White, Whiter, Ghost(World)

- Ghost World’s plot depends on playing out how white people negotiate and exploit race issues in our culture. -

"But unlike most movies by, about, and starring white people, Ghost World isn’t afraid to interrogate its characters on such matters. What it comes up with wouldn’t fit into any conception of wokeness, nor is it even necessarily enlightened at a remove, but it does expose a level of privilege and self-entitlement that is generally only assumed, at best, in almost all other media of its ilk. While it keeps its characters of color on its periphery, allowing them little more than a few seconds of screen time and, in rare cases, a sentence of dialogue, Ghost World’s plot nonetheless depends on playing out how white people negotiate and exploit race issues in our culture.

Because to Enid very little is sacred outside of her own delicate feelings, it’s somewhat logical that she’s so flippant about race. The movie opens with her mimicking a musical number called “Jaan Pechan Ho” from the 1965 Bollywood film Gumnaan. She joyfully responds to the manic dancing and emphatic singing coming from her TV—at this point in the film, we have no sense of who she is or what she’s watching, but it’s fairly easy to relate to her response to the foreign kitsch without acknowledging greater forces at hand like potential cultural insensitivity.

Shortly, we’ll see her guffawing and rolling her eyes at her high school graduation, as a paralyzed classmate delivers a speech (“She gets in one car wreck and all of a sudden she’sLittle Miss Perfect and everyone loves her”) and a multi-ethnic group of girls take the stage for a graduation rap. During the after party as Enid and Rebecca scan the room for shit to shit talk, their classmate Melora (Debra Azar) approaches to express relief and shock that their graduation is upon them. “We graduated high school. How totally amazing,” deadpans Enid. It’s a funny joke, but given the breakdown of graduation rates by race, it’s one that’s much easier to make if you’re white."

source: click