First time viewer, long time person here. Maybe I'm being misled by the presence of Bob Balaban and Tom McGowan, but I felt a strong sitcommy vibe across this movie. I guess that plays into the depersonalized, numbness that Enid and to an extent Seymour seem to fight against.
Perhaps one of the most pre-9/11 films out there, made at the end of the End of History. Societal issues presented include the lethargic shift of oil companies to mentioning the environment, and the submerging of the shameful racistly charged commercialism of America. The mirror of Enid worrying about her past, and her journey through it to the present and her fear of the future, emblemised in her sketchbook diary and its treatment of Seymour.
There was a brief zebra motif in the movie with a top worn by Enid, leading me to think about the herd instinct. It is stifling in a sense, and Enid seems to reject both it, and inauthentic rejections of it. I hereby assert this to be an Anti-Zebra Movie. Clowes? More like Clawes, clawing the Zebra.