I think this is one of the the few movies to depict a relationship that would probably get one member arrested and tried where it never struck me as creepy.
A high school girl and a forty something guy go into a sex shop and goof around with sex toys, but it never felt creepy.
They definitely kiss and I’m not sure whether it was implied they had sex or not, I need to watch it again.
I’m just curious since in the time the movie came out statutory rape has become an issue very sternly frowned on by society, I wonder if newer viewers find it creepy.
You’re right, Enid is 18 officially. I had remembered her and the friend discussing plans after they graduated about art school and assumed they were supposed to be 16-17.
Well legality out of the way, I still wonder whether other viewers found the relationship was creepy.
Yep. Summer after high school graduation.
The relationship comes about naturally through character development. It would play fine for a current audience. Some people are triggered to go “creepy” with any significant age difference relationship. If a storyteller does the job correctly then creepy relationships come off as creepy, healthy relationships come off as healthy, complex relationships come off as complex- all depending on the characters.
Pretty Little Liars has been one of the most popular T.V. series among teens in the past few years and it features a relationship between a high school girl and her English teacher- and it’s presented as one of the more healthy relationships on the show (not that that’s saying much). So, yeah, an audience these days would have no more trouble with Ghost World than audiences of 13 years ago.
According to the Wikipedia page on the graphic novel, Enid is eighteen years old. I haven’t read the book, and there are probably substantial differences between it and the movie, but given that in the movie Enid has finished high school except for one class, it seems likely that she’s the same age in the movie.
I didn’t find the sex scene between Seymour and Enid creepy. They were something of an odd couple due to the difference in their ages, but by the time their relationship got physical they had developed real affection for each other. They had something in common: they were both alienated misfits.
I never found it creepy at all, simply because Enid was the more aggressive of the two. Seymour barely felt right being her friend, but she was a free-spirit and fascinated by him. And when they do finally have sex its kind of a spur of the moment thing that Enid regrets, while Seymour goes and dumps his new girlfriend for her!
Interestingly Thora Birch ***was *actually underage (17) when she showed her gorgeous, ample hooters in American Beauty. They had her parents permission, though I’m not sure how that mattered legally, I think it just slipped under the radar. Birch has kind of a messed up family life, both her parents were golden-age (70s) porn stars, and her dad took an unseemly interest in the shooting of a sex scene she did for a later film. **That **was creepy!
I think the relationship in the movie is supposed to be slightly offbeat and maybe a little unsettling. Certainly Seymour is never quite comfortable with their friendship until Enid initiates sex with him.
And to me it comes off as Enid either making a poor decision or using intimacy with Seymour to try to deal with some of her own emotional troubles, resulting from her post-adolescent crisis and troubling events, such as her father’s reunion with Teri Garr and Scarlett Johansson’s hookup with Brad Renfro, as well as other factors that are estranging Enid and Rebecca’s close childhood friendship.
She really screws up Seymour’s life, that’s for sure, but it’s hard to blame either of them very strongly. They’re both screwed up and casting about for ways to fix themselves. They just don’t know what to do.
I think agree with you, except that I found Enid to be an unlikable character overall who treated most (?) of the other characters with cavalier disdain. A mean young woman who seemed oblivious to anyone else’s feelings. To me, Seymour was her biggest victim.
While watching the movie, I kept thinking Enid was setting up Seymour for humiliation. Like a Carrie treatment, so to speak. She’d get him all thinking that they ahd a real relationship, and then she’d publicly go “eww, why would YOU think a girl like ME would have you?”
The movie didn’t end up going there, but I was so worried it would that I never thought about the creepiness as it was happening. After the movie ended, I think it was just a story of two sad misfits, who for a brief time had a modicum of happiness.
I think it was a very trenchant examination if what it’s like to be at a specific stage of your life.
Yes, Enid was selfish and mean and unlikable, but it was the kind of selfishness, meanness, and unlikability that just happens to most people of a certain age.
At some point you might think to yourself that all teenagers are assholes, and to a large extent it’s true but it’s being driven by physically changes in their bodies and brains. Their brains are actually physically fucked up.
If you’re a normal healthy individual, then you grow out of that, but I have clear memories if being that age and just feeling so shorty and sad and angry and yearning … For what? Don’t know? It’s like a feeling of desperation that’s not clearly connected to anything.
I have never experienced clinical depression, but my guess is that it’s something like that. Your body and your brain are out of control and making you crazy. But it’s all just physical development and at some point it just ends.
Meanwhile, you act like an asshole towards the people who have loves you all your life—your parents, siblings, childhood friends. And you are driven to seek out these new connections and risks and just fuck with the world around you and leave everything a mess.
The portrayal really resonated with me and my wife felt the connection even more. It was really sort of brilliant.
