Ghost World
Oct. 15th, 2017 06:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI watched Ghost World because it was on a list of good movies about female friendship, and YOU GUYS, the movie is barely about female friendship at all and also that friendship, after being narratively sidelined, ends up going kersplat. And not in an interesting way! Enid starts relentlessly pestering a middle-aged man and simply loses interest in her former best friend Rebecca, who, incidentally, has been working her ass off at a coffeeshop trying to make enough money so that Enid and Rebecca can fulfill their dream of getting an apartment together now that they’ve finally graduated high school.
Except it is no longer Enid’s dream. Enid is now obsessed with Seymour (her middle-aged man) and the classic blues records that he collects.
The movie focuses on Enid. I have no idea why the movie thinks I will be more interested in the faithless Enid than the loyal Rebecca, who deserved better, as indeed do most of the people with whom Enid comes in contact, including Seymour.
WHY? WHY? WHY WAS THIS MOVIE ON A LIST OF MOVIES ABOUT FEMALE FRIENDSHIP?
Well, because there aren’t many movies about female friendship and so we are forced to subsist on crumbs, BUT STILL, we ought to have some standards about this.
Clearly finding this movie on this list gave me false hopes. I think that made me more irritated than I would have been otherwise, although I was probably never going to enjoy this movie, even though it is well-made and interesting - both as a character study of Enid (Rebecca never gets fleshed out as much) and a snapshot of a particular time and way of thinking. It really captures that cynical, scofflaw, we-don’t-care-and-the-whole-world’s-a-joke viewpoint that was popular in the late nineties - and I hated that even in the late nineties so of course I was never going to warm to the movie.
It’s this viewpoint that makes Enid & Rebecca think it’d be a fun prankto answer a lonely-hearts ad just so they can sit in the corner booth at a diner and watch the guy wait for a date who never shows. This is how Enid first comes into contact with Seymour. (He doesn’t know she’s the one who pranked him, mind.) She follows him to his house afterward, out of a weird combination of morbid curiosity and remorse, and buys a record from him at a garage sale. Then she becomes obsessed with the blues and with him and begins to browbeat him into spending time with him.
This may be the only movie I’ve ever watched where I felt genuinely sorry for the older man in a May-December romance. Seymour’s clearly so uncomfortable, but unable to say no (because nothing less than brutally shunning her would make her stop) and so lonely that he doesn’t quite want to get rid of her even though she does things like drag him to a sex shop (where she hoots, “Look at all these losers!” - meaning the men in the shop, and she’s speaking loudly enough that some of them definitely hear her - while Seymour looks like he’d like to sink into the magma core of the earth) and badger him into buying her a latex Batman mask there even after he tries strenuously to beg off. He doesn’t have cash! He really doesn’t want this showing up on his credit card records! Jesus, Enid, didn’t anyone ever tell you no means no?
Also, Enid, how about getting a job and buying your own goddamn Batman mask? She briefly lands a job at a movie theater and gets fired after less than a day because she’s rude to all the customers. Despite this, she has the audacity to get annoyed at Rebecca (who, let’s remember, has been working all summer so they can get an apartment together!) when Rebecca complains about the “creeps and losers and weirdos” who come to her coffeeshop. “But those are our people,” says Enid, who clearly feels that Rebecca is selling out by actually trying to make their dreams come true.
YOU FAILED AT CASHIERING AFTER ONE DAY, ENID. YOU HAVE NO ROOM TO BE JUDGMENTAL. Not least because she’s clearly judging her customers for being the wrong kind of losers and weirdos for wanting extra fake butter on their popcorn or going to see a movie Enid doesn’t like.
I don’t think the movie expects us to agree with Enid’s choices or judgments 100%, but I also think it expected me to like her enough to feel sympathetic as she makes yet another terrible choice that will make everyone around her suffer and her own life worse, and I just didn’t. Honestly, Rebecca really dodged a bullet losing that girl as a roommate.
Except it is no longer Enid’s dream. Enid is now obsessed with Seymour (her middle-aged man) and the classic blues records that he collects.
The movie focuses on Enid. I have no idea why the movie thinks I will be more interested in the faithless Enid than the loyal Rebecca, who deserved better, as indeed do most of the people with whom Enid comes in contact, including Seymour.
WHY? WHY? WHY WAS THIS MOVIE ON A LIST OF MOVIES ABOUT FEMALE FRIENDSHIP?
Well, because there aren’t many movies about female friendship and so we are forced to subsist on crumbs, BUT STILL, we ought to have some standards about this.
Clearly finding this movie on this list gave me false hopes. I think that made me more irritated than I would have been otherwise, although I was probably never going to enjoy this movie, even though it is well-made and interesting - both as a character study of Enid (Rebecca never gets fleshed out as much) and a snapshot of a particular time and way of thinking. It really captures that cynical, scofflaw, we-don’t-care-and-the-whole-world’s-a-joke viewpoint that was popular in the late nineties - and I hated that even in the late nineties so of course I was never going to warm to the movie.
It’s this viewpoint that makes Enid & Rebecca think it’d be a fun prankto answer a lonely-hearts ad just so they can sit in the corner booth at a diner and watch the guy wait for a date who never shows. This is how Enid first comes into contact with Seymour. (He doesn’t know she’s the one who pranked him, mind.) She follows him to his house afterward, out of a weird combination of morbid curiosity and remorse, and buys a record from him at a garage sale. Then she becomes obsessed with the blues and with him and begins to browbeat him into spending time with him.
This may be the only movie I’ve ever watched where I felt genuinely sorry for the older man in a May-December romance. Seymour’s clearly so uncomfortable, but unable to say no (because nothing less than brutally shunning her would make her stop) and so lonely that he doesn’t quite want to get rid of her even though she does things like drag him to a sex shop (where she hoots, “Look at all these losers!” - meaning the men in the shop, and she’s speaking loudly enough that some of them definitely hear her - while Seymour looks like he’d like to sink into the magma core of the earth) and badger him into buying her a latex Batman mask there even after he tries strenuously to beg off. He doesn’t have cash! He really doesn’t want this showing up on his credit card records! Jesus, Enid, didn’t anyone ever tell you no means no?
Also, Enid, how about getting a job and buying your own goddamn Batman mask? She briefly lands a job at a movie theater and gets fired after less than a day because she’s rude to all the customers. Despite this, she has the audacity to get annoyed at Rebecca (who, let’s remember, has been working all summer so they can get an apartment together!) when Rebecca complains about the “creeps and losers and weirdos” who come to her coffeeshop. “But those are our people,” says Enid, who clearly feels that Rebecca is selling out by actually trying to make their dreams come true.
YOU FAILED AT CASHIERING AFTER ONE DAY, ENID. YOU HAVE NO ROOM TO BE JUDGMENTAL. Not least because she’s clearly judging her customers for being the wrong kind of losers and weirdos for wanting extra fake butter on their popcorn or going to see a movie Enid doesn’t like.
I don’t think the movie expects us to agree with Enid’s choices or judgments 100%, but I also think it expected me to like her enough to feel sympathetic as she makes yet another terrible choice that will make everyone around her suffer and her own life worse, and I just didn’t. Honestly, Rebecca really dodged a bullet losing that girl as a roommate.
