GHOSTBUSTERS Backlash: A Pop-Culture Portrayal Of A Divided Society

As a society, recent events have left us more divided than ever. The people on one side of this socio-political argument are trying to undermine unrepresented voices in the culture by calling for a cry back to the “good old days” and using hateful rhetoric in order to get what they want. The other side are being labelled as mere “liberals” with a politically correct agenda that isn’t attuned to the desires of the majority of people.

I’m not talking about the fall out from Brexit, or the rise of Donald Trump. Instead, this heated discussion is the fallout from a blockbuster movie nobody has seen yet and appears to contain no controversial content whatsoever: the forthcoming Ghostbusters reboot.

How A Sequel Became A Reboot

For years, Dan Aykroyd has been trying in vain to get a third entry in the Ghostbusters franchise made, much to the aversion of Bill Murray, who has passed on several treatments and screenplays for the project. With Sony wanting to maintain copyright (let’s not kid ourselves here, this movie exists because of filthy lucre), they moved forward with a sequel-slash-reboot to be directed by current king of comedy Paul Feig.

From having a critical success with his cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks, to the consecutive blockbuster smashes of Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy, he is arguably the most attuned person to what is funny in pop-culture right now. Having him on board behind the camera was a move not designed to inspire any vitriol.

Back in 2015, the cracks in the project began to show. He claimed to be doing a reboot and not a straight sequel due to a preference for “origin stories”, which made many original fans uneasy. But that was nothing compared to the later announcement: his Ghostbusters would have an all female cast.

Whilst likely to generate a mere shrug of the shoulders from the majority of audiences, it managed to strike a raw nerve with many fanboys (and make no mistake: these are boys) who saw this as nothing less than blasphemy to a sacred text. You’ve probably encountered these “male rights activists” whilst online, using badly constructed arguments to claim that women were inferior and didn’t deserve the wide representation afforded to them in the media.

Websites like Return of Kings protested Fury Road and The Force Awakens, two widely acclaimed and successful films, for what they likely believed was a liberal falsehood that women could not only be as powerful as men, but stronger. Both were described as feminist propaganda that undermined traditional masculinity in the mainstream media.

Yet it is the seemingly innocuous release of Ghostbusters, a reboot that would otherwise be ignored like so many remakes and reboots in previous years, that has really caused their scorn.

Battle of the Sexes

The trailer is the most “unliked” in the history of Youtube. Although many agree it was poor, a cursory glance at the comment section dictates that it isn’t the comedic content that is causing dislikes, so much as the idea that women can bust ghosts.

An article on A Voice For Men from March 2016 called “Down With the New Ghostbusters Movie!” (I’m not going to post a link to such nonsense) argued that as many of these comments were from women, their own male rights arguments aren’t misogynist and are in tune with the culture as a whole.

But this is the bizarre thing: the writer actually asked fellow male rights activists to not publicly condemn the film, as a string of eloquently worded think-pieces defending its right to exist from “feminist activists” would be detrimental to their own cause. A cause that opened this article with the following paragraphs:

“There is a new Ghostbusters movie coming out. Normally that would be good news, but in this case, I am hesitant to even use the name Ghostbusters in association with this feminist piece of crap.

To begin with, don’t look for Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd or Harold Ramis anywhere near this big wad of celluloid fail. Instead, there are three women taking the lead roles. That’s right, you heard me. WOMEN. And no, I don’t mean women who are Sigourney Weaver hot. Far from it.

That is it. Mad Max was bad enough (oh, how they fawned over that bit of feminist agitprop at the Oscars). I am calling for a men’s rights activist boycott. We will ruin this movie. We will destroy the careers of all those “actresses,” and we will make Sony Pictures lose millions of dollars”.

Every time a new trailer or piece of promotional material was released, this vocal minority yet again came out of the woodwork, to the extent that now the pre-release reaction to Ghostbusters is mirroring the same divide in Western society. Women are only allowed rights in supporting roles, and even then, only if they’re “Sigourney Weaver hot”.

The relative silence from official men’s rights spokespeople is somewhat alarming, but nonetheless welcome; the sane people who have an aversion to the film because of poor CGI or the fact it doesn’t appear to be funny are the ones having the biggest say. But those with aversions for bonkers reasons have been positing a deadly silence as the release date grows imminent, so expect an onslaught of think pieces over the next week (I’m getting mine in early).

Judd Apatow quipped that people with an aversion to the new Ghostbusters are most likely “Donald Trump supporters with an aversion to change”. Although intended as a joke about the ridiculous nature the film’s extended promotional campaign has taken, it isn’t hard to see parallels: Trump has been elevated to a presidential platform despite repeated allegations of sexism and misogyny.

Ghostbusters has widely been criticised for turning something intrinsically male into something “politically correct” due to its inclusivity of women as core cast members. It goes without saying that the other American presidential candidate this year is a woman; this battle of the sexes is playing out on a political and pop-culture stage, with a small, but vocal subsection of males falling on their worst instincts in order to maintain some form of dominance in both society and the representation of society through the media.

[easy-tweet tweet=”‘If Ghostbusters becomes a failure, it will have a devastating impact on both female-fronted films'” user=”FilmInquiry” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

Because of this context, it is now going to be impossible to judge Ghostbusters on its own terms. If it becomes a failure critically and commercially, it will have a devastating impact on both female-fronted comedy films and female-fronted blockbusters. This sounds like a worst case scenario, but there is a precedent for this type of behaviour.

After the failure of Tomorrowland, Disney and several other studios erased many sci-fi projects from their slates. After a high profile flop, it is believed by executives that the audience are uninterested in the genre as a whole and not just that specific film. A flop for Feig’s film could have very real, very devastating effects.

Flop or no flop, this movie is going to have consequences

Of course, it isn’t as simple as having a mere hit movie. In this case, it has to be loved. The original Ghostbusters is a strange B-movie, with weird sexual overtones and occult themes that presumably only escaped being a gigantic flop due to an ear worm theme song that was inescapable before release.

It’s an enjoyable mess of a film, that watched now seems strange to have been such an enduring piece of pop-culture. As a studio product designed to make money, the reboot is likely to feel less weird and more sanitised: in stark contrast to what made the original so unique amongst blockbusters of its era.

Both Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray have publicly stated a preference for the reboot over the original (although this is rumoured to be because of lawsuits threatened their way if they didn’t help promote it). Instead of taking this as a sigh of relief, that vocal minority who saw him praise it as “funnier than the original” responded in the only way they knew how: with intense hate.

One tweet following his 30th May declaration of love for the reboot is possibly the most offensive response imaginable:

“They raped your baby and you’re thanking them”.

The most incredible thing is this response is from somebody whose bio claims they are an “anti-fascist”, but when discussing something as inane as a Ghostbusters movie, he feels emotionally compelled to indulge in the very same dialogue of the gutter.

Could it be a fact that this movie’s existence is turning rational people insane? Instead of being greeted with indifference like so many other blockbusters, here you have to pick a side for or against its reason for being without even seeing it. When I saw Warcraft at cinemas recently, the trailer for Ghostbusters was greeted with a fanboy-type guy in the row opposite shouting “No!” at the screen.

He was the only person who felt obliged to criticise, a likely reflection that the public don’t really care about the film, but those that do, want you to know how they feel. To use the woeful, but commonly used, expression; they feel like their childhoods have been “raped” and they are angry as hell about it.

Sony attempted to disable comments across most Youtube promotional material for the film too, but stopped one step before they realised they’d silence the critics and free speech. Sure, those critics may sometimes offer poor arguments without seeing the film itself, but there is no such thing as bad publicity.

After all, there are plenty of rational arguments against the film that the studio are trying to trying to erase from the public consciousness: the offensiveness of green lighting a remake so soon after the death of Harold Ramis, as well as the aforementioned poor CGI and awkward humour. These arguments need to be heard, because if they aren’t, anybody with an aversion to Ghostbusters is likely to be banded together with Men’s Rights Activists, despite rational thinking.

The trailers may give a bad representation of the film, but criticism on them can’t be silenced just because of a prejudiced minority.

Conclusion

It is fine to hate the new Ghostbusters. In fact, it is fine to boycott it on the grounds of it being another unnecessary remake to a beloved cornerstone of 80’s pop culture. But the promotional campaign has been blown way out of proportion into a battle of the sexes and bizarre socio-political argument.

It is remarkable how something so inane is beginning to represent how divided we have become as a society. Are we really that passionate over something this unimportant? As a result, it has transformed into a “life and death” situation for women in movies, which very few people criticising it would ever want it to be.

The remarkable leap forward we are continuing to make in terms of groundbreaking media representation for everybody other than straight white guys would be ground to a halt, all because of some dumb blockbuster. Whether you like it or not, the outcome of this movie will mark a pivotal turning point for pop-culture, that will either develop blockbuster inclusivity or start to withdraw from that ideal. Let the think pieces begin.

What are your thoughts on the new Ghostbusters? Have internet commenters made it harder to express personal opinion?

Ghostbusters shuffles into UK cinemas on July 11 and on US cinemas on July 15. All international release dates are here.