Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a movie about opening up. This is done through the story of the protagonist, Greg. Throughout the film, Greg is closed off emotionally. His opening monologue is about him not belonging to any high school clique. He only has one friend, Earl, who he calls a co-worker. Greg’s fear of opening up is tied up with the secret movies he and Earl make, and which he refuses to show to anyone.  But the dying girl (Rachel) is making him change this, as seen through him spending time with her and showing her his secret movies.

            Because of this, the idea of ‘skin’ (especially referring to the kind in the Jennifer Barker readings) is very prevalent in this film. Greg relies on skin as a boundary to keep people out of his world. However, this ‘skin’ is breached because his fellow classmate (and crush) Madison has now seen the movies, she’s in his world now. This is shown in the film visually by her (a beautiful girl) looking out of place in Greg and Earl’s movie set (which is a weedy field). These are two textures that shouldn’t go together. There’s a break in the film’s skin when Madison touches Greg’s shoulders and we get an image of a stop-motion moose, one of the things from Greg’s films. Greg knows that Madison will force him to open up and show his movies to the world, and this is presented by breaking the live-action skin of the film to show us Greg’s stop-motion movie, just as Greg’s movie (and his inner self) will soon be shown to the world.