Enid's escape car; image courtesy of swill-merchant.blogspot.com
Terry Zwigoff’s film adaptation of Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel Ghost World is one of my favorite movies. How can it not be, really? Smart, mouthy girl Enid (Thora Birch) and her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson, in an early turn) graduate high school. Aforementioned smart, mouthy girl tries to complete an annoying pending course requirement and discovers she’s really good at art in the process. Along the way, she collects some records, sorta falls for an older guy she knows is wrong for her, and realizes that she can’t stay in her safe suburban surroundings and leaves town alone for some unknown destination. Throughout, she slings caustic barbs at people to mask the pain of her family’s divorce, being the overlooked friend of the girl other guys want, and being psychologically unable to work at the local multiplex. She also slings caustic barbs because, frankly, you’re kind of boring and lame.
Enid, in other words, is at once who I felt I was at 18 and who I sometimes still hope to be. The closest I have to a real-life Enid is my friend Shelly, who I’m pretty sure was just like her when she was that age. I’m glad she got out of her hometown too.
Tonight, I thought I’d focus on the scene when Enid starts packing up her bedroom and leaving her father’s house (warning: spoiler alert ahead; if you haven’t seen it or need to watch it again, a source at Cinetic tells me that it will run on demand through December on cable).
The audience thinks Enid is moving in to an apartment with Rebecca, but, as we find out in the final scene, she’s actually moving away altogether. Though her relationship to music — particularly vinyl — is well-established, her packing music couldn’t be more darkly ironic.
A fairly popular sister act in the 1950s, Patience and Prudence McIntyre were best known for “Tonight You Belong to Me,” which has since been used in movies like Birth and, more famously, The Jerk. Enid plays the Patience and Prudence single as well. Pointedly, however, she plays its b-side, “Smile and a Ribbon.” A saccharine ode to what little girls are supposed to be made of and what gives them value, Enid seems to play the song as a reminder of exactly what she doesn’t want out of life and as an assertion to herself as to why she has to leave. I completely understand, and believe she finds a home for herself at the end of that solitary bus ride.
