Casper

Casper arrives before the cultural moment we now call social consciousness, a ghost story that predates the specific markers we use to measure contemporary progressive sensibility. Brad Silberling's 1995 film is content to be a simple tale about a friendly specter and the teenage girl who falls for him, animated by genuine warmth and an interest in acceptance. The narrative asks us to sympathize with Casper and his uncles, to see them not as threats but as troubled beings deserving of compassion. This is humanist work, not the kind of cultural work we are measuring.

The film's gender politics are unremarkable for its era. Christina Ricci plays Kat as intelligent and resourceful, yet the central romantic tension still positions her as an object of Casper's affection, a girl to be won over rather than an agent pursuing her own desires. The supporting cast is uniformly pale, reflecting the default assumptions of mainstream 1990s filmmaking. There is no engagement whatsoever with questions of representation, identity, systemic inequality, or any of the specific cultural anxieties that define 2020s progressive cinema. The film does not even attempt to address these concerns.

What remains is a competent piece of family entertainment built on themes of kindness and coexistence. These are virtues, certainly, but they are not what we are measuring. A film about supernatural beings learning to get along peacefully is not the same as a film engaging in cultural consciousness. Casper is innocent of the charge of progressive messaging because it was made before such messaging became a recognizable aesthetic category. It is, in this sense, perfectly neutral ground.