Una problemática regional

In its portrayal of childhood, Casper limits its representations to Casper and Kat, the two main characters. Though one is dead and the other living, the two are clearly grouped together by two main characteristics, revealing an understanding of childhood more complex than The Watcher in The Woods and more precise than The Gate. The first characteristic of this group is age. Spielberg, who produced, and Silberling, who directed, estimate Casper and Kat’s age at “twelve or

thirteen,”437 _{while reviewers commented on the “12-year-old”}438 _{Kat and on Casper, who “lived to} be 12.”439 _{It is interesting that reviewers have pinpointed the children’s age so precisely as age is not} directly mentioned in the narrative. There must have been something else in the representation of these children that connected with the critics’ personal sense of what a twelve-year-old would be — and, conversely, the roots of those details were in the filmmakers’ ideas about a twelve-year-old’s life.

Thinking back to my arguments in chapter two, the age of twelve is significant because of its position just below an important frontier. Arbitrarily or not, the PG-13 rating highlights a moment of

separation between young children and teenagers; a child of twelve is therefore right at the border, fast approaching this unique transition in life. And indeed, the second major characteristic of Casper’s children is their overpowering liminality. This is quite literal in the case of Casper, who is in between life and death, but Kat is similarly associated with incomplete or uncomfortable transitions: moving to a new town, a new school, a new family structure after the death of her mother and a

437 _{Brad Silberling, 2008.}

438 _{Owen Gleiberman, "Casper," in Entertainment Weekly (1995).}

160 newfound interest in boys. Both Casper and Kat are young people straddling childhood and

adolescence.

This ambiguity begins with their appearances. As Roger Ebert noted, Casper has “much in common”440 _{with small children. As described by a number of other critics, the little ghost’s} “obsequious and bubble-headed”441 _{nature, his “Walter Keane eyes that bat up and down like} Bambi’s”442 _{and his “baby face and big blue eyes”}443 _{make Casper look very much like a child — he is} a “fetus-shaped apparition,”444_{“the cuddly, floating baby-head from the next world.”}445 _The roundness of his shape and the associations with babyhood continued in comparisons to “the Pillsbury Doughboy”446 _{(Casper could be “the Pillsbury Dough Boy’s shy cousin”}447_{), and adjectives} such as “lovable,”448 _{and “adorable creature.”}449 _{Christina Ricci, who plays Kat, was also described as} “a bit of a baby-head herself.”450 _{Unlike Casper, however, her “adorably spooked stare”}451 _was usually contrasted with more adult characteristics: her “amazingly mature and nuanced

performance”452 _{and the way she “has become eye-catchingly lovely since her days in The Addams} Family.”453 _{For the press and her co-stars alike, Ricci was “fourteen going on thirty”}454 _{and “never} managed innocence, even in Casper.”455

This combination of child-likeness and adult maturity in the pre-teen bodies of Casper and Kat is addressed directly in the film’s exploration of their budding sexuality. The famous line uttered by

440 _{Roger Ebert, "Casper," RogerEbert.Com, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/casper-1995.}

441 _{Mick LaSalle, "'Casper' Raises Spirits and Tugs Heartstrings," The San Francisco Chronicle, 26 May 1995.} 442 _{Gleiberman, "Casper."}

443 _{James, "Friendly and Translucent? He's Back."}

444 _{Rita Kempley, "'Casper'," Washington Post, 26 May 1995.} 445 _{Gleiberman, "Casper."}

446 _{Desson Howe, "'Casper'," Washington Post, 26 May 1995.} 447 _{Gleiberman, "Casper."}

448 _{James, "Friendly and Translucent? He's Back."} 449 _Ibid.

450 _{Gleiberman, "Casper."} 451 _Ibid.

452 _{James Berardinelli, "Casper (1995)," http://www.imdb.com/reviews/36/3658.html.} 453 _{Zachary Woodruff, "Casper," http://www.filmvault.com/filmvault/tw/c/casper.html.} 454 _{"Behind the Scenes," in Casper, ed. Brad Silberling (Universal Pictures UK, 2008).} 455 _{Anon, "Teen Spirit," Marie Claire, February 2000.}

161 Casper upon first seeing Kat (“There’s a girl in my bed... Yes!”) is an example, as is the scene in which Kat and her father discuss her Halloween party costume. In this scene, Dr. Harvey tells Kat she will look cute no matter what she wears, to which Kat responds, frustrated, that “Cute’s like when you’re nine years old and you’ve got papier machê around your head. I wanna look… nice. Like… like, date- nice.” At this, Dr. Harvey is agitated. “Really? Honey… You know, maybe it’s time that we sat down…” She laughs. “It’s a little late for that, Dad.” Dr. Harvey’s agitation increases. “How late?” “Oh! Don’t worry, not that late.” The exchange is humorous but very clear in its suggestion of Kat’s transitioning from asexual child to sexual teenager. Kat sets herself apart from the “cute nine-year- olds” but also from sexually-active adults; she is somewhere in the middle, just recently aware of her potential to attract romantic attention as well as her desire to explore the world of dating and boys. And, regardless of Ricci’s media persona, Kat’s romantic advances and her interactions with boys are displays of very innocent sexuality: being asked out to the Halloween party, sharing a slow dance, a first kiss.

Innocence is also the defining tone of Casper’s romantic feelings toward Kat. His puppy love is child- like in its exaggeration, from his cartoonish expressions and inflated romantic sighs to his naive attempts at seduction, such as shape-shifting into a muscular superhero. Casper and Kat’s romance is wholly youthful, based not on sexual chemistry but ideas of true love that is rooted on friendship: Kat may be “the love of his life”456 _{but Casper remains her “truest friend.”}457 _{As one critic noted,} “there is only so much you can do with a relationship between a little girl and a ghost,”458 _and indeed, even if this supernatural romance may seem to parallel Ghost, the similarities are limited to a belief in everlasting love (“Can I keep you?” Casper repeatedly asks). Instead of evoking sensuality, the kiss between Casper and Kat “loads on the fairy-tale allusions,”459 _{and their coupling, though} framed as romance, was read by critics as a close friendship, sometimes compared to that of E.T.

456 _{Howe, "'Casper'."}

457 _{James, "Friendly and Translucent? He's Back."} 458 _{Ebert, "Casper".}

162 and Elliot.460 _{Reviewers described Casper’s longing “to make friends with”}461 _{Kat, how they “become} fast friends,”462 _{and how their “friendship”}463 _{develops until they become “best friends.”}464 _{The film’s} narrative also appears to encourage this platonic reading, as Casper and Kat seldom engage in physical displays of romantic affection, acting instead as close friends.

Nevertheless, Casper’s suggestion of romantic desires in childhood did not escape criticism, with disapproval particularly aimed at the “girl on my bed” line. The issue was raised by Harvey Films, the original owners of the Casper character from back in the 1950s, who felt uncomfortable with the implication of Casper having been a person before becoming a ghost. The notion was especially inappropriate if that person had been an adolescent with a maturing sense of sexuality. For Harvey, it was problematic and undesirable to present audiences with “a very young boy” who had

“adolescent yearnings.”465 _{Referring to the divisive scene, Silberling has confessed that he felt the} original Casper to be “a little too soft, a little bit androgynous.” In an attempt to correct this, he and Spielberg agreed to “contemporise” Casper by giving him a “truly adolescent reaction to the first girl who’s dropping on the springs of his bed.” With a touch of topical humour, the filmmaker added another element to his defence: in all these years Casper’s been dead, “he’s gotta have learned something [from TV].”466

It is interesting to note that the filmmakers’ intuition of what a boy Casper’s age would be like was not challenged by reviewers nor by audiences, who, according to Silberling, “appreciated [the scene].”467 _{Harvey’s protests therefore feel more like a sign of consummated change in American} views than an indication of any form of controversy or challenge. Indeed, Casper “doesn’t trade on

460 _{LaSalle, "'Casper' Raises Spirits and Tugs Heartstrings."} 461 _Ibid.

462 _{Ebert, "Casper".} 463 _{Gleiberman, "Casper."} 464 _{Berardinelli, "Casper (1995)".} 465 _{Silberling, "Casper Dvd Commentary."} 466 _Ibid.

163 nostalgia,”468 _{as one critic put it. On the contrary, it was completely separated from the concepts of} childhood and children circulated in its source material, portraying the twelve-year-old not as an innocent child but as a pre-teen, belonging to a different group of young people experiencing the transition between childhood and adolescence. These changes to adapt Casper and the way they resonated with audiences and critics — as well as the way it clashed with Harvey’s views — are only evidence that childhood was now perceived differently and that the concept of the pre-teen as a distinct demographic had at last taken root in American culture.