, as well as how film/TV often uses small moments and shots to deepen characters and reflect our world back at us.
Toward the end of 2021, I sat in a darkened theater watching a woman in her mid-thirties (inhabiting the character of a clearly uncomfortable 13-year-old girl) simulate performing oral sex on a male actor (Bill Kottkamp, also playing a teenage boy) on a lit-up projector screen. If that sounds complicated and somewhat upsetting, well, it was — and meant to be — though there were also touches of humor throughout the scene. This blend is classic Pen15, which the scene in question hailed from — the penultimate episode of Pen15’s final season, to be exact.
The screening audience was occasionally laughing, but it was a laughter born of discomfort — cringe-laughter. (I was also gagging and gripping the arm of the friend sitting next to me; at one point, I was convinced I was going to puke into my mask, which would’ve been a pandemic first for me. Thankfully, I did not.) The scene convincingly puts the viewer in Maya Ishii-Peters’ shoes, and it’s a weird and awkward place to be, because Maya is experiencing a traumatic first. She’s crossing an invisible teenagedom line — her first oral sex, and she’s not all that into or prepared for it. Whether or not the viewer’s own first oral sex experience was as fraught or uncomfortable, one of Pen15’s magic tricks is that it can immediately catapult you back to that certain place and time known as puberty, that oft-confusing time period wherein bodies and social dynamics are changing faster than any one person can keep up with (yeah, even the popular kids who seem like they’ve got it all figured out…I think?). The discomfort and pain of Maya’s first oral sex experience was palpable both onscreen and within the screening theater.
After the recipient (ugh, Derrick) finishes, a teary-eyed Maya, mouth full of semen, rushes to the bathroom to wash out her mouth and collect herself. As she processes what’s just gone down — she’s given her first blowjob but still hasn’t had her first kiss (a first she was prepared for and even expecting) — she examines herself in the mirror above the sink. She takes deep breaths and tries to keep herself from crying, before offering her reflection a sad little half twitch of the mouth that seems to be an attempted smile and turning to leave the bathroom. Watching from the distance of 20 years past puberty myself, my heart broke for Maya, and something sparked in my brain: I’d seen this scene, or something very similar, before.
In an early scene in Heathers, Heather Chandler is coerced into performing a blowjob at a college party. Afterwards, she washes her mouth out in the bathroom and stares at her reflection in the mirror above the sink, just as Maya does in Pen15. It’s a shorter scene than Pen15’s, yet in that one shot of Heather staring hard at her reflection — measured and controlled at first, then spitting a mouthful of water at herself in the mirror — the audience is allowed to see within her for one split second. Though what we’re seeing isn’t necessarily clear-cut (does she hate herself as much as everyone else does? Is she ashamed of “letting” herself be pressured into oral sex? Is her anger directed at her own vulnerability in both this moment and the one before it, at the Remington guy, or at a society that lets frat guys get away with treating high school girls as on-demand blowjob-givers?), the scene is still striking for the rare glimpse it allows into Heather’s interiority. The viewer isn’t placed into Heather’s direct POV in the preceding scene like they are during Maya’s, but we’re allowed in her gaze and head for a second as she looks in the mirror. For those of us who weren’t mean Queen Bees in high school, it might be Heather’s most sadly relatable moment as a character — a quiet moment where she’s turned her judgment inward, rather than inflicting it on those who fear her at school.
In contrast, over the course of Pen15’s three seasons, there’s no shortage of glimpses into Maya Ishii-Peters’ head and heart. Maya’s routinely incapable of concealing her inner feelings very well, unlike Heather, who rules Westerberg High School with a red scrunchied fist of bitchery and a cool and cruel façade. The camera often captures those vulnerable emotions as they play across Erskine’s face.
Even in these similar scenes, there are differences that show the characters’ different personalities and circumstances: Maya repeats “ew, ew, ew, ew, ew” under her breath as she washes her mouth, and she has her best friend Anna Kone (played by Pen15’s other co-creator and showrunner, Anna Konkle) there with her to confusingly debrief and snap into action to get them home. Maya mostly seems sad and confused — she knows something big has just happened, and she and Anna briefly seem to think she should be happy about it, though she clearly doesn’t feel happy. Heather is silent and alone (and you can infer from other character details that this isn’t her first blowjob experience), illustrating that although, as she says, she’s “worshiped at Westerberg,” she’s all alone during this moment of vulnerability. Her primary emotion in the scene seems to be anger, with perhaps a tinge of disgust. Is part of her anger in the moment due to the very fact that she’s alone in it? Or does she only feel comfortable letting her guard down and showing that emotion because she’s alone? Either way, she needs that moment in the mirror to process and reflect, just like Maya does, though rather than cry, she responds in the one way we see Heather respond to everything: lashing out in rage, first at her reflection, then later at Veronica (Winona Ryder).
It’s the contrast, and Maya and Heather’s overall differences in character, that make the similarity of their post-blowjob scenes so interesting. That two different characters, one as hard-shelled and supposedly always-in-control as the older Heather, and one as outwardly young, vulnerable, and naïve as Maya, who operate in totally different ways in the world, would react so similarly to a similar situation suggests a universality in their experience. A universality to both the preceding scene’s action itself (which brings up questions of consent and power and sex and gender dynamics and how they all routinely interact in our world) and the reaction — the need to (literally) reflect, to process, in the aftermath.
These scenes, crafted 30+ years apart in such different projects that are set just over 10 years apart, tells us broadly that social-sexual dynamics between teens (depressingly) hadn’t changed much from 1989 to 2000. They also serve as an example of how film/TV can use one single shot to deepen characters, give their inner-workings voice without using dialogue, and dig into harsh social realities to reflect our world back at us (as the characters reflect, as well). As you watch both Maya and Heather take their reflections in and react to what they’ve just been through in the mirror, you feel like you know them both a bit more. And you’re reminded of how shitty the world can sometimes be, too. Art mirrors life, after all.
