The audience around me seemed to love the 3D viewing of Ghostbusters as much as I did. The tweens may not have caught all of the delightful '80s pop culture references and cameos, but that's okay. The reboot was delightfully comedic, full of ectoplasmtastic effects and buoyed by a focus on female friendship and general badassery. Best of all, it asserted that women can indeed bust ghosts (duh!), and we also can support each other in fighting for our dreams and against the patriarchy in all of its earthly and supernatural forms. So we laughed a lot, and we cheered wildly when the villain got a much-deserved, proton-fueled kick in the nuts. Boo-yah (emphasis on the "boo")!
The movie, after almost two years of brotastic abuse for simply casting women, is a practice in upending the status quo. A few meta jokes about idiots leaving YouTube comments ("ain't no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts") p0wned that malevolence, and they didn't stop there. Tropes bust more frequently than ghosts. Women are shown supporting each other, with attention paid to how much it hurts when female friendship and professional relationships dissolve. They are neither rescued by a man nor performing for the "prize" of a relationship with one. The eye-candy role is a guy. Stunts are gleefully delivered without being performed for the male gaze. None of the Ghostbusters die in punishment for the transgression of independence. There's not even a fat lady joke in sight.
Stripped of all of old patterns left Ghostbusters with a new, exciting openness. At times, the simplicity felt unsettling, actually, but ultimately it sinks in that what is missing is as toxic as the unleashed spirits. Unladen, the women were free to just rock. In fact, a key scene has the squad fighting a demon ghost where the Ghostbusters overtake a stereotypical metal rock concert stage and drown out the dumb, male band with their awesome busting. When Kate McKinnon grabs and smashes a guitar in scene-stealing celebration, then says she can't afford to replace it, she's enacting only one of the movie's many notices to the patriarchy. We will grab your power symbols and make them ours, the movie says, we rock, and we can't afford to go back to the way it used to be.
Leslie Jone's character often mentions events from history as correlates to ghosts, subtly making the point that connection to injustice is the real thing that haunts us. The ghosts in the subway seem to have been created following gruesome death sentence electrocutions, for example. And before that, it's the ghost of a woman who died while imprisoned by her family who reunites the power team of Kristen Wiig's Erin and Melissa McCarthy's Abby in an inversion of classic fairytale plots. "She's so beautiful!" coos McCarthy. The imprisoned baron daughter's Lilith-like bid for freedom and revenge essentially conjures the female ghostbuster team.
But just as that ghost may have represented the beautiful power of becoming free from the patriarchy, the city-threatening ghosts stand-in for the patriarchy themselves via their summonsing overlord. The villain was a great representation of the type of Gamer Gate bro or hyper right wing nut who bemoans his loss of privilege. The dude's abuse of the book written by Erin and Abby is a great symbol of this theme. He literally took their work, learned from it, defaced it, and then intended to gain paranormal power of an army of ghouls from it.
But sorrynotsorry, basement buddy. He meets busters who ain't afraid of no patriarchy, and it is fantastic to ride along as they take him down. Among the best of the fight scenes is one that brought the house down with laughter and cheers: all four ghostbusters firing straight on into a ghost-crotch in a highly rewarding and much-deserved proton kick to the balls. Take that, sexism in Hollywood and sexism on the Internet and sexism in academia and sexism every-damn-where. May you melt into ectoplasm and fall into the vortex, never to be seen again.
Something I would love to see again, though? Wiig, Jones, McCarthy and McKinnon fighting ghosts. We have plenty more cultural baggage for them to fight in the form of spirits with or without pants. Bring it on in the form of a sequel. These bitches sure can fight ghosts, no question. If you didn't see it opening weekend, make a plan to see Ghostbusters soon. Show Hollywood, and all the old ghosts out there, that you are willing to fight for a new city of our own.
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