Ghost World (2001)

directed by Terry Zwigoff

Ariana Martinez & Kayla McCall

PART ONE: GHOST WORLD AND ME

In the years since I graduated high school, I have outgrown most of the clothes I wore back then. My body has shifted its weight into new places, my age stretching against my limbs (though never my legs; I have remained a stubborn 5’0”). As my sartorial belongings have experimented, matured, and collected anew in my closet, it’s comforting to slip on a blue T-shirt decorated with an orange dinosaur and aggressive text reading “Raptor” and have it fit the way it needs to. But, it is not so comforting to watch the character of Enid in Ghost World—the reason I bought the shirt in the first place—and realize she does not fit within me the way she once did.

“Yeah. We graduated high school. How totally amazing.” These words decorated my high school graduation cap, googly eyes glued atop Thora Birch’s disinterested gaze. A tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of a milestone that felt more like a mourning of a time I would never get back. When I graduated from college in December with a degree in film studies, it only felt right to relish in a Criterion sale with the DVD of Ghost World. It was an opportunity to revisit a film that at one point meant so much to my 17-year-old self, recommended by my high school film teacher Ms. E. A cycle come full circle. And yet, like a waistband that hugs too tight, there was an awkwardness watching the film that was not always there, tugging at my side, unable to be ignored and requiring an unbuttoning, a release. Like another famous fictional white woman struggling with cynicism, I felt like Carrie Bradshaw typing away at her laptop because I couldn’t help but wonder: Do I find Enid less sympathetic now that I’m older?

Ghost World was released the year I was born, two months after me. The film, like most coming-of-age films it resembles, captured the ennui of the misfit, the unamused. Enid was a character existing out of time and space, unable to assimilate into the adult world everyone around her effortlessly flocked to. Her nostalgia, contempt, and chronic hater-attitude to everyone around her read as a chain link armor through which I could identify my senior year existentialism. A little less than a year after graduating, COVID-19 arrived and overshadowed everybody’s lifestyle. Some people baked bread. Others took up gardening. I dove headfirst into making film videos on YouTube. One of my earliest was me dying my hair green while analyzing Ghost World. That video has, oddly enough, remained of interest to new viewers and has been the video to receive comments most consistently, often from people saying how much they love Enid.

In the film, Enid’s best—and really only—friend is Rebecca, who exists attached to Enid’s sardonic hip. That is, until she doesn’t. When Rebecca says they should probably spend some money to ensure they present a mature and adult image to people they hope to rent an apartment from, Enid dyes her hair green. It’s a hilarious fuck-you, except there is nobody around who actually deserves this identity outcry, and the only one left to bear the brunt of this misplaced frustration is Rebecca. Despite her excited attempt at “an original 1977 punk rock look,” Enid’s esteem is quickly flattened by the anti-semitic Zineophobia Books and Magazines store owner. He shits on her fun, calls her a poseur, and Enid can’t even get a word in to defend herself until the very end, where she hilariously says, “Everyone is too stupid.” Enid storms out, Rebecca in tow. While once I saw myself in this pissed-off moldy bread-head, the sadness of my collegiate farewell and move back home is no longer soothed by an 18 year old who harbors a scorn with no real idea of what to do with it or who to wield it against. Ghost World, memorable with its obscure representation of Enid’s fate on a mystical bus to nowhere, upon rewatch, fell flat into my lap. Sometimes, ambiguity is no longer a comfort but an ignorance that wears thin.

Following the film’s release, cultural critic Henry A. Giroux wrote Teen Girls' Resistance and the Disappearing Social in Ghost World in response to the film’s success. In it, he criticizes how depoliticized the film and its main characters are: “Irony, pathos, rebellion, and gritty dialogue may help to capture the spirit of teenage girls who ‘talk back,’ but such depictions remain utterly privatized and ineffectual unless they are situated within broader social, economic, and political forces that provide an opportunity to understand the crisis of youth as part of a broader crisis of labor, political agency, democracy, and the future itself.” Girls with a sneering bark and no bite don’t help a world swimming in dogshit; they just add noise. Ghost World carries a sentiment I argue is modernly echoed in Lady Bird, in which the titular Christine laments living in a year where the only exciting thing is that 2002 is a palindrome, despite the fact that the country was rising in racial tensions and preparing to ‘retaliate’ against Iraq. For Enid and Christine, the most significant burden they have to carry bears no respect for the greater political context of their world but instead how they struggle to function as a person within the cultural world. While this is not a profoundly unimportant or unrealistic characterization, my high school self deeply identified and was comforted by these imperfect women undergoing an identity crisis. But, with each passing year in which I become older and audiences become less white-centric, these films become more outdated and out of touch with a generation of people who cannot relate to what can ultimately be boiled down to the white coming-of-age experience. Take, for example, my dearest friend and editor Kayla McCall, who doesn’t like Ghost World.

PART TWO: GHOST WORLD AND KAYLA

I searched “Ghost World” in the archive of messages that span my friendship with Ariana and the accompanying group chats we share and found next to nothing. I realized this was by design—my only introduction to this movie was Ariana’s love for it, so when I finally watched it and hated it, I kept my feelings to myself. That is until now.

As a self-professed cynic, Ghost World had the potential to be exactly what I needed to feel seen: two awkward teenage girls using their macabre sense of humor to navigate coming of age in a world they don’t want to be a part of. In actuality, it alienated me, reminding me that even those with contempt for society’s shortcomings are still not above earnest displays of racism. Consuming media as a Black woman is difficult, but I’ve learned that my enjoyment of media with racial micro (or macro in this case) aggressions is directly correlated to how it serves the story. In Ghost World, I am not convinced that Enid’s casual racism is meant to sully her character in the eyes of the viewer, especially considering the context of its 2001 release date.

Despite Enid’s sullen persona, as our main protagonist, it’s clear the audience is meant to relate to and identify with her ideals—throwing a racist jab or two and baking it into the turning point of the plot never feels like a deal breaker. When Enid is at Seymour’s house, she finds an antique advertisement for Coon Chicken Inn depicting a caricature of a Black railway porter with the name of the restaurant written in his teeth between big red lips. He explains that he collected this memorabilia from his job, now called Cook’s Chicken, because it intrigued him. Enid turns this piece into her art class, where it’s heralded by her teacher and submitted to an art show, putting her in the running for a scholarship to art school. When her piece is rightfully rejected at the exhibition she didn’t attend, her teacher informs her gently that she was forced to fail her, revoking her high school graduate status and thus making her ineligible for art school. However, Enid is never confronted with the moral implications of being a white girl using minstrelsy as art. Instead, she uses this event to feel even more ostracized and misunderstood without reflection. The film’s flippant treatment of racism and lack of responsibility for the weight of its presence left me feeling like it doesn’t know much more than Enid.

My true problem with Ghost World is with the myopathy that comes with viewing coming-of-age stories through the lens of white women whose lack of a conscience is passed off as naivete. Enid and Rebecca stalk and harass strangers and classmates simply because they have nothing better to do. The nonchalance of their cruelty is chilling, and yet, it’s another flaw we have to assume will be corrected with age, akin to liking bad music and ironic T-shirts. Sensationalizing bad habits and worse behavior is a common trend on “girl failure” TikTok, but existed first as a subset within the coming-of-age genre. These films center white female characters who are lost and spiral at the thought of growing up, a privilege not enjoyed by most people of color. Reveling in mediocrity is indicative of social and financial stability granted solely to those who inherit upper middle class status and heralding these values in a space that promotes ubiquity is troubling. All of these movies have an “it’s just a phase” approach to the characters’ actions that forces the viewer to assume they will grow out of it someday. I don’t think it’s coincidental that these movies are popular within a cultural landscape that’s notoriously guilty of diffusing accountability.

Early into my teenage angst, my late father told me that “being negative all the time is a smart way to be dumb.” Enter Enid and Rebecca. The duo carries out the final summer of their adolescence proudly sporting their ignorance on their sleeves, oblivious to the looming consequences of their pessimism. In this way, Ghost World’s characters depart from the classic cynicism trope where the archetypes are normally self-aware misanthropes whose intelligence distinguishes them from their unassuming peers. The most notable (and my favorite) cynics, Daria Morgendorffer and her best friend Jane Lane, from MTV’s Daria, are everything their Ghost World counterparts should be: they’re witty and skeptical but still have enough emotional depth to recognize their faults. Being 17 never meant that Daria and Jane couldn’t back up their disdain for their classmates and in turn, the audience is able to justify and relate to their intellectual elitism. On the other hand, Enid and Rebecca’s sense of superiority is meritless—they aren’t well-read, they have never left their small homogenous town, and they have no real goals for the future.

By the end of Ghost World, I couldn’t shake the bitter taste in my mouth. I’m three years and one degree older than I was when I watched it for the first time, but rewatching it did not cure my distaste for the film. Both times, I interpreted the final scene where Enid gets dressed up to take an out-of-service bus to nowhere as a metaphor for suicide. And still, I wasn’t moved. How could I feel something for this person who was given all the tools they needed to succeed and just didn’t? Maybe that’s my own cynicism getting in the way of all the Shrek-like onion layers of satire and hardship of what it means to be young and white and lost in a town where everyone else is also white but not-so-young and seems to fit in just fine. Maybe I’ll never understand, and I accept that. After all, “you don’t ever criticize the feature.”

PART THREE: SO NOW WHAT?

Before my latest rewatch, I gasped at the idea that Kayla didn’t like Ghost World. But, after we spoke more about our own interpretations of the film, we realized it had much more to do with our perspective of the world rather than our opinion of a film. My teenage perspective more closely resembled Enid's than Kayla’s did. I grew up in a middle-class immigrant family: a Cuban father who deeply identified with the American Dream and an Ecuadorian mother who could be overbearing but genuinely wanted me to be my best self. I am privileged enough not to feel jaded by these white characters. Sure, I didn’t get along with my mom all the time. Sure, the pressures of a Christian household have been omnipresent as my younger brother and I navigate mental health struggles and queerness. But fundamentally, I resonated with the teenagers who did not know how to be an adult, who retained a cynicism or a meanness and hoped a great escape (from a foundation others would kill to have) would fix it all. I knew Lady Bird and Enid were not likable, but their lack of likeability led me toward fascination rather than aversion. Because I was of their same age and sensibilities, it was easier to be comforted by their suburban struggles than it was to criticize them.

In an article for Sight and Sound, director and co-writer Terry Zwioff is quoted about his attitudes toward the genre: “I had to see a lot of teen movies when we were casting... I can’t think of a single one I liked. They all seemed so false.” It’s not incorrect to assert that Ghost World retains a level of specialty, a unique and refreshing entry into a genre that was deeply one-note at the time of its release. Ghost World filled a gap for adolescents and adults alike who couldn’t engage with the effortlessly funny and charming cool kids. Yet it has become clear that this gap was more likely to aid those of a certain demographic.

I absolutely agree with criticizing the film’s racist inclination to use Black people as a plot point. But I also think the pivotal scene Kayla describes regarding Enid and the controversial art piece serves a purpose relevant to the film, specifically to satirize the art world and those who wish to ascribe to it. Enid barely has the language or understanding to describe why she feels the work should be displayed; she stutters and trails off, copying the phony artistic rhetoric previously uttered and admired by another white female student and the white female teacher. Yet, the one moment in which Enid attempts to assimilate to an adult world, that of art and creativity, by co-opting politically correct narratives through what she thinks is shedding a light on hidden history, she is not rewarded. The film foregrounds her lack of passion, as she is hours late to the exhibition, more interested in impressing Seymour with this surprise invitation, and then never attends. Kayla is right to assert that Enid no longer being eligible for art school is a weak punishment meant to substitute actual accountability. But, Ghost World’s decision to finally push Enid to her breaking point through something as vulnerable as her interest in art functions as a reminder that even art is not a solid protection from the world’s realism, and this choice is fascinating and effective to a degree. It showcases the film’s refusal to fully and poetically assuage the pain and confusion of its main character with a fairy-tale escape. It’s through this choice that the film touches on white people’s interest in using controversy to “start” a conversation but their inability to engage properly or thoughtfully once this conversation arises. How ironic is it that the same criticisms have been wielded against Ghost World itself?

It’s never easy to realize a film you once loved and held so dearly no longer consoles you how it used to. Enid once resonated as a symbol of my fears of aging, leaving high school behind, and not knowing where to begin as an adult. And though I can’t say I identify with Enid anymore, she still serves as a reminder I can still cherish. Enid reminds me that I am growing, changing, and maturing in my ideals, not only of who I should and shouldn’t be but also of what films I love should and shouldn’t do. When I told Kayla it made me sad to leave Ghost World with a different feeling than before, she disagreed and said, “I think that’s the beauty of growing up.” It’s unrealistic to expect the people in my life to like every movie I like, but it’s also unfair to hold every version of my aging self to the same standard. Sometimes, getting on a bus means stripping away a frayed past, but it only carries substance if that past is actually reckoned with.

Ariana Martinez is a freelance film critic, video essayist, and amateur programmer. Their work often gravitates toward explorations of the 1980s, gender, and sexuality in cinema. Ariana’s independent work can be found under Awake in the A.M. on YouTube and Substack, and their programming name is Sodapop Screeners.

Kayla McCall is a financial auditor by day and a freelance editor and writer by night. She is driven by her love for fashion, film, and literature. Her writing and editorial style combine sharp wit and a love for grammar—complete with frequent but necessary em dashes. As a frequent collaborator with Ariana Martinez, most of her work exists behind the scenes: drawing parallels and refining ideas during the writing process. Kayla plans to launch About A Girl, an anecdotal lifestyle newsletter through Substack.