The Automatik

Once, on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Joel Hodgson and his robot sidekicks discussed the subtlety of evil. Joel asked Crow T. Robot what he thought of Hitler. Crow immediately replied that he hated him, naturally. Then Joel asked Crow what he thought of the band Styx. Crow admitted that they weren’t so bad, they had some good songs, then he let out a cry of horror as he finally understood what Joel was trying to convey. Although Justine, the main character in The Good Girl isn’t necessarily evil, she’s quite adept at proving the subtle nature of selfishness and apathy.

None of the characters in the film evoke much pity or sympathy. Floundering through a small Texas town, they either hate the world, are satisfied with their boring jobs and lives, or simply don’t care. But they’re never really going anywhere or making a difference. English writers and musicians have long since mastered the telling of small stories, bits of people’s normal lives, the day-to-day details of human drama that are often more meaningful than the big tragedies. The closest equivalent to this style in the U.S. would be Seinfeld, which is, ostensibly, a show about nothing. (Never mind what it says about Americans that a show about nothing remains, years after its demise, arguably the most popular sitcom of all time.) Unlike the English kitchen sink dramas, however, Seinfeld doesn’t try (or succeed despite itself) at examining universal issues; it’s just self-absorbed, reasonably dysfunctional people careening through life.

And so it is with Justine, the good girl. She says she hates her life, her job, her co-workers, her husband�she can’t even get decent reception on her TV set. Her husband and his best friend paint houses and get stoned without joy, sadness or any sort of discernible emotions. So Justine starts sleeping with her co-worker, the 22-year old Holden-Caulfield-wanna-be named Tom, in the hopes of escaping. Any hope of witnessing the blossoming of a desert flower is crushed when we see that Justine’s never heard of The Catcher in the Rye and that “Holden” isn’t very bright. To him, the book is just about a guy, who is put upon and eventually has a nervous breakdown. And in a way, he’s right. But Caulfield is no Seinfeld; sure he’s a whiny, somewhat spoiled guy, but he at least had that older brother issue and all. Holden doesn’t even have any real hardships in his life, to say nothing of goals, even when pressed by an exasperated Justine: “But what will we DO?” He doesn’t want to be well-adjusted; he just wants to leave a legacy like J.D. Salinger and then disappear. “At best, he was a child; at worst, he was a demon,” says Justine and we can’t argue with her when we see how much havoc he brings into her life.

She flakes out on her dying friend, she cuckolds her husband and gets pregnant, she feeds Holden potentially tainted fruit, tells his parents he’s mentally disturbed and gives him up to the cops, but claims that she doesn’t want to hurt anybody, although she ends up doing just that. Yet we suspect that Holden would have died anyway because he really doesn’t “get” Justine; he’s just looking for any woman upon which to pin his disturbed adolescent yearnings. And we suspect that Phil will forgive her indiscretions because really, what other choice does he have? Most significantly, we suspect that Justine might pretend that she cares about other people and what they think, but she only wants to save her own ass.

Like an egotistical Dorothy, Justine realizes that in the end, she shouldn’t look any further than her own backyard for her heart’s desire because she doesn’t want much more than what she’s already got. Her alleged hatred and discontent only breeds a vague sense of exhaustion and not the sort of righteous ennui that makes people disappear and change their names or join the Peace Corps.

In fact, Justine doesn’t get any sort of enlightenment from her misadventures. She continues to “not be got” by anyone and she still works at the Retail Rodeo. Her husband paints houses and gets stoned. The only significant change is that now they have a baby, but as Justine herself supposes, that’s not going to really change anything. Life will plod along and nothing will continue to happen. No profound truths will be revealed, no self-awareness will be gained. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.