Enid and Rebecca are queen shit-talkers who hate everything: consumerism, mainstream culture, trendiness, try-hards, and especially their peers-“all these extroverted, obnoxious, pseudo-bohemian losers,” as Enid describes boys their age. Ghost World is about two outsiders whiling away their post-high school malaise in a nondescript suburbia that, though never identified, with its strip malls, midcentury diners, and adult bookstores, is clearly Los Angeles playing itself. “I just feel that Kat definitely watched Ghost World and completely related to Enid,” Ferreira told British magazine The Face in 2019. Even Euphoria’s standout misfit-turned-dominatrix Kat Hernandez (Barbie Ferreira), took a DIY Ghost World mood board to the show’s stylist.

Networks have scooped up show after show centering on complex female friendship ( Insecure, Fleabag, Broad City) and also those probing the shockingly transgressive lives of teenagers ( Skins, 13 Reasons Why, Euphoria). Twenty years later, the answer would be just about everybody. A movie about a guy nailing a pie was the biggest teen hit of the era, and a critic reviewing Ghost World that year echoed what was likely on the minds of every studio exec who’d rejected director Terry Zwigoff’s pitch during the five years it took to get green lit: “Who wants to see teens act the way teens really act, anyway?” When Ghost World, a dark comedy about two teenage misanthropes-Enid (Thora Birch), a classic hater, and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), a normie-in-waiting-debuted in July 2001, it was beloved by critics, misfits, and few others.

Ghost world comic strips