Someone just sent me a URL to a video about “Why it’s important to be honest about Ghostbusters.”

blue-author:

It’s a 14 minute video, and I’m not spending 14 minutes out of my life watching a video some rando sends to me without a word of explanation, especially when all the top comments on the video are things to the effect of “Great video, I agree with everything, except the wage gap isn’t real.” 

But don’t worry, folks! I’m also not about to dismiss it without giving it a chance. See, I don’t need to be convinced. I already agree with the premise: it is important to be honest about Ghostbusters.

It’s important that we point out that this movie is a huge and affirming love letter to geeks and geek culture, unlike the male version from 1984 in which nerds were losers, punchlines, stooges, and bad guys, in which even the nerdy good guys (Ray and Egon) were the butt of jokes for their gullibility (Ray) and “weirdness” (Egon) and existed only to make the cool slacker look good.

It’s important that we point out that everything people say they like about the male version—stuff like great comedians given free license to riff off of scenes and each other and create their own characters and chemistry—is fully present in this movie. 

It’s important that we point out that everything we’re supposed to hate about Ghostbusters—low-brow humor like slapstick comedy and jokes about body parts and body functions, all the problems stemming from the arrogance or ignorance of men, the whole world-threateing ghost infestation plot actually stemming from technology created by a disaffected man—was also present in the boy version.

It’s important that when people say things like, “I don’t object to female characters, but there’s no reason to change the gender of established characters,” that we challenge this statement which is either ignorant or dishonest, as the four characters in Ghostbusters are all original creations, not gender-swapped analogues of the ones from the male version. 

There’s no female Egon, no female Winston, no female Ray, etc. This is part and parcel of why Paul Feig went with a fresh take: those characters already exist, and they are so iconic there’s no reason to try to do them again.

It’s important that we’re honest about its flaws—and it does have them, I mean, every movie does—but part of that honesty is admitting that the male Ghostbusters was also flawed.

It’s important that we’re honest about what it means for so many women, including the often-overlapping categories of female geeks and queer women, to be able to go see a movie with women like ourselves as the heroes, to see them overcoming challenges that aren’t just a bunch of gift-wrapped misogyny, sexualized violence, demeaning language, body shaming, etc, to see them just be the heroes for once.

It’s important that we’re honest in pushing back against the noisy narrative that says the marketing was “nothing but girl power and misandry”, that the movie itself is nothing more than that.

Let’s be honest about Ghostbusters: the hate is trumped-up, the excuses for the hate paper-thin, the majority of the negative user reviews are faked, the people pushing a biased narrative are the ones who staked their soul on the movie sucking from the day it was announced, and the desperate and increasingly sexist and racist backlash against it is getting louder now because the positive buzz from people who’ve actually seen it is likely to make it the same kind of slow-burning build-up that have propelled previous Paul Feig releases to certified hit status.

If I’m going to be honest about this movie (and I’ve been making the case for this whole post about doing just that)… no, it’s never going to take the place of the male version in my heart. Why? Because I saw the boy Ghostbusters when I was 5 or 6 and so for basically my whole life, my whole family has walked around quoting it. If you average out the times I’ve seen it over the years I’ve been alive, it’s probably more than once a year. It’s hard to beat a thirty yer head start. 

But there’s a whole generation of kids seeing Ghostbusters, their Ghostbusters, for the first time. And if we’re going to be honest, it’s more about them than it is about us. They’re seeing a movie in which women are respected and have agency, not used as prizes to be pursued. They’re seeing a movie in which geeks are vindicated, and the people who mock them are the bad guys. They’re seeing a movie in which the queer-coded characters aren’t the bad guys, for once. They’re seeing a movie in which age and physical shape are not disqualifiers for a woman’s personhood.

And let’s be honest: this is all a good thing.

I love this post, and by the way, I watched the video and thought is was mostly garbage.