(Note: I originally wrote this essay for my Film Adaptation course in college.)
Many
people have experienced life-altering changes, and one change that we must all
undertake is adolescence. An unavoidable, multi-pronged fork in the road,
adolescence is never an easy transition for anyone; the onset of adulthood is
relentless in its mission to transfer us from dependence to the personal
responsibility of independence. The uncanny tug-of-war between the familiar and
the unknown creates an unlikely mixture of confusion, excitement, fear, and
anticipation – or lack thereof – for what the future holds. Some of us are able
to overcome this obstacle and grow into some degree of personal equilibrium;
others, however, become stuck in limbo, a psychological purgatory between the
child and adult forms, or some other state of arrested development. Being
caught in this limbo is paradoxically isolating for people. There are so many
who experience this adolescent loneliness, yet despite the community of misery,
there is no comfort.
The characters
in Terry Zwigoff’s film Ghost World (2001) and its source material, a
graphic novel by Daniel Clowes are caught in this quagmire. Clowes also wrote
the screenplay for the film, so it is interesting to see how the cinematic and
literary versions enter into a dialogue. There are similarities and differences,
but what is truly important is the overall message that the two works are
trying to convey. The film contains many of the scenes that exist in the
graphic novel, but as A.O. Scott mentions in his review, “Mr. Zwigoff and Mr.
Clowes … have added new, sharper story lines and fashioned a tighter narrative
framework. Mr. Zwigoff’s unhurried editing and his subtle sense of composition
approximates Mr. Clowes’s clean, quiet, black-and-white drawings without
seeming arch or arty” (2). The film’s story may be “sharper” and “tighter” but
it is on an overall equal standing with the book, and it is these subtle
differences that give the works their identities; these variances allow us to
participate in the intertextual conversation.
Probably
the most visually interesting example of intertext occurs between the film’s
frantic yet subdued opening sequence and the book’s shrewdly minimalist opening
panel. The panel features a wide nighttime shot of protagonist Enid’s apartment
complex, with the words “Ghost World” painted in an off-kilter style on an
artificially illuminated garage door. As a matter of fact, the only other
sources of light in the panel come from the waxing moon and a single window in
the top left, where a tiny Enid is staring out. This idea of people framed
within windows, a favored motif in the book, is elaborated upon in the film’s
opening sequence. After the initial shots of the Indian dance show, where the
title floats in front of the dancers like its namesake specter, Zwigoff offers
an establishing shot similar to the one in the panel. We are shown an apartment
building, similarly shaded with the night-blue of the panel, and a couple of
illuminated windows rather than just one. Interestingly, the light emanating
from inside the windows is the flickering blue of television screens, as well
as the same blue that pervades the entire graphic novel. With the energetic
pulse of the dance music, the camera dollies slowly toward the windows; instead
of Enid, we are given a medium shot of an old woman staring out, an ashy
cigarette clenched between her fingers. The camera moves on to other windows,
showing a long shot of a bored mullet-headed man at a table, then on to an
unoccupied room with a lone, half-finished plate dinner atop a small card table
as well as an exercise bike. Following is a man and woman staring blankly at a
television while their son bangs a baseball bat up and down onto a drum,
completely out time with the dance beat. Finally, we see Enid in the next
window, garbed in a vivid red gown, wildly dancing with “unfashionable
enthusiasm” (Edelstein 1) along to the dance music belting out from her TV.
It is
interesting that Zwigoff chose to show Enid last, contrary to the panel.
Contrary to Stam’s theory on adaptation, Zwigoff has extracted the “kernel of
meaning” (4), the comic’s spirit, and transplanted it into the film’s opening
sequence. Indeed, the juxtaposition of wild Indian dance music and the parade
of tenants windowed in their lethargic misery reflects the bleak minimalism of
the comic panel. The pan has Enid isolated as a tiny figure, a miniscule beacon
of life amidst a landscape of cold, a testament to the shared theme of
loneliness and isolation. Further, the next few panels show Enid staring out
the window and Becky lazily watching a TV show; the film depicts these same
elements in various ways. The staring woman, the bored man, the family watching
TV are all cinematic extensions of these few panels, all of which give the
impression of isolation and stagnation. The unused exercise bike in the empty
dining room is especially symbolic of the theme of laziness. The bike is also
significant to the idea of change; people use exercise as a means for
transforming their bodies, and the bike’s stagnation is relative to the
half-sincere attempt by many to not only exercise, but it is a refusal of
change. The little boy hitting the drum, however, is contrary to the rest of
the sequence, and like Enid’s protesting of the magazine in the panels, the boy
represents everything from repression, frustration, and the rebellious nature
of change itself.
Enid’s eccentric
dancing, as well as her being the last windowed person we see, conveys the idea
that she is still unbridled by the miseries that her fellow tenants now suffer;
however, by being shown reveling in her own uniqueness, Enid is also alone. The
passionate red color of her nightgown and the vibrancy of her room support this
idea because everything about the other tenants’ and their rooms are drab,
dull, and ultimately artificial looking. In the panels, Enid’s “dancing” is less
physical and more verbal, as she berates one of Becky’s magazines – and Becky
herself- with contemptuous zeal: “I can’t believe you bought this!” (Clowes 9).
Although Becky is her best friend, Enid’s disdain for mediocrity and superficiality
isolates her from Becky as well as the tenants. Enid’s dancing, whether in the
literal or figurative sense, is what effectively isolates her as well as
elevates her beyond the people around her.
The openings of
both versions of Ghost World are at once glaringly effective and
deviously subtle; yet despite their structural differences, they remain
aesthetically true to the spirit of Daniel Clowes’s defiantly eccentric
protagonist and everything that she stands for. As such, Ghost World
itself is a call to arms against the mundane, the paradoxical loneliness of
fitting in with the status quo. The sequences themselves ask us to take a step
back and question our own emotional states: are we truly as unique as we think?
Enid found her answer, so we owe it to her to “dance” the night away every once
in a while.
------------------
Works Cited:
Works Cited:
Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World. Canada: Thompson
& Groth, 1998.
Edelstein, David. "Thora! Thora! Thora!" 20
July 2001. Slate.com.
<http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=112226>.
Ghost World.
Dir. Terry Zwigoff. Perf. Thora Birch. 2001.
Stam, Robert. "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of
Adaptation." Naremore, James. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
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