Ghost World Half-Day — Graduation

School’s out for Summer. Welcome to Ghost World Half-Day.

Graduation Speaker: High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. It is a time for young people to explore different fields of interest and to hopefully grow from their experiences.

After all, that which we learn from our mistakes can be as valuable as what we learn from our textbooks, and often we can turn the negative experiences that are common to all high-schoolers into positive steps toward personal growth and achievement.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001).

Graduation Speaker: In coming to terms with my own personal setback, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about, I’ve been able to learn a lot about myself. I’ve learned, for one thing, that I don’t need to rely on drugs and alcohol!

(Applause)

Enid: God, what a bunch of retards.

Rebecca: I thought Chipmunk Face was never going to shut up.

Enid: I know, I liked her better when she was an alcoholic crack addict! She gets in one car wreck and all of a sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everybody loves her.

Rebecca: It’s totally sickening.

Rebecca: This is so bad it’s almost good.

Enid: This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.

Melorra: Oh, my God, you guys! I can’t believe we made it!

Enid: Yeah, we graduated high school. How totally amazing.

It’s a great scene because the girls think they are very wise and sardonic and above-it-all, throwing out snappy one-liners and putting down the popular people at the school, and you realize that they may talk cool but they actually have a shitload of growing up to do. It gives their grimly satisfied bitchiness a certain dramatic irony and even a little pathos. I think all teenagers should be legally required to watch this film. I know I certainly should have.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.

Tags: advice, art, candids, commencement, Daniel Clowes, Ghost World, Ghost World Half-Day, graduation, high school, images, movie quotes, movies, Patron saints, Pictures, quotes, Scarlett Johannson, screencaps, Self-audit, speech, Steve Buscemi, stills, summer, Terry Zwigoff, Thora Birch, tree hugging hippie crap