The Hermit Or The Queen?
Ghost World gives of the feel that you get from looking at an old faded picture. The quirkiness is partially due to being a movie designed for teens, generalizing here, but it seems teens think everything and everyone is weird or embarrassing. Despite, or maybe because of the target audience certain concepts are really favorably realized; peter pan syndrome; societal deconstruction; the show must go on.
The movie starts with two of the main characters Enid (Thora Birch), and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) graduating from high school. Enid whose name translates to purity, is the personification of innocence and therefore an outcast in society that strives to defile the feminine. Rebecca on the other hand hates that she is a Barbie, condemned to be successful member of society. A queen in the carefully designed world of man. Their clearly defined polar opposite roles illuminate the innate human paradox, a desire to both be accepted by peers as one of many, but also a desire to be seen as a unique individual.
Enid is the perfect unique individual and therefore free from the pressure of societies expectations, free from human development. That is to say, human development is a construct of society. A person living in a vacuum has no standard to measure against, and therefore no form of development could occur, there is only one single pure state of being. Enid remains a child forever. She innocently enters a sex shop to play dress up, follows around eccentric strangers, and literally fails art class twice because she cannot figuratively draw within the lines. Perhaps paradoxically Enid is a loner that is not truly alone. There are other free spirits, other eccentric outcasts such as Seymour (Steve Buscemi). Unfortunately, their failed relationship proves that some people must remain islands unto themselves. They must remain hermit’s to society.
Rebecca whose name means to “join, tie, or snare” is the antithesis to Enid. She is as boring a character I have ever seen on film; she speaks in a monotone, looks lost, never seems interested in anything, hates her job, and decorates her apartment with things from Ikea. If Enid is a soul, a unique being, Rebecca is just one of the many. This film is a comedy because it makes the irony found here so apparent. Society is a collection of individual humans living together with the aim towards uniformity. A goal that when reached eliminates itself.
Society dictates that we must stand by and let things continue as they are, “the show must go on”. An idea partially explained through the by the bystander effect; “the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation.”[1]A person will watch someone die because our programing comes from observing our neighbor, basically the first person to act or not act will inform the rest. Rebecca will remain part of the crowd, and Enid will never be an accepted member of the crowd.