My Girl was a staple of my formative years. Vada Sultenfuss is the average preteen girl trying to navigate her way through life - albeit the average girl who lives in a funeral home and has a morbid obsession with death. She's got a lot going on... she's going through all the wonderful changes that puberty brings, her widowed father is seeing a new woman, and she's trying to decide if she should stay close to her best friend Thomas (played by Macaulay Culkin) or try to make new female friends. Also, there are a lot of bees in the area, and Thomas is allergic to everything. That might become relevant later in the story. Vada drops her mood ring in the forest one day, and Thomas goes back later to try to find it for her. Sadly, when he finds the ring, he also finds a hornet's nest, and is stung. To death. Vada's experience of grief, from the moment she finds out that Thomas is dead to the memorable scene at the funeral, was one of our generation's first exposures to this kind of loss. We learned that kids like us could die, and not just sick kids that you see on TV, but average, every day kids, too. It was a sobering realisation - a little piece of our childhood died that day.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
