![]() ![]() The Technicolor suburbia filled with brill creamed boys, buying ice cream from the Good Humor man, contrasts jarringly with the grey, lifeless palette of Ruth’s basement. On a technical front, I found The Girl Next Door charmingly anachronistic exactly as a story set in the 1950’s ought to be. This allows one to watch the film from a distance, in a way the book forbids. No longer are we forced to confront the reasons why we want the book to go further, just as David does. Gone is the sense that David’s adolescent boner is taking precedence over his instincts as a decent kid. Contrast this to the film adaptation in which David is conflicted from the get-go. Even when David finally does rebel, it’s not until it’s far too late. Ketchum’s reader is not given any cushy moralizing character to identify with and through whose eyes they can safely watch the action unfold without direct involvement. Sure, the more sensitive in the theatre will walk out, not wanting to see a girl branded and raped, but the power of the book is that it can make even the most hardened, questioning reader ask themselves why they keep turning the page. ![]() The audience is given permission to watch the atrocities befalling Meg without being implicated. Just before the film reaches it’s sadistic nadir, and in response to David’s growing objections, Woofer barks “But we have permission!”Īnd here is the one significant problem I have with the film version of The Girl Next Door. It goes downhill from there, as the gang’s voyeuristic urges grow numb, in favor of a yearning for more cruel pleasures. The boys are allowed to indulge their curiosity about the female body without fear of reprisal and without Meg’s consent. She starts by tying Meg up in the basement. Like Woofer feeding helpless inchworms to red ants, Ruth has a vapid longing to destroy not only Meg’s purity, but that of the neighborhood children and her sons as well. Ruth’s leniency is not extended to Meg and Susan, who she resents, not only because they constitute a financial burden, but because Meg represents unsullied innocence and a potential for self realization and happiness long since lost to Ruth. In return Ruth holds court on her favorite topics: the weakness of women and the tyranny of men. The rest of the neighborhood kids love Ruth because she allows them a glimpse of adulthood by letting them congregate at her house to watch TV, where they can drink a beer, or sneak a cigarette. Ruth is “like one of the gang” according to David, the next door neighbor and friends to Ruth’s three sons, Willie, Donny, and “Woofer”. ![]() For the uninitiated, The Girl Next Door tells the story of Meg and her crippled sister Susan, who have been sent to live with their Aunt Ruth following the death of their parents in a car accident. ![]()
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