Another day, another new feature here at Filmophilia. Today we bring you Childhood Memories, where we re-watch films we loved as children and see how they stand up to the harsh light of adulthood. First up: My Girl.
I loved, loved, loved this film as a kid. A bookish tomboy myself, I really identified with the main character Vada. I thought it would be really cool to live in a funeral home like her and I wished I could be as brave and outspoken as she was.
I understood that she was sad about her mom being dead and I thought her dad was mean but I didn’t really think about it too much. What stood out for the 9-year old me was how accurately the film portrayed the feeling of freedom you get when spending a warm summer playing with your best friend. It taught me about valuable things like the K-I-S-S-I-N-G rhyme, mixing your blood with your friend’s to become blood-brothers, the groovieness of late 60’s pop music and the existence of mood rings. And the ending left me a sobbing mess on the floor. When Vada’s best friend dies, it was the first time I realised that death was not just something that happened to old people, it could happen to kids too. Luckily there weren’t too many bees around where I grew up, so me and my friends were pretty safe.
When I sat down to watch it again as a grown up cynic I was expecting a sweet little film, possibly I could have some chuckles at the outdated fashion (although for some reason this 1991 film is set in 1972, a fact I never realised until now) and marvel at how young everyone looked. I was not prepared for the emotionally devastating gut-punch it delivered instead.
Little Vada (a marvelous Anna Chlumsky) lives in a funeral home with her emotionally distant father (a miscast Dan Aykroyd) and dementia-suffering grandmother (Ann Nelson). Surrounded by corpses and blaming herself for her mother’s death in childbirth Vada frequents the local doctor’s office complaining of various ailments to try and convince people she’s dying. It seems like that is the only way to get the attention from her father she so badly craves. When a new make-up artist, Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis), starts working for her dad, it seems Vada might finally get some much needed female influence and affection. But instead Shelly usurps Vada’s place in the home and steals away her father. It’s heartbreaking to watch her face as she sees them kissing for the first time, realising that her father IS capable of showing love, just not to her. This Freudian theme is echoed in Vada’s crush on her teacher. Clearly just a father substitute, Mr. Bixler (Griffin Dunne) is everything her father is not. He’s warm and encouraging and listens to what she has to say.
Now, if she wasn’t getting enough rejection at home she’s also rejected by her peers. Girls her age taunt her for being weird and her only friend is fellow outcast Thomas J. (Macaulay Caulkin, adorable). Even though she’s not very nice to him he’s unfailingly loyal to her. Their friendship is the heart of the film, sweetly portrayed by the actors and made this cynic go “awwww” and want to go climb trees, more than once.
The events in the story are clearly a metaphor for puberty, and a rather brutal and feminist one at that. Let’s examine. Once Shelly has brought femininity into the house, Vada starts changing. Tensions between her and her dad are heightened because of the presence of a“new woman” in the house, her feelings towards men change as she starts seeing her teacher in a different light, and sexual awakening leads to her experimenting with kissing Thomas J. (still adorable though). All this leads up to the moment where Vada gets her first period (which she describes as hemorrhaging) and from there on in, get ready for some brutality. Her father announces he’s getting married to Shelly (she’s been replaced), he punches Shelly’s ex-husband in the stomach pretty much un-provoked (men are violent and volatile), her best friend is killed in a violent attack by bees (childhood is over and boys aren’t just your friends anymore) and her teacher rejects her love in favour of another (more age-appropriate) woman (love sucks). Welcome to adulthood kid, it’s great! But all is well that ends well and after going through all this Vada is finally accepted by her female peers and the film leaves us with the image of a seemingly happy Vada riding off with her new friends to the strains of Smokey Robinson‘s My Girl. That’s girl power before the Spice Girls made it popular.
Despite my snark, the film, especially the last 20 minutes, had a very emotional effect on me. That sequence when Thomas J. goes back into the woods to get Vada’s mood ring and gets attacked by hundreds of bees (CRACK), to Vada’s dad explaining to her that she can’t go over to his house and yell at him anymore (CRACK), to the shot of them wheeling his little body into the funeral home (CRACK) and finally to when Vada sneaks down to his funeral and starts trying to wake him up, screaming that he needs his glasses (CRACK aaaannd my heart breaks into a thousand pieces and I’m a sobbing, cynical mess on the floor) is absolutely devastating, though probably for different reasons now than when I first saw it. When I was a kid I was mostly upset because now the best friends couldn’t play together anymore but when you’re older, and have perhaps experienced loss yourself, you understand the devastation it brings. In fact, my favorite scene of the film today is one I didn’t even remember was there. Vada and her dad meet Thomas J.’s mother on the street. She tells them how she’s been trying to cope with the loss and thanks Vada for being a good friend to her son. It’s a short but beautifully played and poignant scene. After all, life just keeps on going and we have to go on with it.
Bottom line: Go and rent this film. You won’t be disappointed.
Wind in My Hair 
The scene with the bees scarred me as a kid and still makes me shudder if I let myself dwell for too long. I don’t even really remember the rest of it, I think I caught it over the shoulder of an older sibling at a neighbor’s house down the street when I was really little, but the horror of the bees has always been with me.