The New York Time’s A.O. Scott calls it “big-screen perfection” and writes what an accomplishment it “is to infuse one of the most convention-bound, rose colored genres in American cinema with freshness and surprise… None of them are caricatures, though, and while everyone is mocked, nobody is treated with cruelty or contempt, at least by Ms. Gerwig.” Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird feels like an affirmation of an over-analyzed and often criticized white, suburban adolescence. It’s a prayer, I mean ode to the convention-bound, rose colored person who may put on extra eyeliner or get a short Splat-doused bob to feel radical but probably is more accurately described as alternative.
Sacramento, where Lady Bird is set, is apparently the thirty-fifth largest city in the country, the fasted-growing big city in the state, and known for its diversity, but you wouldn’t know it from the film. Gerwig’s Sacramento is described by Christine McPherson, who goes by the nickname Lady Bird, as the Midwest of California. Quiet streets are lined with luxurious homes that Lady Bird and her mom often tour as false potential buyers (their favorite Sunday activity) before returning to their quaint, less-affluent neighborhood sprinkled with dingy small businesses and populated by regular, moderately depressed, working and middle-class folk and next to an alleged train track that, if it even existed, was probably too ugly to make the cut. Lady Bird jokes that she is from the wrong side of the tracks, which hurts her mother and father who struggle to make enough money to support Lady’s Bird’s lifestyle including tuition for her private Catholic school or a road trip to visit more affordable California colleges. The film begins on one of these trips during which the Grapes of Wrath audiotape nearly brings mother and daughter to tears just before they get into an argument and Lady Bird throws herself out of the car and breaks her arm. You know, just a typical American teenager.
After Lady Bird plays a prank on a nun to gain popularity at school, Sister Sarah isn’t angry but rather has a sense of humor about it (I believe we are meant to be surprised when a character is made out to be human). She remarks how Lady Bird’s college essay about Sacramento - which Lady Bird criticizes throughout the film as kids do their hometowns - shows how much she in fact loves Sacramento. “I guess I pay attention,” Lady Bird responds coyly. A.O. Scott describes this remark as Lady Bird not wanting to be contrary, but he is also being coy - what teenager would be so unwittingly insightful? Gerwig wants us to know that Lady Bird is paying attention, and if love is anything, it is that. She is telling us that no matter what, we love our hometowns, and we love our moms and our Catholic, middle-class upbringing and we are sorry for not appreciating it and saying all those nasty things. Watching Lady Bird feels like forgetting that not everyone grew up somewhere like Gerwig’s Sacramento and learned to appreciate having been forced to go to Sunday school, in fact many people in this country may not identify with what A.O. Scott too eagerly describes as the “typical American teenager.” I did grow up somewhere like that, and I can see how “Lady Bird” is seductive to others who did as well. However, there are a lot of people excluded from this definition of a typical American teenager, including Lady Bird’s brother Miguel, a person of color who wears a lot of black and has a lot of facial piercings and who dates Shelly, who looks exactly the same.
Miguel serves not only as the diversity-box checking POC character in a predominantly white film, but also someone who Lady Bird, or perhaps Gerwig, can bounce off unsavory opinions while feeling secure in the unconditional love of a character they love/have invented. A.O. Scott writes, “Her (Gerwig’s) affection envelopes them like a secular form of grace: not uncritically, but unconditionally”. When Lady Bird is upset that she didn’t get into better colleges, she tells Miguel that he wouldn’t understand because he filled a diversity quota. Miguel tells her that her statement is racist, and that he didn’t put his race on the applications, to which Lady Bird replies that his name was obviously a giveaway. She then angrily leaves the room, not before telling Miguel that he and Shelly will never get jobs with all their facial piercings. There is a little affirmation in Miguel’s condemnation. He looks shocked, like nobody in his life has told him this before and that he has just come to a profound realization, and the next time we see him he is has his hair pulled back on his way to a job interview and all the piercings gone. Was Lady Bird right then? Does Miguel inherently have an advantage over her because he is a person of color applying for college? Can white, teenage girls growing up in Sacramento have it bad too? In the end, can’t everyone with radical beliefs just temporary take them out like piercings and put them aside to be a part of society and achieve success, I mean happiness? Through Lady Bird’s volatile, teenage mouth, we are invited to scratch an itch burrowed deep down inside – a muffled little racist thought - but what about me, don’t I matter? She makes us feel like we aren’t the only ones.
The film ends with Lady Bird heading off for college in New York City, going to a party, and asking a guy if he believes in God. He says he doesn’t, she asks why, and he says because it is ridiculous. She replies, “People go by the names their parents give them, but they don’t believe in God.” The line is supposed to be profound, but I feel it’s obvious that believing in God and having a name is just not the same thing. Most of us who don’t believe in God also don’t believe that our names created us or have too much power over us. She makes out with the guy anyway and ends up getting too drunk and going to the hospital. She wakes up hungover and alone, and checks out of the hospital to wander around the city, finding her way to a church. She listens to the church choir, a heavenly moment, and then steps outside to call her mom and tell her how much she appreciates Sacramento and having had grown up there. For Lady Bird, New York is cold, disconnected, full of radical, Godless people who never had a Sacramento or have abandoned it for the false sense of pride and superiority. She is not from New York, and probably won’t stay there, and that’s fine.