Open Thread and Link Farm, Empty Chairs At Empty Theaters Edition

  1. In praise of ambivalence—“young” feminism, gender identity, and free speech | Practical Ethics
    A post criticizing how leftists have responded to Alice Dreger and Germaine Greer. There’s some back-and-forth between me and the author in the comments.
  2. A discussion of the phrase “Not All Men,” again with me participating in the comments.
  3. A Feminist Defense of Cinderella
  4. Harrassment, Racism, & “Harmless Torturers”
    Also really interesting to think about in light of “what does it matter if I vote?” arguments.
  5. Trope Anatomy 101: Your Body Is Not Your Confession | The Book Smugglers
    Really good essay on how fat people are presented in media.
  6. The 2016 Hugo Awards: Two Weeks Out
    If the price tag isn’t too high and you’re interested in the Hugos, please don’t sit this year out. It’s okay if you haven’t read everything.
  7. Beyond Panic and Punishment: Brock Turner and the Left Response to Sexual Violence | Common Dreams
    Argues that calls for harsher jail sentences aren’t where the left should go.
  8. Ghostbusters Enjoys $46m Opening Weekend Entirely On Strength Of Guys From The Internet Sitting Alone In Empty Theaters With Their Phone Cameras
    Overall, it seems that Ghostbusters is neither a huge hit, nor a huge flop. Which is fine with me. I’m bugged by so many people being so eager to see this film flop, though.
  9. Zero Tolerance: Censored by the Left | Alice Domurat Dreger
    By “censorship,” Dreger means that a website declined to publish her article. Because that’s totally what censorship means. It’s not as if “Everyday Feminism” has a free speech right to choose what and what not to publish.
  10. Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: What’s wrong with Airbnb?
    ” Overall, it’s really hard to say whether the net impact of Airbnb is to reduce overall income and wealth inequality or increase it. To the extent that Airbnb diminishes the Hilton family fortune, while making it cheaper for tourists from Tulsa to visit New York city, it may actually reduce inequality in income and wealth.”
  11. Meet Dani Mathers: The Playboy Playmate From Hell – The Daily Beast
    She took a photo of an unwitting nude woman in the locker room and made fun of the woman’s body on snapchat.
  12. Sexual Harassment Is Invisible to Half the Population – Bloomberg View
    “If you rarely or never see sexual harassment, then it can be hard to believe a group that says that it’s really common and that legal redress is required.”
  13. Box Turtle Bulletin » Today In History: 1962: New York’s WBAI Radio Broadcasts Talk Show Featuring Eight Gay Men
  14. Firing Roger Ailes and exiling Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t going to fix much of anything — Quartz
  15. Matte Shot – a tribute to Golden Era special fx: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY MATTE ART: Part Two
    The matte paintings used to create the city in Mary Poppins are especially beautiful.
  16. Ash’s Regency | Gerhard Art
    Cerebus background artist Gerhard’s stunning new drawing of the Regency Hotel’s back side.
  17. Urban Myth: Black Lives Matter Protests Kill Girl Waiting for Transplant in Memphis
    Snopes is on the case.
  18. Same-sex couple denied a birthday cake by local bakery
    I think the bakery owner honestly wants the drama. I AM MAKING A STAND!!!!!
  19. Anatomy of An Iconic Image: How this photograph of a protester in Baton Rouge could come to symbolize a movement – Salon.com
  20. Police, Prosecutors and Judges Rely on a Flawed $2 Drug Test That Puts Innocent People Behind Bars – ProPublica
  21. Spideyzine,” a 20-page Spiderman fan comic, is one of the best Spiderman comics I’ve ever read, and you can download it for free.
  22. Gamasutra – Opinion: Being sexy and not sexist – a look at Bayonetta and objectification
    Although this is about a character in a game, the discussion is applicable to fictional characters in general.
  23. Help Support a Harassment Victim | SINMANTYX
    Years ago, Chanty Binx was caught on camera yelling at MRAs. Years later, they are still harassing her. She’s crowdfunding to hire a lawyer.
  24. Why the new ‘Ghostbusters’ is Gamergate’s worst nightmare | The Daily Dot
  25. Google deletes artist’s blog, along with a decade of his work | Fusion
    Yes, it was foolish of him not to back up, but still.
  26. The case of the $629 Band-Aid — and what it reveals about American health care – Vox
  27. US Rep. Steve King preaches literal white supremacy on national television – Vox
  28. Who is this man who seems to die in every terrorist attack?
    The answer: He’s alive, not a victim of a terrorist attack, but several people he knows are engaging in an oddball revenge scheme.
  29. FBI: No Evidence That Orlando Shooter Was Gay : snopes.com
  30. Whole Health Source: Two huge new studies further undermine the “obesity paradox”
    I don’t think these studies are the be-all and end-all, but they’re interesting, and worth linking to because they contradict some of what I’ve argued in the past.
  31. In Memoriam: The VCR, 1956 – 2016 | ThinkProgress
  32. Distributors of Anti-Vax Film Are Trying to Keep an Autistic Rights Advocate From Criticizing It
  33. Woman Cosplays To Work To Beat Stupid Dress Code
  34. In 1995, Wal-Mart Got in Trouble for Pulling a T-Shirt Promising ‘Someday a Woman Will be PRESIDENT!’
  35. 6 Ways I Was Taught to Be a Good Fatty (And Why I Stopped) — Everyday Feminism

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52 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, Empty Chairs At Empty Theaters Edition

  1. 1
    dragon_snap says:

    A short comic about body hair, fat, gender expression, and queering norms of attractiveness: http://www.autostraddle.com/queer-ten-straight-zero-a-comic-about-chin-hair-346538/

  2. 2
    Tamen says:

    Historically, body-shaming women has been considered a man’s game. This week, Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers singlehandedly burst through that glass ceiling with one despicable Snapchat.

    Wow, I know several women who’d wish it were so as it would drastically reduce the amount of body shaming they receive.

  3. 3
    Jacob Schmidt says:

    Hey, my writing made it onto the link farm!

    That Dreger article is precious. She wasn’t just declined publication, she was declined publication from an organization that sought her out in the first place, and they later changed their minds because of some other stuff she’s said. On top of that, she was sought out for a reprint of an article that had already been published and had already, by her words, gone “viral.”

    It’s difficult to think of a way this could be farther from censorship.

  4. 4
    Ampersand says:

    Jacob, which link is yours? (I’m sorry, I know I should be able to remember which link it is, but I have the world’s worst memory).

    Tamen, I agree with you about that sentence. I linked the article mainly because I thought it was sort of a notable event.

    Dragon Snap, thank you for that link! I read it and really liked it.

  5. 5
    Jacob Schmidt says:

    I go by Szhmidty on Tumblr. The 2nd link goes to my blog.

  6. 6
    Ampersand says:

    Oh, you’re Szhmidty! I love your blog.

  7. 7
    Jacob Schmidt says:

    Thank you!

  8. 8
    desipis says:

    In light of what’s going on in Turkey, this story is an interesting example of how easy it is for a ideologically driven legislative body to grant extraordinary powers to an authoritarian executive, enabling them to do an end run around the standard judicial processes (and the constitution), all in response to an apparent crisis.

  9. 9
    Ampersand says:

    You know, if you had just said “what happened to Rohini Sethi at the University of Houston seems wrong; it’s extremist and inappropriate for the student government to punish one of its own members for posting #AllLivesMatter on her Facebook,” I would have agreed with you. (I think they should have just lived with it until the next election cycle; if the voters then chose not to re-elect Sethi, that’s democracy for you.)

    But the way you framed the discussion is itself so extremist that it makes agreeing with you impossible.

  10. 10
    LTL FTC says:

    Let’s leave aside for a minute the fact that Sethi’s punishment borrows heavily from the Maoist concept of struggle session. The UH student government’s Overton Window is so far away from that of the rest of the country – and probably the rest of the student body – that its members are in for a rude shock if they ever decide to substantively engage with the world outside their bubble. Serving as warm bodies at a protest, sure, but would Hillary Clinton want these people going door-to-door for her? Would a Dem running for Senate (in Texas!) want them?

    Could anyone who thinks that a very widely shared sentiment is out of bounds for a supposedly representative deliberative body actually create the change in the country that they’re trying to impose on their little fiefdom?

  11. 11
    Pete Patriot says:

    its members are in for a rude shock if they ever decide to substantively engage with the world outside their bubble. Serving as warm bodies at a protest, sure, but would Hillary Clinton want these people going door-to-door for her? Would a Dem running for Senate (in Texas!) want them?

    I’ve got to say I disagree, these people will matter and it’s terrifying how important they’re going to be. The class of people who run college politics end up running real politics eventually. And small groups of ideologs can very easily hijack government in the right circumstance.

    For instance, neocons on the right and open borders activists on the left are very politically marginal groups of people. They really are extremists with their own agenda and little popular support. No-one elected them because of their ideas, they just got in the right positions and then hijacked 9/11 and the refugee crisis to implement their long term dreams of invading Iraq and reshaping the demographics of Europe.

    There are lots of examples of movements like this, which can stay under the radar but just go for it given the chance. SJWs are at a disadvantage because of their stridency and commitment to ideological purity, but still…

  12. 12
    desipis says:

    But the way you framed the discussion is itself so extremist that it makes agreeing with you impossible.

    Which part do you find extremist (and/or disagree with): the comparison to Turkey, or the functional description of the actions of the student government?

  13. 13
    Ruchama says:

    The class of people who run college politics end up running real politics eventually.

    Has there ever been a time when college politics weren’t ridiculous? I remember once commenting on a group on my campus that was putting up signs talking about how “Amerikkka” is evil, and an older friend said, “Those are the people who’ll be voting Republican in 20 years, but telling themselves that it’s OK, because they were radicals in college.” And, from the couple of people that I’m still in touch with who had supported that group, he’s pretty much right.

  14. 14
    LTL FTC says:

    Has there ever been a time when college politics weren’t ridiculous?

    When I was in college, student government busied itself with throwing dry parties that nobody went to. Campus politics was initially about protesting the 2000 election, then the Iraq War, then it splintered off between mainstream liberals getting involved in electoral politics and keffiyeh-wearing suburban-born radicals prattling on about the intifada, as if blowing up a bus full of commuters in the name of driving the Jews into the sea was anything more than an abstraction to them. The right-wing students entertained themselves with their own little magazine, funded by someone’s rich dad. Nobody tried to shut them down. Nobody tried to de-fund the main student newspaper either.

    It was 15 years ago so I could be mistaken, but I can’t remember any no-platforming of speakers.

    Whatever the issue, the enemy was never on campus. The urge was not to purge, but to change the world writ large.

  15. 15
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    “For instance, neocons on the right and open borders activists on the left are very politically marginal groups of people…they just got in the right positions and then hijacked 9/11 and the refugee crisis to implement their long term dreams of invading Iraq and reshaping the demographics of Europe.”

    So let me get this straight, you’re saying that since the refugee crisis open borders activists have been in power in Europe?

  16. 16
    Ben Lehman says:

    When I was in college, 15 years ago, no-platforming was frequent and in vogue. Lots of shoutyness, splinter groups within splinter groups, and People’s Front of Judea vs Judean People’s Front stuff.

    I think when “just college politics” stuff branches out into legit harassment or flat out hate speech, like for example the fuckers who like to paint Jewish frats with swastikas (whether for White Purity or Palestine or the LOLs), it’s a problem and needs to be reined in. But for the most part, it’s as it ever was, and what happens when you let people who don’t know very much, but think they know everything, run political groups.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  17. 17
    Ruchama says:

    I remember a whole bunch of protests on campus when a group wanted to get all the university logo stuff sold at the campus bookstore made somewhere other than sweatshops, and there was a sit-in in one of the administration buildings. And a feminist group protested Phyllis Schlafly speaking — I don’t think the goal was actually to get her not to speak, but just to make a “We don’t like this” statement. Protestors were outside before the speech wearing “Feminist” stickers, then went inside to listen to her speak, then asked a bunch of “Are you serious about this? Do you know how ridiculous you sound?” type questions in the Q&A afterwards. This all would have been around 2000-2003. And I never thought of my campus as particularly political — it was pretty small groups involved in all of these things.

  18. 18
    LTL FTC says:

    I missed the licensed goods labor protests at my school by a year.

    There is a big difference between protests asking for labor standards in the supply chain and punishing duly elected student leaders for having the audacity to express wrongthink.

  19. 19
    Grace Annam says:

    On the appeal of Donald Trump to working-class people.

    I was particularly struck by Vance’s pointing out that it is fruitless to dismiss structural problems, and at the same time, fruitless to dismiss the power of individual agency and self-discipline. Yes, yes. One of the foundational essentials which is missing from our public discourse is a willingness to understand that both matter, and simultaneously.

    Grace

  20. 20
    Pete Patriot says:

    So let me get this straight, you’re saying that since the refugee crisis open borders activists have been in power in Europe?

    No. I’m saying that before the refugee crisis open-borderers got elected/appointed to key positions in the Greek (Syriza) and German (SDP/CDU) govs, without being too forthcoming about their ideas. When the opportunity arose they then acted to enable migration flows. Now there’s been time to arrange politicial opposition they’re having a tougher time of things.

  21. 21
    Mandolin says:

    Individuality and self-discipline are good and all, but political systems are there to deal with problems with systems. If one of the ways you deal with systems is to figure out ways to empower individuals to practice self-discipline, cool, but that’s a structural solution.

  22. 22
    Ben Lehman says:

    I think it’s important to note that, while Trump is popular with working-class whites, this is part of an ongoing massive partisan shift amongst white people, and the biggest Republican partisans — thus the biggest Trump supporters — are still middle class and wealthy whites.

    It’s uncomfortable, to associate middle class whites with this sort of “low class” open racism and anger and violence. But that’s where it comes from. It’s not fair — in fact, it’s open classism — to use lower class whites as a scapegoat to avoid implicating the middle class and wealthy whites.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  23. 23
    Mandolin says:

    Grace: Seriously, I have no idea why you linked to that article approvingly. It’s pretty shoddy, with contradictions within the guy’s text from paragraph to paragraph.

    And it’s not like anyone on the left is like “oh noes, everyone is the powerless.” This is just “victimhood culture” crap.

  24. 24
    Grace Annam says:

    Mandolin,

    I’m happy to discuss it. Maybe I’m all wet. But it will have to happen Monday at the earliest.

    Grace

  25. 25
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    @Pete Patriot: You do realise that open borders within the EU has been an explicit policy of almost every major EU party (not just the ones you mention) and the EU itself since 1995, right?

    The most significant effect that the refugee crisis has had on European borders is that many of them have been ‘temporarily’ closed.

  26. 26
    MJJ says:

    I’m bugged by so many people being so eager to see this film flop, though.

    From what I have seen from various video critiques, what I think angers a lot of people about the Ghostbusters reboot is that it seems that Paul Feig and Amy Pascal basically said “I don’t care what the fans want, I am going to make this film the way I want and everyone will just have to like it.” So a lot of people feel as if they weren’t respectful to the fans of the original.

    So if the film were to flop, it would be a vindication of sorts.

  27. 27
    MJJ says:

    @Pete Patriot: You do realise that open borders within the EU has been an explicit policy of almost every major EU party (not just the ones you mention) and the EU itself since 1995, right?

    I don’t think Pete Patriot was referring to open borders within the EU when he said “open borders.”

  28. 28
    Harlequin says:

    From what I have seen from various video critiques, what I think angers a lot of people about the Ghostbusters reboot is that it seems that Paul Feig and Amy Pascal basically said “I don’t care what the fans want, I am going to make this film the way I want and everyone will just have to like it.” So a lot of people feel as if they weren’t respectful to the fans of the original.

    I know an awful lot of people who are fans of the original and the reboot. The people who seem to be angry about the reboot, though, mostly have something in common besides being fans of the original, which leads me to believe this explanation is missing some important points…

    This position is not unique to Ghostbusters, either. I feel like Star Trek fans have much more to be angry about w/r/t the new movies than Ghostbusters fans do–since the person in charge of the ST reboot has said in interviews that he’s not a fan of exactly the things many people loved about the originals and that he much preferred Star Wars instead. And lots of Star Trek fans don’t like the reboot. But some saw the reboot films and liked them; and there wasn’t anything like the backlash that Ghostbusters saw. (Maybe about Khan, but still smaller scale, in my memory–could be faulty.) So I don’t think it’s a generic betrayal-of-original-fans reboot problem, either.

  29. 29
    Ampersand says:

    From what I have seen from various video critiques, what I think angers a lot of people about the Ghostbusters reboot is that it seems that Paul Feig and Amy Pascal basically said “I don’t care what the fans want, I am going to make this film the way I want and everyone will just have to like it.” So a lot of people feel as if they weren’t respectful to the fans of the original.

    A lot of fans do feel that Feig and Pascal said that. But as far as I can tell, they never actually said that. Feig has told some of the people attacking the movie to fuck off; but that was after the backlash was already well underway. And, of course, telling a particular group of rude and misogynistic fans off, isn’t the same as telling the fans in general off.

    Vox suggests that a major factor may have been the dashed hopes for Ghostbusters 3, after the Ghostbusters stars (minus Bill Murray) had teased the possibility of GB3 for so many years.

    (Also, good point about Star Trek, Harlequin.)

  30. 30
    desipis says:

    But some saw the reboot films and liked them; and there wasn’t anything like the backlash that Ghostbusters saw.

    The producers of the latest Star Wars and Star Trek movies didn’t go around labelling people who criticised their films as misogynists. The backlash was so significant because the producers of the new Ghostbusters film took a popular franchise, something that united a lot of people, and turns it into a weapon for an ideological war in order to divide people. There wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much backlash if the marketing for the film hadn’t explicitly been framed in a way to start a feminists vs male nerds shit-fight.

  31. 31
    Jake Squid says:

    The backlash was so significant because the producers of the new Ghostbusters film took a popular franchise, something that united a lot of people, and turns it into a weapon for an ideological war in order to divide people.

    From this observer’s POV, not quite. It’s more like some group of people not involved in making the movie turned it into an ideological backlash. But subjectivity being what it is and all…

  32. 32
    Pete Patriot says:

    Nah. The problem is the original Ghostbusters is 80s sexist. And it’s not incidentally 80s sexist, sexism is absolutely core to the characters and plot. So there’s an attempt to social justice the reboot up to make it relevant to the ’10s, which ruins what fans love about the original and gets caught up in an ideological war (and I don’t think that’s what Feig/Pascal wanted, they wanted a big popular blockbuster – they just accidentally blundered into a culture war).

  33. 33
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    “I don’t think Pete Patriot was referring to open borders within the EU when he said “open borders.””

    I was trying to interpret his point charitably, since that’s the only place in Europe that “open borders” could be said to exist.

  34. 34
    desipis says:

    It’s more like some group of people not involved in making the movie turned it into an ideological backlash.

    It was part of the marketing campaign with boththe crew and the director being a part of it.

  35. 35
    desipis says:

    The problem is the original Ghostbusters is 80s sexist.

    From what I’ve read the new one is just as sexist, if it more so. The difference seems to be that in the 80’s version that was a character trait as part of a character arc from morally dubious (i.e. Venkman being a sleeze) through to redeemed hero. The new one seems to portray the sexism towards men as a morally positive thing.

  36. 36
    Eytan Zweig says:

    From what I’ve read the new one is just as sexist, if it more so.

    I haven’t read as much as you seem to have done about the movie, but I’ve actually watched it. From what I’ve seen, that is total and utter nonsense. There is one scene where one of the female characters acts in a rather sexist way towards a male character, and in that scene, another one of the female characters is critical and apologetic about that behaviour. And that’s it as far as overt sexism in this movie.

    As for the two links you gave – the link to the cast photo is indeed emphasising their gender, but I can’t see how it’s an attempt to stir controversy. The Paul Feig article does a bit more pot-stirring, but it’s from 3 years before the movie came out and doesn’t mention it once, so I’d find it hard to believe it was part of the “marketing campaign”.

    (In case anyone wonders, btw, my general opinion of the movie is that it’s a lot of fun, though a bit uneven. The best parts was where the four ghostbusters were interacting with each other. I like it a lot but I don’t love it nearly as much as I love the original Ghostbusters, but I think that may have more to do with the fact that I saw the first one when I was 9 years old and watching it was a formative experience for me, rather than the actual objective qualities of the movies.)

  37. 37
    Elusis says:

    “They made a movie in a franchise that started off very sexist, without the sexism! How dare they get political like that!”

    Er, OK.

    (Free hint: Sexist attitudes and behaviors also have a political valence. It’s disingenuous to only label the absence of sexism as “political.”)

  38. 38
    Ampersand says:

    This cartoon by an anti-feminist – about how American women are horrible and evil and American men should go abroad to find compliant Asian women to date – is amazing in all the wrong ways. If the same cartoonist hadn’t created a ton of other cartoons with similar views, I’d honestly suspect this cartoon of being a false flag.

  39. 39
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Wow, just as you think it can’t another layer of awfulness, it go ahead and does so.

  40. 40
    Elusis says:

    The best thing I can say about that comic is they didn’t make the American women fat.

    (Only, I presume, because the author(s) can’t fathom the idea of being attracted to fat women.)

  41. 41
    RonF says:

    “So there’s an attempt to social justice the reboot up to make it relevant to the ’10s,”

    Interesting. According to this sentence, a movie has to promote what a certain group of people define as social justice in order to be relevant to the present day. Seriously?

    I was reading some commentary on the movie industry in the Chicago Tribune last Thursday or Friday and the author stated how it was obvious that people didn’t want to see movies about war anymore because all the recent ones had failed at the box office, with the exception of American Sniper. He then moved on without any examination of those data. But it seems to me that if he had examined the situation more carefully, what he might have noted was that what rejection of all recent war movies with the exception of American Sniper shows is that Americans don’t want to watch war movies that show American soldiers, sailors and Marines as chiefly emotionally or mentally damaged and powerless victims of (or participants in) politics and corruption. What they want to see are movies that shows the people serving in the American military as dedicated to the ideals of duty and honor and that show courage in the face of adversity in both their service and their daily lives. But the author – and Hollywood in general – are too blinded by their predjudices and biases to understand that. They have a particular viewpoint to promote, and from what I can see they think doing so is more important than making a return on investment.

    This, I think, is what got a lot of people upset about the Ghostbusters reboot. It wasn’t promoted as “Here’s a funny remake of the movie!”, it was promoted as “Here’s the movie with an all-female cast!” The promotional point was not that people should see it because it was funny, it was that it served a particular social justice/feminist agenda and was therefore relevant to the current day.

    I haven’t seen the movie. That’s not political/social commentary. I’m not a big movie fan. I don’t go to movies much (I think I’ve been to 2 this year so far), I don’t watch them on TV (even though I have Xfinity and can call up movies using On-Demand with little effort) and I don’t have a Netflix account. But the promotion of this movie did not make me think “This movie is tremendously funny”, it made me think “These guys want to shove a social viewpoint down my throat”. And the reviews in the Trib didn’t say “This is a really funny movie” either. They were more like “Meh – it has it’s moments.”

  42. 42
    RonF says:

    Here’s my take on that cartoon based on my years of experience working in corporate America:

    Panel 1: This guy is a fool. Any male in management knows that doing this leaves you tremendously vulnerable and is a great way to commit career suicide. Straight guys with any brains never ask a female co-worker out for a date if he’s in management and she’s not. In fact, you don’t even make any comments on their appearance, clothing, etc., on a social basis.

    Panels 2 – 9: Uncommon but entirely plausible.

    Panel 10: She (and in HR, it’s pretty much 95% “she”, but unlike in the STEM field I don’t see anyone thinking it’s a crisis and that we need a big nationwide drive for diversity in HR) would never say that.

    The rest of it is irrelevant to my experience in corporate America and looks pretty ridiculous.

  43. 43
    Ampersand says:

    Back in February of 2015, Donald Trump released this on instragram. He’s not objecting to any publicity for the new Ghostbusters – he’s objecting to the very idea of casting women in those roles. That’s over a year before the trailer was released.

    It wasn’t promoted as “Here’s a funny remake of the movie!”, it was promoted as “Here’s the movie with an all-female cast!”

    Looking at the (poorly made) trailer and the promotional images, it sure doesn’t look like that’s how they promoted the film. I think I saw one publicity photo (out of countless publicity photos) that showed the cast standing with the female crew members and a sign saying “girl power” – but that’s pretty obscure, and not a major part of the publicity campaign.

  44. 44
    Chris says:

    Interesting. According to this sentence, a movie has to promote what a certain group of people define as social justice in order to be relevant to the present day. Seriously?

    Having just seen Ghostbusters, it didn’t really contain any kind of “social justice message.” The fact that every main cast member was a woman was just kind of taken for granted. There were no explicit calls for feminism or “girl power,” the characters were just allowed to be women without anyone drawing attention to it.

    I liked that. The characters themselves were also pretty great, especially Kate McKinnon’s Holtzman, who I understand is becoming something of a queer sex symbol, and for good reason.

    Other than that, it just wasn’t a very good movie. It felt like a first draft, before they brought in someone to punch up the jokes. Many of the more comedic scenes don’t have punchlines, or any sense of conclusion. It’s got that flaw a lot of comedy movies have, of having scenes that just feel aimless. Other than Bridesmaids, I’ve felt that way about all of Paul Fieg’s movies. There were a few very funny lines, but overall I was kind of “meh” on it. Then again, I’m pretty “meh” on the original Ghostbusters too.

  45. 45
    Harlequin says:

    Reading mainstream-ish commentary on the new Ghostbusters movie is interesting. I haven’t seen it, but most of my friends are female nerds, and the reaction has been that it’s great–I know multiple people who have seen it multiple times in the theatre, for example. (Perhaps of interest to the commenters here, apparently there’s no negative body commentary at all in the film.) To a lot of my friends, the characters seemed like the type of women they could be–and they don’t see themselves represented on screen a lot. Again, I haven’t seen it, but that’s what the consensus opinion is on my parts of the internet!

    especially Kate McKinnon’s Holtzman, who I understand is becoming something of a queer sex symbol, and for good reason.

    Yep. I had a friend who didn’t stop talking about her for two days. :) (Even the straight women were getting in on this a little.)

  46. 46
    Ruchama says:

    Yeah — I saw one person marveling that there’s a scene in Ghostbusters where they’re eating pizza, and no one makes any comment about how they’ll have to work off the calories or how they shouldn’t be eating food like that or it’s a one-time thing or anything — they’re just eating pizza because people eat food. And there really aren’t too many scenes in movies where that happens. (I haven’t seen it yet — I want to, but haven’t gotten a chance. Maybe sometime this week.)

  47. 47
    Chris says:

    I can see why so many people, women especially, are responding to those aspects of the movie. (And I didn’t even notice the unusual body positivity, or at least, unusual lack of body negativity. Yay!) In that way I suppose the movie is “social justice-y,” but only in the sense that it’s doing things that more movies should already be doing, and not making a big deal about it.

    There’s definitely stuff to celebrate here. I just wish it were funnier and better written. But I don’t mean to take away from the love that many feminists feel for the movie.

    Especially for Holtzman. Holtzman was awesome.

  48. 48
    Ruchama says:

    It’s been years since I saw the original Ghostbusters. I think I was about four or five when it came out, and I definitely remember being aware of it and all its marketing stuff, but I’m trying to think if I can remember any specific scenes from the movie, and pretty much all I can picture is where they’re fighting the marshmallow guy. (On the other hand, I can practically recite all of Back to the Future from memory.)

  49. 49
    Ruchama says:

    Since I finally saw the new Ghostbusters, I figured I’d come back here with my opinion. Some spoilers here.

    So, that was a lot of fun. I was just sitting in my seat grinning for large parts of it. I definitely want to see it again.

    People had been complaining about how there’s only one male character, so that’s what I went in expecting, but there were a whole bunch of male characters.

    Also, I thought it was really interesting in the way it addressed responses to bullying. Practically every main character in the movie, both the four main characters and the bad guy, mentioned that they’d been bullied as kids, that they didn’t really have any friends. The four main characters dealt with this by becoming socially awkward adults who have trust issues and don’t really expect the world to treat them any better than the school bullies treated them. The bad guy dealt with this by becoming an adult who felt entitled to all the respect that he felt like he’d been deprived of, and he would make the world bow down to him. I thought the last scene (or, almost last scene) demonstrated this really well — the Ghostbusters had just saved the entire city, and then they were told that, officially, none of that happened, and they were not allowed to talk about it, and eventually, everyone would forget about it and go back to thinking of the Ghostbusters as neurotic women looking for attention. And they kind of looked at each other and shrugged, like, “Well, that sucks, but that’s life,” and went back to planning their next ghost hunt. When one of them noticed that the whole city was being lit up with their names, it was touching, and it was sweet, but it wasn’t like, “This now validates everything we were doing.” Before they saw those lights, they knew what they had seen and what they had done, and that was good enough. The thanks from the city was just a bonus. Whereas, for the bad guy (Rowen?), outside recognition was the only thing he wanted. (And, for two of the main characters, the specific form of their bullying had been that they said that they saw ghosts, and the response from everyone was, “You’re crazy. You’re just trying to get attention.”)

  50. 50
    Ruchama says:

    To a lot of my friends, the characters seemed like the type of women they could be–and they don’t see themselves represented on screen a lot.

    As a female nerd, I absolutely felt this. When I watch a lot of movies, I see characters talk about how women always need to talk about their feelings, or women love clothes, or women don’t actually want men to say what they’re thinking, and I’m just thinking, “Huh. Guess they’re once again telling me that I’m doing womanhood wrong.” The characters in this movie saw stuff that needed to be done, and they did the stuff, and there were exactly two scenes where they stopped to talk about their feelings — one of them was a “This is my history” scene, getting the new people introduced into the group, and the other was treated as, like, one of the women stood up and told the others how grateful she was to have friends like them, and she’d never really had friends like that before, and everyone else was like, “Oh, that’s nice. That was really real, and we love you, too, but now we’re all uncomfortable, so let’s get back to talking about ghosts.” Which is EXACTLY how I react whenever anyone starts talking about feelings — like, I love someone, but I don’t want to start listing the reasons why, because that just feels weird — so if they want to do it, OK, I’ll sit through it, but please let me get back to talking about movies or politics or science or whatever afterwards.

  51. 51
    Ampersand says:

    Thanks for coming back with that update, Ruchama!

    Ghostbusters wasn’t a great film, in my view – it was fluff. But it was a kind of fluff we really don’t get enough of.

    I really liked what they did with bullying. There was once scene where the villain said to one of the heroes (I think MM’s character?) something along the lines of that she had no idea what it was like to be marginalized and made fun of, and she responded that she knew exactly what that was like. (My paraphrasing is totally wrong.) I thought that was a really great exchange.

  52. 52
    Ruchama says:

    I remember that scene — I think he phrased it as, “Do you know what it’s like…?”, addressing all of them, and both Melissa McCarthy’s character and Kristen Wiig’s character had just been talking about that, and they both nodded like, “Yeah, and? That makes you destroy New York City? That makes what kind of sense?”

    It actually kind of reminded me of an incident when I was in high school. Columbine happened my senior year. Within the next few days, all of the bullied kids (including me) were called down to the guidance office to “have a chat,” where it was clear they were trying to figure out whether any of us were planning to shoot up the school. I found it really insulting, and kind of weird. Like, seriously? But I also noticed that the other kids treated us differently, for at least a couple weeks. They seemed scared of us, and kind of trying to make nice so that we wouldn’t shoot them. I thought the whole thing was stupid, and made a lot of “Yeah, whatever” faces at guys who’d been threatening to rape me the week before who were suddenly trying to be polite to me. But I can definitely see how someone who really was looking for attention could feed off of that — people being scared of you can look a lot like people respecting you, if you don’t look too closely.