Teen Sexuality and Cinema: the Ghost World Adaptation
Introduction and Background InformationThe 2001 feature film Ghost World is one of only a few comic book-to-film adaptations that centers on a female protagonist, and it contains one of the first comic-to-film protagonists, male or female, to be a non-action character-in other words, the protagonist is not a super hero. Several changes were made in the translation of this protagonist, Enid Coleslaw, and her best friend, Rebecca Doppelmeyer, from the pages of Daniel Clowes's comic-cum-graphic novel to the Terry Zwigoff-directed film. A high number of these changes involve the alteration (and, in many cases, extraction) of narratives involving female sexuality (specifically young-adult female sexuality, sinceEnid and Rebecca are 18-year-olds), relationships, and desire. The revisions made to the Ghost World narrative are reminiscent of revisions the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has requested-unfairly, many feminists would argue-of various female-focused films, such as But I'm A Cheerleader (1999) and Coming Soon (1999). These two movies contain more sexual subject matter than either version of Ghost World, but Clowes's characters address issues common to these films (lesbianism, masturbation, the female libid
The scene is not gratuitous in the comic, yet in the film, Becky's comment about masturbation is made in the coffee shop, a public place, and Enid makes no mention of Mr. Underground comic artists are often considered auteurs because, akin to how Charlie Chaplin would write, direct, compose music for, and perform in all of his films, underground comic artists usually write, draw, and ink their work with few to no middle-men touching the art between conceptualization and publication (Ault). Enid at that particular moment in the comic narrative, feels as though she lost her best friend, seeks comfort in the arms of Josh, and proceeds to stop the moment because it doesn't feel right to her-a far more realistic scenario than the Enid/Seymour tryst of the film. Enid starts and stops her fantasy several times: "Wait, I'm taking a shower. The filmmakers eventually received the backing of MGM's United Artists division, which handles "independent" art-house films. '" (Chocano, 2000) "The things that happened [when shopping the film] were all the things you would think of. Clowes compared the experience of working with Zwigoff to "what it must have been like to work with hands-on, visionary directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick" (Chocano). " (Taubin) The film contains no nudity or violence, but Burson was told by her MPAA contact that since the MPAA reviews films for parents and because parents have different standards for their daughters than they do for their sons, the MPAA is forced to fall in line and judge movies on that double-standard. ) Both texts of Ghost World function well and were well received by critics and audiences alike.
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