The new Ghostbusters Movie looks like a lot of fun. What is not so much fun, the overwhelming negative reaction to the trailer mostly by man-babies who have to get their winge on because an all female cast of a rebooted franchise is ruining their lives. But hey, take a look at the trailer and form your own (slightly framed by me) opinion on the upcoming reboot.
There. Now that wasn’t so bad now was it? To my informed readership there could be issues with the dialogue, what is considered funny, how much can one really glean for a trailer – the usual suspects when it comes to evaluating a possible film to watch.
Then there is this dude. Welcome to Ground Zero of glibly earnest misogyny. Feel free to stop the vid at any time. It doesn’t get any better.
The pattern laid out by the douche-nozzle above can be found replicated in the comment section of the movie. But before we get to that, the we should examine the numbers of the situation.
At the time of this screen capture, 877k of negative votes for this movie. Similar trends for other movies?
Evidently not, especially note the Adam Sandler, a movie crafted with all the care and attention a drunkard has while taking his mid bender shit of the day. For this toadstool of a movie, 13k people have rated it negatively. Yet, how did Ghostbusters earn so many down-votes? Could it be the threat of male-centric media dominance ever so slightly slipping way? The plaintive wails from thousands of fragile male egos, given an anonymous forum, showing how threatened they are?
Quite possibly.
I shan’t talk about the Green Lantern – its better and more humane that way.
A small sampling of the comment section:
Now before I go on my spiel, I managed to find a comment hidden in this thread that is golden as it encapsulates the phenomena at hand.
Well there you have it. Problem named. Male entitlement and the reaction to the threat of not being centre of the media universe, for just one movie. The amount of push-back over the new Ghostbusters movie is quite staggering, as it is in fact, just one summer movie and unlikely to change the dominant mode of production in Hollywood.
If we put on our sociological glasses and get our hypothesizing boots out we can appreciate the fertile ground the discussion of this movie brings about. Can we perhaps extrapolate to other venues in society that have been traditional bastions of male power and the backlash that must have been experienced by women trying to change the status quo?
Consider the amount of misogyny present, even in the small sampling presented here (you can go see much much more in actual thread if you’d like) and what does that say about about our society? I would say that despite all the hurley-burley about social justice warriors and their ilk ruining *everything* that one of the dominant themes in our constructed social existence is the hatred of women.
This hatred of women is a learned generational feature – the commenters on this trailer are of the new ‘enlightened’ generation. This is scary frakking shite we have here, because without direct attention to the processes that form this toxic hate, nothing will change. Deprogramming the patriarchal misogyny that cripples men and destroys women must be moved up the priority list (stat!). We have wasted too many generations on a system that is destroying us.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
June 22, 2016 at 8:13 am
john zande
Women don`t stand like that! Gavin`s got a point. It`s madness. Madness I say…
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June 22, 2016 at 6:01 pm
The Arbourist
@JZ
Next thing you know they’ll want to speak at meetings or not be harassed in public…those silly gals.
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June 24, 2016 at 7:54 am
VR Kaine
All depends on the audience the movie’s being targeted to, and what the movie’s intentions are, to me. If its trying to be groundbreaking, then I say it’s already won. I respect and admire the risk the studio’s taking by replacing what were entirely male roles with female ones. I also admit that it’s sad to say that doing so has to be considered a “risk” in the first place, but c’est la vie. This is why western society and capitalism is great, though – the market can blockbuster new mainstream thinking faster than any government can, and like Brokeback Mountain did for gay rights or DaVinci Code did for atheism, Ghostbusters may very well do it for female reboots – we’ll see. As for the movie trying to be funny and entertaining, then the market will decide that soon enough.
As for that Gavin guy, overall I don’t think he’s funny (the sugary drink part was funny and true, though, to be fair) but shouldn’t we keep in mind that he’s supposed to be a comedian? I don’t get why far-left liberals are so thin-skinned that they get bent over what some comedian says half the time, or so desperate to try and and make their point that they have to overinflate some benign comments that an idiot comedian says. (Arb being “appalled” at Maher’s benign Pornhub comment is such an example.) Even worse when liberals try and lift up some comedian as a “representative” of society rather than simply an observer of it having an opinion. Comedians don’t deserve that stature, and they’d be the first to say it, too, and tell you all to get a life.
Courtrooms are representative, comedians aren’t. A comedian’s job is to push the boundaries and point out how ridiculous some of our beliefs or behaviors might be, as well as calling us out on our hypocrisy or bullshit. Their job is to cross our boundaries and offend our sensitivities, letting us take a safe visit down to the bottom of our “dark places” where they’ll say things we all think at times but shouldn’t say. None of you are thinking “race” when you’re laughing at Russell Peters making fun of his? Gavin’s point is valid – women mocking men looks ridiculous to men (just as in reverse), so if they’re trying to appeal at least in part to a male audience then they may miss the mark. And trying to compare responses to an Adam Sandler movie to the pre-launch comments of this one? Apples to oranges. Sandler doesn’t try to be anything but Sandler and he only competes with past Sandler movies. Here a relative bunch of no-names are trying to compete with legends like Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, and also the nostalgia of the film. Again, hats off to the attempt at disruption but ANY reboot gets automatically skewered for any reason loyal fans of the original can grab at. Look at the fans of James Bond vs. Daniel Craig, or the Star Wars move to Disney. But no, you have to over-inflate this as systemic misogyny. Like Chris Rock said – not everything is sexist, not everything is racist – and I think the fan backlash is simply that.
And as for the comedian making jokes about how ridiculous women look when they pretend to stand like men (or vice versa), if anyone wants to pretend they’re so above thinking or laughing at that sort of thing (and keep acting like the phony fucks that they are), or they don’t have the guts or the fortitude to put up with some comedian’s ridiculous comments (and yes that means you offended lesbian couple who took that amateur comic to the Human Rights commission when your sensitivities got offended at a comedy club), then I say either shut the TV off or leave the room, but move to Tehran or Syria if you want to try and stifle it or shut it down. .
And besides, this “comedian” is a regular on the Fox tabloid show, “Red Eye”, so that should be enough said there (although a right-wing, bottom-of-the-barrel-sludge show like Red Eye airing at 3am with a clown like Gavin on it can still kick the ratings crap out the “serious” liberal masterpieces that MSNBC puts out, such as “Morning Joe”.)
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June 24, 2016 at 9:05 am
The Arbourist
@Vern
The market if possible profits are involved can promote diverse ideas and programs. The ideas need to come from somewhere before they can be exploited for dollars. Usually, the left leaning creative types that you seem to have little respect for. The government can change society with the stroke of a pen, the New Deal, the EPA, and Citizens United are examples of tectonic change.
I had no idea. He is pretty bad at his job then.
The damage porn does to individual women and women and class is significant. Having read about the negative effects on the individual and society being appalled by porn is not only an ethical reaction, but a rational one. Of course, if doesn’t happen to effect you or you cannot be bothered to form an empathetic reaction to negative aspect of society then the problem lies with you, and not me.
Just as you have to wholeheartedly defend the flawed status-quo, so we’re even? :)
Don’t have a Television. But ratings would seem to be indicative of what is popular, but not necessarily of what is good.
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June 26, 2016 at 1:14 am
bleatmop
Jesus Fuck Arb. You had me click play on a The Rebel video with no 50 point font bolded warning. This is quite possibly the worst thing you’ve ever done.
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June 26, 2016 at 7:45 am
The Arbourist
@bleatmop
I had no idea the video was part of a larger beast. I thought stupid of that calibre could only be contained in one-off videos.
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June 27, 2016 at 7:01 pm
bleatmop
Ug. I helped fund Ezra Levent. I feel dirty now.
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