This is tough. I don't know exactly who I could relate to in this movie. Probably Brigitte for her shyness and the ability to really care for the people she loves and push with all her strength to save them (in this case Ginger of course).
But, I like Ginger the most. Why? Well, the basic male instinct tells me to say because she is HOT LOL! But all shallow reasoning aside. She is one of the many well-rounded characters of the trilogy, perhaps the most deep of them all actually. I am also a large fan of the tragic flaw in characters. Her devotion to Brigitte was a twisted one which has been mentioned before. The idea of "together forever" through suicide was a fascinating perception and left me to wonder why Ginger had such a bitter view of the environment around her to feel that killing herself was the absolute best option. I always wondered about this because, one she was an attractive girl clearly and it would appear many guys wanted her (Jason and most likely some others). It appears that her mother is very loving and affectionate, so perhaps it was something in the past. That beginning scene as well led me to believe she truly craved attention but also she seemed to push that away whenever it came because I think she didn't want to sacrifice her pride and change her already set thought process. That also probably had to do with not wanting to abandon her sister since she loved her to an extreme anyway.
This has turned out to be long. Your post brought out a lot that I always wanted to say about the movie, and Ginger.
I really identified with Brigitte and loved Ginger because Brigitte started out in awe of her and would do anything to save her, but, as for being "hot," I really think that Ginger less than a year before would have been more like Brigitte, with red hair that she probably would not have groomed well. That is, in both her grooming and style of dress, she wouldn't have seemed as "hot." The fact that she's a red head named Ginger would have made her a bit of a freak to people just automatically. Remember, in some cultures, they used to kill red-headed children. Yet, Ginger was really the star of Brigitte's life.
I don't think Ginger's bitterness had to do with how much attention she might have gotten. I don't think further attention would have helped. I believe that would have missed the point. Ginger's problem might have been just exactly how it looked: middle-class suburban life, while keeping her safe and well-fed, was dull, dismal and phony to her. I'm not exactly describing only boredom here, though that was part of it. Let's just say, it was emotionally uninspiring, nothing beautiful, or interesting or poetic to be found, and the people there were petty and ignorant.
Her mother might have been loving and affectionate, but if you look closely, jesus, she really misses the point-- every time. She starts by waving this . . . straw at the sisters and says, "Look girls, flowers!" when there's actually
nothing alive there. She has learned to revel in being a suburbanite, lying about how beautiful and great it all really is; it really frightens the sisters to think they might turn into her. In fact, the scriptwriter Karen Walton said that was the girls' nightmare: to grow up and turn into Pamela, up until werewolves became their nightmare, presumably. They might love their mom, but love that misses the point can be extremely painful, and not something dealt with well by teens.
The reason why I say Ginger had the soul of an artist was because she noticed this, and unlike many people, it bothered her. If Ginger and Brigitte had a certain view of the afterlife, where they would be together forever, it would probably seem much better than what they thought they were facing, with some 70 years of soul-crushing lies and boredom. I mean, what is minimum security prison? It's years of boredom. We do that to punish people. The only solution offered to them for this: Pamela's clueless optimism. Insanity is not a good medication.
But how serious was their oath, really? They made it when they were eight. They set the hardcore part of it, the suicide pact, a whole other lifetime away for them. For an eight year old, eight more years is . . . forever. This wouldn't mean the same thing to eight-year olds as it would to sixteen-year olds or adults, but the meaning they gave it evolved over time as they mentally evolved. "Out by sixteen . . ." wouldn't have meant that they hated their parents, or they were in a bad circumstance, it would have meant that they became elite. They gained their independence early.
". . . Or dead in the scene" would have been more of a motivator than anything else. I'm certain they weren't thinking they were going to fail, though. Pamela's optimism would have by then told them to never expect failure.
"Together forever" of course was just an expression of a love, that felt so strong it must be eternal. For a child who's only eight, eternity is ten years.
But there's the interpretation they had when they were eight, and then there's the interpretation that evolved as they grew. Once they swore to these words and seriously committed themselves to them, it changed their thinking as their understanding of love, life and death changed.
How do I think this probably effected them?
As they failed to get "out by sixteen" that had to depress them. Their love, their pact, was not making them super-elite as it should have, not enough to gain their independence. So, why not run away instead of commit suicide? Because it would have missed the point. The point was to gain their independence super-early, not to live in destitution as runaways. It had been an expression of their goals, not an expression of anger.
Meanwhile, Ginger is about to become sixteen, and their pact is calling on them to commit suicide. Now, with that coming up, of course its going to be focusing their minds on death. They are already feeling pressures to make more friends, Ginger at least, did. So, do they renege on the pact?
This would probably belie their entire memory of their childhood friendship, and make them hard to take their love for each other seriously again, at least for the foreseeable future. I think it was much more a danger with Ginger than Brigitte.
My interpretation from the first scene and how reluctant Brigitte is to take Ginger's hand at the recital of the pact: Brigitte wants to forget about it, simply dispense with it, but Ginger wants to follow the pact no matter what. I'm thinking it has been on Ginger's mind a lot since she's about to turn sixteen. She's manipulative about the pact, and I think, of course, she was the author of it, it's a way of controlling and dominating Brigitte, but I really think for Ginger the words really mean something. One reason why I think Ginger clung to the pact is probably she ever meant anything more in her life when she composed it. It's more of a poetic expression of childhood love, and if the words didn't have literal meaning, it would put Ginger into a crisis.
The pact also necessarily excluded other people. It formed the girls into their own, very small clique. So, there was the growing problem of needing other friends, of spanning out from their sisterly clique, and I really think the slide show was Ginger's way of attempting that. On the one side, the slide show was extremely morbid, but on the other side, those two were really showing their love for each other, and they had such great sense of humor with it. It was meant to repulse the peers who did not understand, but gain attention of those who did. They didn't expect the authority figure, Mr. Wayne, to renounce it in front of the class.
Then the infected Ginger was just... AWESOME! She really kicked some major ass, one of the coolest sides of her. The disease really allowed her to act upon her anger since it definitely removed the moral limitations from her mind since she didn't go after and pummel Trina the first time she pushed Brigitte. At this stage she was having conflicted emotions at least in my opinion, I feel she was definitely aware of what the infection was doing to her. One piece of evidence to this was where she was in the bathroom with the knife cutting her tail, that scene with Brigitte was one of the most revealing aspects of Ginger. She did not want to kill people and animals and was scared to death of what she was turning into. The entire series of events leading to her complete destruction by the wolf was one of the most depressing scenes ever put on film. All of her strengths shattered, all of her weaknesses exploited due to something uncontrollable.
lol. I rather think Ginger was pulling her punches with Trina there despite how it looked. Not because she didn't want to hurt Trina, but because she didn't want to break her hands, which were probably still too delicate for her strength, and her claws and teeth probably weren't ready yet.
As for being aware, I think she went through moods and more lucid periods. Think about that bathroom scene and the scenes before that the dinner table: this was the night before the full moon. To her, she's thinking her life is over, "tomorrow night I'm dead." She's probably really annoyed at her mom's cluelessness as well. She ignores Pamela. She asks her dad out of the blue (calling him daddy) if she could learn to drive. Seems like just an abrupt change of subject until you realize it was something that she always looked forward to, you would think. When she took that butcher knife into the bathroom with her, I believe she thought of suicide and
couldn't do it. After all the thinking about it, the slide show and everything, and instead she tries to cut the tail off.
On the other hand, if her dad had taken Ginger to learn how to drive, would he have survived after she got him alone in the dark?
In the bathroom, no, she didn't want to be a killer, but contrast that to how she responds to Trina's death. There was no sorrow, no remorse there, and a lot of twisted thinking.
Ginger: (Lying next to Trina's corpse, smiling) "Do you think she's pretty?"
Brigitte: "If I weren't here, would you eat her?"
Ginger: (Laughs) "No, that would be like . . . fucking her."
Notice how Brigitte, outraged, tries to shock Ginger with the idea of cannibalism, only to have her sister one-up her with an image of lesbian necrophilia. I get the feeling this was not the Ginger Brigitte had ever known.
Well, last but not least she is played by Katharine Isabelle! Perhaps my favorite actress of the last several years. I could go on and on why I like Ginger the most but I think I've said enough. And if you haven't noticed, I am a new member lol so hello all!
I didn't know about Katharine Isabelle until I saw her here, so I got to love Katy through this part. Unfortunately, I don't think she has had a really good part since. With the exception Ginger Snaps, she has been 9th or lower on the cast list, or in a bad movie, like Freddie vs. Jason. Emily Perkins gets more work, and she just did an amazing job in Unleashed. She saved that movie and carried the whole first part of it without any help from the script. She did the best job with the worst lines and longest pauses . . .
I keep on waiting for Katy to have a part like that. It would be too bad if the best role she ever had and the best acting job she ever did was when she was 18.