What Are Your Mandatory Character Traits?

In 1984, audiences watched as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore—a.k.a. the Ghostbusters—protected New York from supernatural perils. They did it again in 1989 in Ghostbusters II, the movie’s sequel. And they did it in an animated TV series in 1986 and another in 1997, sequels to the first and second movie, respectively, as well as in a 2009 videogame, also a sequel to the second.

In 2016, significantly smaller audiences watched as Abby Yates, Erin Gilbert, and Jillian Holtzmann—a.k.a. the Ghostbusters—likewise protected New York from supernatural perils. This Ghostbusters movie didn’t lead to sequel movies, TV series, or videogames. It was the target of misogynist and racist vitriol, which, though spewing from a small minority, spread far and wide over social media. Even before the movie was released, Answer the Call’s trailer had become the most disliked on YouTube at the time, and the movie’s IMDb page was the subject of a coordinated, and ultimately successful, effort to lower its pre-screening rating. Ghostbusters: Answer the Call never recovered.

Why couldn’t Ghostbusters be women?

Leslie Jones, who played Patty Tolan, was attacked on social media with vicious slurs and stereotypes. In Tolan’s case, misogyny intersected with racism. Twitter ultimately suspended then-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos for his part of it, but he was only one bad apple of a whole rotten barrel.

The misogyny and racism directed at Answer the Call caught a lot of people off guard. Everyone understood the movie wasn’t a sequel, the next chapter of the story started by the previous movies. They also understood it wasn’t a retcon, revealing something new or correcting something about them. While the previous two movies and their spinoffs all occurred in the same fictional world, Answer the Call occurred in a separate one. It was self-contained. Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston still did—and still could continue to do—their ghostbusting independent of the ghostbusting that Abby, Erin, and Jillian did.

Though Answer the Call takes place in a different world, it necessarily privileges that world. While Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston were patrolling New York in their version of events, the moviemakers focused on Abby, Erin, and Jillian’s doing so in theirs. Rejects cancel new installments—sequels, retcons, or remakes—by also placing the new installments in a different world. While Abby, Erin, and Jillian were now patrolling New York in their version of events, those who rejected that version focused on Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston doing so in theirs.

We’ve got a theory as to why so much hatred could be directed at a rejected world. Ignoring wasn’t enough. Misogynists and racists, even if they ignored Answer the Call, at some level still recognized a connection between the all-male and all-female versions of the Ghostbusters. Each protects New York from the paranormal. Each faces skeptical scientists who scoff at their name and mission. Using high-tech gadgets and creative tactics, each are ultimately vindicated and celebrated as heroes.

Each of us thinks of ourselves in particular ways, and our sense of individual identity is particularly strong. So strong, in fact, that we become uncomfortable when other people’s identities get called into question. That, we think, is why there’s so much prejudice against trans people asserting their identities, and why issues of race can be so triggering. Remakes like Answer the Call hold a mirror up to its audience—fictionally but also in real time—to make us imagine what if we were different from the identities that we—factually but also currently—inhabit.

That’s why just asking those questions can make misogynists and racists squirm. If Ghostbusters can switch gender and race and still be Ghostbusters—even if only possible ones—then maybe actual people could switch gender or race and still be who they are in other possible worlds too. Even though Answer the Call merely remade Ghostbusters—and even though the remake could be rejected—it still raised the possibility that gender and race aren’t fixed. These central parts of everyone’s identity are possibly up for grabs. And even only hinting at that possibility, and even then only implicitly, may have been enough to trigger people already insecure.

When in 2012 DC remade—or, as the preferred term in comics, “rebooted”—their World War II-era superhero Alan Scott, a.k.a. Green Lantern, The Christian Post reported a pastor’s tweet: “Thanks to our depraved society, the Green Lantern will now be known as the Pink Nightlight.” “Nightlight,” presumably, because nightlights are used by kids scared of the dark. “Pink” because this Alan Scott was gay.

IHateTheMedia.com responded similarly: “Remember when comic books were just comic books? When a boy could read his comic and dream about being a hero? And a girl could decide whether she wanted to be Betty or Veronica? No political agenda being shoved down your throat? Those days are gone.”

Why couldn’t superheroes be gay?

Setting aside the not-insignificant gender politics of Archie comics—and IHateTheMedia’s implication that Betties and Veronicas couldn’t be heroes—the anti-gay hatred was about more than nostalgia. Yes, some older fans had fond memories of the original Green Lantern, which they didn’t want altered. But those memories weren’t being altered. DC wasn’t revealing that Alan Scott of the 1940s had always been a closeted gay man who was now coming out. Though writers a decade later would retcon exactly that, in 2012 DC was instead creating a new Alan Scott, one who had always been openly gay and existed in a different universe from the original. Even though this new Alan Scott did now exist, the old Alan Scott continued to exist too—in the same imaginary world where he always had.

Surely the infinite range of the merely possible was big enough for both?

As we’ve seen, revision backlash isn’t always only about changing something old. Sometimes it’s about adding something new to the category of the possible. That’s why rejects are sometimes insufficient, since they do just that. According to internet trolls who attacked Ghostbusters: Answer the Call’s trailer on YouTube and the movie’s IMDb page, no Ghostbusters in any possible universe are female. According to these anti-gay protests, no Green Lantern in any possible universe is gay. Though both groups of people were wrong—the movie and the comic are proof of that—their worldview requires metaphysical unpacking. That leads to another possibility question.

Could Peter Parker, the secret identity of Spider-Man, be anything other than a straight, white man?

A 2011 agreement between Sony Pictures and Marvel (hacked and leaked online in 2015) stipulated that the “Mandatory Spider-Man Character Traits” must include “Male” and “Not a homosexual,” with the caveat “unless Marvel has portrayed that alter ego as homosexual.” That last part is important since “Spider-Man” is a kind of job title that different people could hold at different time—or at least different males could. The primary male, however, is Peter Parker, who also has a list of required Character Traits, including: “He is Caucasian and heterosexual.” Apparently that’s mandatory, required of writers and essential of the character. According to Sony and Marvel, every possible Peter Parker is male, white, and straight.

Except that’s demonstrably false. The 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as well as its two-part 2023 and 2024 sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, include multiple female and non-white versions of Peter Parker. Other traits on the “mandatory” list are equally questionable. In time, they’ll likely be invalidated too.

Regardless, the agreement still reveals something about the character—or rather, about the 2011 fans of the character whom Sony very much wanted to please. Spider-Man was introduced in 1962, and during the character’s six-decade history the majority of fans have been male, white, and straight. Spider-Man didn’t acquire those traits by chance.

The character’s current audience is not as male, white, and straight as it once was, but many fans still are. And some of those male, white, and straight fans have expressed a range of misogynistic, racist, and homophobic reactions to similar changes. While the focus of their reactions has explicitly been on remade characters, their implicit focus has been on themselves and whether they have Mandatory Character Traits. Perhaps they are worried about the metaphysics of their own identities.

Few things, if any, are nearer or dearer to each of us than how we view ourselves. “Identity politics” might (or might not) get derisive cackles from certain political quarters, but the metaphysics of personal identity is inescapable. And anything that challenges it can become uncomfortable really fast. If some merely possible character is female, non-white, or gay, and still Peter Parker, then some possible version of themselves is too. As with Ghostbusters and Green Lantern, the concern isn’t about remaking fictional characters. It’s about the essential characteristics, or in the terms of the Sony-Marvel legal agreement “Mandatory Character Traits,” of actual people.

Especially themselves.

[excerpted from Chapter 1: “Rejecting Possibilities” of Nat Goldberg’s and my Revising Reality]