My Girl Movie Analysis

My Girl
When it came time to pick a stage of development, I chose the stage of middle childhood. The movie that best depicted this stage of development to me was the 1991 movie “My Girl”. In this movie, you see a 11-year-old girl named Vada Sultenfuss going through a lot of psychosocial and cognitive changes in her life. She has grown up without her mother due to instant death when being born and she blames herself for her mother’s passing. Her dad is very absent in the upbringing of Vada, as he focuses most of his time and energy into his work as a mortician. Vada is surrounded by death due to the fact that they live in the house where her father constructs his business which is why her view on death is demented. When her dad becomes involved

in a relationship Vada is very distraught at the idea that someone else is getting the attention she never got. Vada is an extreme hypochondriac who has a misunderstanding about death and the life changing experiences happening around her including the death of her best friend, Thomas Jay. She is slowly entering adolescence and is dealing with puberty all at the same time. Throughout the movie she strengthens her relationship with her family and her best friend Thomas and those relationships help build her formal operational thinking. With these changes occurring you are able to see her overall growth and her changing views on death.
According to Erikson, a major component of self-esteem develops in the stage of industry vs. inferiority. In the text it states that if children are not able to obtain praise and attention from an adult figure, they may develop a feeling of low self-worth, and thus develop a sense of inferiority (Papalia, 2014, pg.295). One major element seen throughout the movie is the parental lack of attention and support in Vada’s life. Her father is unavailable emotionally and physically when it comes to his daughters needs which could be a key factor about why she acts the way she does. One night at dinner, Vada goes onto tell her dad that she is dying and he completely ignores the statement rather than going into detail on the real issue at hand. Such behavior from her might be an attempt to receive the attention that is so largely absent. When Vada reaches puberty and has her first period, she believes she is hemorrhaging which is clearly not the case. Because her father hasn’t properly educated her on basic body changes that are unrelated to death, we see an increase of death related subjects brought up during the movie. This overall lack of attention being given to her at this critical time in life could be a direct relationship to why she has misconceptions about death and disease. As the movie continues, we start to notice that she is almost at the end of Erikson’s 4th stage of development and she starts to mature into a formal operational thinking process.
When it comes to middle childhood, family structure has a big impact on the child’s life. Living in a stepfamily can be stressful and difficult to adapt too. A child’s loyalties to an absent or dead parent may interfere with forming ties to the stepparent (Papalia, 2014, pg.304). In the movie, Vada’s father becomes involved with a woman by the name Shelly. They quickly get engaged which upsets Vada and causes her to react negatively. She tries to convince her best friend Thomas Jay to run away with her, only to find out when she comes back home no one even noticed her absence. Shelly notices Vada’s need for attention and love and helps guide her throughout some of the changes into young adolescence. Vada also started puberty at a younger age, so even though she was a bit hostile towards Shelly she was thankful for the help in explaining what was going on with her body, which is something her dad never did.
Another important element we see throughout this movie is Vada’s obsession with death and disease and her constant struggle with understanding both. Death has been a large part in Vada’s life, seeing as she grew up in the funeral home surrounded by the deceased, and with the loss of a parent as a newborn. This has contributed heavily into her thoughts and views on life. One example that helps show her fear of death is a scene where her basketball rolls into the basement where her dad prepares the bodies for the funeral, she was very unsure if she wanted to go retrieve the ball from the basement. She then finally worked up the courage to go get the ball, she quickly grabs the ball and heads towards the exit only to realize that the door is jammed. Vada then goes into a panic, and freaks out about the idea of dead people below her. This psychological response to being in the presence of a deceased person shows how convincing her fear is of the dead. In the book it describes Vada’s loss as an ambiguous loss, since she was denied ritual and emotional closure after the passing of her mother. The book also goes onto say that children can better understand death if they are introduced to the concept at an early age and are encouraged to talk about it. Children’s understanding of death and the way they show grief depends on cognitive and emotional development overall (Papalia, 2014, pg564). The book and movie are very accurate when it comes to describing why Vada reacts to death the way she does. There are a lot of factors at play, it could be her lack of information on death while growing up or her overall lack of attention from her father that causes her to act out the way she does. Either way we are able to grasp why Vada’s view on death is distorted by using the knowledge given to us in the book.
The most vital element to me throughout this whole movie is Vada’s relationship with Thomas Jay, her best friend.

When Thomas Jay suddenly and unexpectedly passes away from an allergic reaction to bee stings, Vada is torn apart by his untimely death due to the fact that Thomas and her were extremely close to one another. Vada then enters the stage of denial and grieving. She goes to visit the doctor that day in a panic complaining that she can’t breathe, that the pain from the bee stings are too much to handle. The book depicts to us that this sort of behavior being shown can be construed as externalizing the internal emotional pain she is feeling because she isn’t sure how to express herself in this certain situation. When Vada leaves the doctor’s office to return to the funeral of Thomas Jay, it is very obvious that she is not willing to accept the death of her best friend, as she still speaks to him as if he was still alive. The book tells us that both internalizing and externalizing behaviors are more likely in children who come from families with high levels of discord (Papalia, 2014, pg297). This reasoning helps explain why Vada is constantly expressing herself through internalizing and externalizing behaviors throughout the entire movie. This reasoning can also help us to understand why Vada exhibits hypochondriac behavior that causes her to believe that any disease is contagious and she inherits these diseases by being around the dead at the funeral

home.
The movie My Girl exemplifies multiple aspects of the cognitive and emotional development of children’s understanding of death. The cognitive side of Vada is categorized as being a tremendously mature girl for her age group and she displays to be a quick learner throughout the movie. Vada seems to show us that she understands the certainty and vulnerability of death, although she is very inattentive with her own death. Her constant visits to the doctor about all her fatal diseases, shows us that most children understand their own personal mortality before they understand that all people die, even those close to them. As she starts to enter adolescence she begins to progress to the highest level of cognitive development in the practice of formal operations (Papalia, 2014, pg340). Some indication for this is Vada is beginning to think rationally about potential ideas or abstract ideas; she learns to accept that she didn’t cause her mother’s passing, and she believes her mother is watching over Thomas Jay in heaven. These life changing experiences that Vada encounters could help us better relate her social and emotional growth as well as how her views on death have completely been altered throughout the movie.