Going Back to Ghost World

I liked her so much better when she was an alcoholic crack addict. She gets in one car wreck and all of a sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everyone loves her.
Enid Coleslaw, Ghost World

Before the Swiftian female anti-hero became cool, there was Enid Coleslaw. It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since the release of the coming-of-age classic Ghost World, based on the comics and graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. Enid (Thora Birch) drifts aimlessly after graduating high school, wryly observing the adult world with acerbic wit. She’s under pressure to get a job and conform to the confusingly hypocritical standards of the capitalist society she finds herself in. While her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) is able to accept the tedium of a job at The Coffee Experience (i.e. Starbucks), Enid kicks against upselling soda sizes at the local movie theatre.

Ghost World batwoman — ‘*I’m taking a remedial high school art class for fuck-ups and retards.*‘

Enid’s eccentricities offer a refreshing female perspective rarely seen in film – but unfortunately we know that those who don’t conform are unlikely to survive let alone succeed. When Enid meets an unlikely older love interest Seymour, a ‘clueless dork’ who collects rare blues records and ‘can’t relate to 99 percent of humanity’, she sees her future, and the type of person she is likely to become.

Ghost World Seymour — ‘*Well maybe I don’t want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests.*‘

Not just another teen movie, Ghost World takes a serious look at the search for identity against the homogenization of American culture – local shops being replaced by chain stores and the post modern co-opting of the past in 50s style diners. One such diner, ironically called Wowsville, features 50s decor while blaring jarringly current pop music. In another scene, Enid tries on a 70s punk look and is mocked mercilessly at the local comic store (Zine O Phobia). Just as Enid is trying to find an identity that fits, Western culture was collapsing in on itself – only harking back to former times that knew what they were about. Seymour disappears even further back, immersing himself in the ‘authentic’ blues of the 1920s and 30s. As much as he sneers at white bands appropriating blues music, as a white man working in corporate at a company with a history of racist marketing, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Ghost World wowsville — ‘*This is the ultimate. It’s, like, the Taj Mahal of fake 50s diners*‘

Ghost World bench — ‘*I hate to tell you this, but they cancelled this bus line two years ago. There are no more buses on this street.*‘

So what can this confused, inauthentic, hypocritical world offer Enid? Can she ever get past her cynicism and truly connect with anyone? At the end (spoiler alert), in an Edward Hopper style shot, we see Enid exit Ghost World on the same bus she claimed didn’t exist earlier in the film. When GW was released, fans debated what this meant for her future. Either she was leaving town to start a new life as she’d dreamed about, or much more darkly, some people saw this as Enid leaving life behind altogether. Another theory is that Enid died in the ‘car wreck’ mentioned in the beginning at the graduation party, and the events of the film are a sort of purgatory. Whichever theory you subscribe to, in a way, all of the characters inhabiting Ghost World are in some sort of limbo. At least Enid realises the absurdity of it all.