INDEPENDENT COMICS: Ghost World

Independent Comic Books in the Media

Ghost World is a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes. The story focuses on the lives of Enid and Rebecca, two teenage outsiders in an unnamed American city. The film was released with limited box-office success but has since gained a cult following.

PLOT:
Best friends Enid and Rebecca face summer after their high-school graduation. The girls are both social outcasts, but Rebecca is more popular with boys than Enid. Enid's diploma is awarded on the condition that she attend a remedial art class. Even though she is a talented artist, her art teacher, Roberta, believes art must be socially meaningful and dismisses Enid's sketches as "light entertainment."ZZZThe girls see a personal ad in which a lonely man named Seymour asks a woman he met recently to contact him. Enid makes a prank phone call to Seymour, pretending to be the woman and inviting him to meet her at a diner, and when he goes there, the two girls secretly watch and make fun of him. However, Enid begins to feel sorry for him, so a few days later they follow him to his apartment building, where they find him selling vintage records in a garage sale. Enid buys an old blues album from him, and they gradually become friends. She tries to find women for him to date. Meanwhile, Enid has been attending her art class. In order to please Roberta, Enid persuades Seymour to lend her an old poster depicting a grotesquely caricatured black man, which was once used as a promotional tool by Coon Chicken Inn, the fried-chicken franchise where Seymour holds a management position. In class, she presents the poster as a social comment about racism, and Roberta is so impressed with the concept that she later offers Enid a scholarship to an art college.ZZZAt this point, Enid's and Becky's lives seriously diverge. While Enid has been spending time with Seymour, Becky has found a job and become more interested in clothing, boys, and other material things. Enid finds a job so the girls can rent an apartment together, but she is fired after only one day. Finally, Becky gives up looking for an apartment with Enid after their personal differences erupt into an angry argument. Sometime after Enid loses her job, Seymour receives a phone call from Dana, the woman he had written to in the personal ad. Enid encourages him to develop a relationship with Dana, but becomes jealous when he begins avoiding Enid to spend time with Dana. At the end of the summer, Enid's and Seymour's lives fall apart. When Enid's poster is displayed in an art show, school officials find it so offensive they force Roberta to give her a failing grade; when Enid discovers she has lost her scholarship, she visits Seymour for solace, resulting in a drunken one-night stand. Seymour then breaks up with Dana before realizing he has no chance with Enid, and loses his job after the poster is displayed in a newspaper. Becky tells Seymour about Enid's phone prank, and he is hospitalized after attacking a boy who was with the girls at the time.ZZZFinally, Enid gives in to her childhood fantasy of running away from home. She sees an old man named Norman, who was waiting at an out-of-service bus stop for days on end, finally board a bus that arrives at his bench. The next day, while Seymour discusses the summer's events with his therapist, Enid goes to the bench and gets on the bus when it arrives.