Druid: "I cast healing word on the bard." GM: "What's the range on that?" Druid: "60 feet." Bard: "I've been teaching him to project, really cast from the diaphragm."
My favorite part of this is that there was a period of time where Archie just expectantly watched Reggie cut the crust off his pizza for what was probably like two minutes and was just wondering how the fuck that was going to turn into half a pizza.
“Archie-” “Jughead, shut up. I wanna see where he’s going with this.”
I admit, I’ve only seen this movie once and I haven’t seen the original in many years, but I think the new film’s jokes are a little more cerebral (to use the term the film itself used) than the old film’s. And, I suspect I missed a bunch as have some of the reviewers I’ve seen. SPOILERS follow:
I remember the old film as having mostly slapstick comedy. Also male-type humor, like making fun of the EPA guy’s ‘equipment’ and Rick Moranis’ distinct lack of machismo, despite his best efforts at presenting himself as a studly, popular man about town. Also stuff like making Sigourney Weaver’s character get possessed and then want to have sexy times with Bill Murray after literally being sucked into her refrigerator.
This one, though, had a bunch of jokes that you had to have some background for in order to think they were funny. You have to know the full name of the actor on the screen to get one. You have to have seen JAWS to get one. You have to have lived in either New York or New Jersey to get one. (OK, so you probably don’t have to have lived there, but I can say that having lived on the ‘other side’ for two years, that joke was way funnier to me than it was to my daughter, who hasn’t.) You have to know about all the internet comments that have swarmed around this film ever since it was announced to get several of the jokes. You have to look in the background and see Taxi Driver and Willard up on the marquees in Times Square and then understand the connection between those films and the antagonist of this film. (Hint: It’s the social outcast and his actions thing.) And, probably most importantly, you have to have seen the first film.
You also have to interpret the things you see like Holtzmann’s ‘Screw U’ necklace and the very 1980s suits that Erin wears. (Seriously, in 1984 I had the same suit she’s wearing at the beginning, except that mine was a different color.)
And, you have to take into consideration the things like the first ghost being that of a woman who had been locked in the basement for years in a house owned by a racist, privileged man.
Compare, for example, the scene where Erin is trying to get through the glass wall of the restaurant to the scene in the first film where Rick Moranis is trying to do the same thing. In the old film, there’s the dorky guy who just wants to be popular banging on the glass walls and being ignored by the rich patrons inside while he is chased down by wild supernatural animals. In the new film, there’s the female scientist banging on the glass walls and trying to slide them open so that she can warn the rich, influential patrons inside of the coming disaster. She isn’t ignored, though, she’s called ‘sad’ for trying to get through the glass. Sure, it’s a glass wall instead of a glass ceiling, but it seems pretty clear that she’s fighting ghosts of the past (look again at the movies on the marquees at the end and the ghost pilgrims and such in the final showdown), both literal and figurative here. Rick Moranis’ character from the original film could easily have been the antagonist in this film. They are treated much the same, but while he is merely ignored, she is insulted as well.
An important moment in the film is when the antagonist is explaining his motivation. He feels like he’s been mocked and ignored and cast aside for his entire life. But when Abby tells him that he sure as hell isn’t the only one in that situation, having had a similar experience, and that he shouldn’t go through with his plan, he ignores her. He even stated earlier in the film that he recognized Patty’s similar plight in her job, but he still doesn’t care. Her problem isn’t his problem. He just wants to be admired and followed, even if he has to become a ghost himself to get there. It’s all about his big, male ego, and how that outweighs anyone else. He blames everyone but himself, while the women he’s talking to try to get him to see that, yeah, there’s a lot of oppression going on and a lot of jerks out there, and they’ve had a really hard time of it, too, but they’re going to keep on working to make things better and maybe he could at least see that good people exist, too. But he’d literally rather die than see things from their perspective and count them as equally important as himself.
There are a lot of ghosts, both literal and figurative, in this film. Lots of stuff being recalled from the 80s and the 70s and even Pilgrim days. But in the end, it is so very timely that these women decide to go for change and perseverance and community while most of the men are either trying to deny the problem exists or just blow the whole thing all to hell if they can’t get enough wontons in their soup.
I don’t think this is a movie for men. I see a lot of male critics reacting with confusion and horror about a movie that isn’t made to cater to them. Like, this is so unusual for them, they are so confused and bewildered and frightened. Most are just “I didn’t like it for some reason, I don’t know why” and some are transforming their confusion into hatred. They fear and hate what they do not understand.
I’ve seen a lot of complaints from men online about how the men in the movie are all “stupid, sexy & stupid, cowardly, or assholes!“ Oh, how … how awful … to be represented like that in a movie. I have no idea what that feels like, in 90% of mainstream media. Also it’s not accurate. The museum manager is a normal man, Charles Dance is a pretty typical university Dean, the delivery guy is funny and ultimately provides approval of the team as a normal everyman, the government agents don’t say anything nasty as far as I recall.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying they didn’t find it funny either. Which baffles me, because not only did I laugh the whole way through, so did the theater I was sitting in, which had men, women, young and old, and plenty of kids, in attendance.
Personally I’m a big fan of any movie that includes women attacking a man in the dick. Too few films show that. More on that in THIS POST.
Male fanboys are uncomfortable with a villain who is a pathetic creepy loser with a bad job who waitresses don’t like. Seriously, I couldn’t make this up if I tried: male fanboys hate the villain being the kind of creepy guy every woman has met on the subway and dreads to meet again. Honestly, you could begin and end the conversation right there. It’s like the Immortan Joe thing from last year all over again, but worse. The heroes battle a representation of Modern Male Entitlement, and hooboy do bitter fanboys not like that one bit.
So while I know all the hype is about Holtzman (and I like Holtzman), when I came out of the movie and started casually looking at Ghostbusters stuff on tumblr, my brain went straight to Patty Tolan as far as head canons and stuff.
SO PATTY TOLAN:
-alone in her subway booth reading books on the history of NYC when things are slow
-tolan hanging out in the deepest depths of the library til closing
-feeling a little lonely sometimes and spitting out nerdy history facts to passengers about the history of the subway because she’s bored.
-what if she wanted to go to grad school and she just couldn’t afford it and she was like eh I’ll just read whatever the grad students read like good will hunting style?
-when she was a kid, she was the biggest tallest girl around and other kids tried to get her to fight with other girls and she was like ‘fuck off, i’m reading’ (ok that one’s 100% taken from my own life being a big and tall bookworm girl)
-patty tolman now being accepted into a misfit group of total nerds.
-i liked to think of her being so useful in the future like they’re trying to figure out some poltergeist situation in a weird building and patty’s like (shrug) “it’s probly because the building was originally financed by the secret cult of floobityjoob in 1897″ and they’re like “huh” and she’s like “oh my GOD how do y’all not know about the cult of floobityjoob???” like that. she’s the giles!
Ways that Ghostbusters 2016 is Better than the Original
The nerdy guy doesn’t get the girl. That was a standard trope in the 80s, and the Ghostbusters of 1984 was no exception. The lack of consent factor that makes all of the Zhoul-possessed Sigourney Weaver scenes difficult to watch is not an issue here, because there is no romance in the new Ghostbusters, creepily possessed or otherwise. Yes, Erin (Kristin Wiig) awkwardly hits on Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) but it’s generally met with disapproval from her fellow Ghostbusters (if not laughter) and Kevin seeming to be oblivious to it. And even better than the nerdy guy being the hero is the fact that the nerdy guy is the villain and the nerdy girls save the world. Boom.
An appreciation for their receptionist by the Ghostbusters. I loved Janine as a kid. As a child, I thought that Janine pining quietly for Egon was romantic. Now it pisses me off. That and the fact that nobody paid any attention to her, generally speaking, because she was competent and therefore invisible. As doofy and dumb as Kevin is, and even though Erin hits on him, the team still values him and learns to work with him because they genuinely care about him. That’s not subtext. That’s actual text.
Using the “ghost” as an allegorical commentary. One of the themes in this movie is the importance of being believed. Yes, in this movie, it’s about being believed about ghosts. Erin talks about how she saw a ghost when she was 8, every night for a year. Her parents didn’t believe her, and she went into therapy. Abby (Melissa McCarthy) was the only one who believed her, which was one of the reasons they became friends. It’s not that much of a stretch to think about all the things that women are also often not believed about, as children or as adults. And that part of the movie, thankfully, and pointedly, doesn’t devolve into comedy. It lets the moment of remembered trauma be serious.
Real friendship between the Ghostbusters. The other moment of seriousness that is allowed to be serious is at the very end, when Jillian (Kate McKinnon) stands up to give the gals a toast. Up to this point, the majority of Kate McKinnon’s screentime has been devoted to sight gags and making straight girls question their sexuality, both of which she excels at.
I think you've already said something about this, but the fact that Ghostbusters has four action women who aren't sexualised is so important to me + somehow the fact that Holtzmann is not sexualised makes her even more attractive to me???
hoooo BOY let me tell you my Thoughts on this one, anon. Buckle your damn seatbelt.
Part 1: The Non-Sexualized Costumes
First of all, let me start by quoting from this post that I love from @cloama:
McCarthy, Wiig, Jones and McKinnon in this movie are not funny-hot, like Cameron Diaz dorky dancing in a pair of underoos in Charlie’s Angels. They’re just funny and serving you soft-butch, wild-butch, nerd-chic and (albeit a little too stereotypical) cut-a-bitch realness
It was true before the movie came out and it somehow rings even truer now. How easy (and lazy) would it have been to make the jumpsuits sexy? Skintight catsuits with zippers down to show off maximum cleavage like a Sexy Ghostbuster ™ Halloween costume. Honestly it wouldn’t have surprised me, since even Black Widow and Wonder Woman apparently aren’t allowed to kick ass on screen without wedges are part of their costumes.
But the jumpsuits were baggy and painfully practical and entirely unsexy, and so were the rest of their wardrobes. The way these women dressed was so real; it was work-appropriate and casual and most of it looked pretty damn comfortable. They wear cute rain boots. I love those rain boots. There were no ass-shots or gratuitous naked scenes or that godforsaken scene where Plain Female Character has to get dressed up Because of Plot Reasons and we discover she’s been Bangable All Along.
This movie does not give two shits about the Male Gaze. It doesn’t care if you want to fuck these women.
Part 2: How did all this wlw fanservice even happen
Okay, so idk if ya’ll have noticed but I’ve been devoting a lot of time and blogging to the marvel of modern media that is Jillian Holtzmann, trying to figure out what the hell it is that makes her so appealing. And I think you just nailed the answer: the movie wasn’t trying to present her as sexy at all.
Despite the fact that sexuality and attraction is one of the most fluid, hard to quantify things in the entire world, there’s a very narrow idea of what makes a woman “sexy” in modern media.
…yep, there it is. Performing femininity is key, and that mean immaculate make up, push up bra, revealing clothing, long well-cared for hair. High heels factor into it a lot. And I’m not saying these women aren’t attractive or that they don’t look good, but…
As a woman who sometimes performs some degree of femininity myself, I understand what a pain in the ass it is. More often than not I look at a woman who’s meant to be a sex symbol and all I can think of is how painful those shoes must be, how long that makeup must have taken, is that bra hurting her back? The way most women are presented as sexual is laboriously unsexy, because it’s all so fake by nature.
(This is in no way a slam against real, non-fictional women who chose to present themselves in any of these ways. You look rad.)
You know that gif from Community where Donald Glover is talking about how he prefers women in pajamas over lingerie because he just wants to know that they’re comfortable? It’s like that.
ENTER HOLTZMANN.
Like I said, this movie doesn’t give two shits if you think Holtzmann is sexy. She’s not presented in any of the ways usually used to sexualize female characters. Her wardrobe choices are violently weird and mostly body-concealing (we never even got to see the crop top under those overalls), she makes a lot of weird faces and does weird voices, she’s not geeky in a cute feminine way but in way that likes blowing shit up and doing god-only-knows what with cadavers.
(You’re an ENGINEER, Holtzmann. What the hell do you need a dead guy for?)
And yet. She’s completely and utterly confident in all of this. Kate McKinnon sells all of Holtzmann’s capital-w-Weird with so much confidence that you have, like, zero doubt this is Holtzmann exactly as Holtzmann wants to be. She’s loud and weird and really unapologetic about making sex eyes at her teammates and also at guns. She’s not sexy because she’s in underwear with perfect makeup; she’s sexy because she’s wildly magnetically strange and is having a blast doing it and you want in.
And, yeah, she’s sexy because she’s really REALLY obviously casually confidently gay and hits on her teammates with style and aplomb in charmingly odd ways.
Dear Hollywood: less Sexy Women ™, more women who are so cool and confident and fun that they become sex goddesses along the way. There’s a difference.
