The Ghostbusters Reboot

Today, I’m going to do a presentation on the importance of female representation in mainstream movies and I'm going to especially focus on the Ghostbusters reboot from 2016.

First, I’m going to study the misogyny around the movie and its release.

Then, I’m going to focus on the importance of the diverse representation in the movie.

I.

The new Ghostbusters movie is a reboot from the famous comedy made in 1984. It was released in July 2016, directed by Paul Feig and stars Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Chris Hemsworth.

As you can tell, the major difference between these two movies is that the second one keeps the overall plot but the male cast is completely replaced by a female one. While this can be seen as a casual or an amazing initiative, the overall response wasn’t so great.

Indeed, as soon as the remake and the cast were announced, both the actors and the directors were victims of a huge misogynist backlash. Men were outraged that women would portray their beloved manly and masculine characters. It actually got to the point where the so-called meninists gathered and made the trailer the most disliked one on YouTube.

There followed a plethora of hate comments and tweets of ever kind, sexist, racist, you name it.

I saw an article from the website rawstory which really made me laugh and it is called “All lady ‘Ghostbusters’ announced, destroying last vestige of manhood left in America”. I quote “Ghostbusters, like Caddyshack, occupies the part of the male brain that never grew older than twelve — the rest of the brain is dedicated to thinking about boobs and, yes, there is quite an overlap — and thus is a featured attraction at the Island of Lost Boys Who Still Think Fart Jokes Are Hilarious Cineplex.” In this article, they wittily show that masculinity is actually a really fragile thing.

More seriously, I looked up the tweets and comments and it just saddened me. I put a few but there were so many that I had to select the least crude and horrible ones: = ‘I’m not racist but…”

Also, this misogyny is also very much present in the movie industry in itself.  Since the beginning, professionals said that the movie would be a huge commercial failure. However, as the Forbes website showed in an article, the review should’ve been better, compared to other movies.

Ghostbusters first weekend US figures: $46m

It had a $144m budget, so in its first week it made 32% of that.

Descriptions: ‘Lacklustre’, ‘problematic’, ‘will haunt Sony’

Star Trek Beyond first weekend US figures: $59.6m

It had a $189m budget, so in its first week it made 30% of its budget.

Reporting: ‘Dominates’, ‘wins big’

II.

We can say that the reboot of Ghostbusters is quite ground-breaking in its genre. Feminist films have already been made in the past but this one is especially important as it is a mainstream movie. There has been a huge publicity around it, and people of all genders and all ages can watch it to have a good time.

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