‘Ghostbusters’ and the Death of Comedy
Really? Abortion is a difficult topic. So are drone strikes, capital punishment and enhanced interrogation.
“Ghostbusters” is about a four heroes in grey suits taking down paranormal creatures. Easy peasy.
Not any more.
The decision to remake “Ghostbusters [Blu-ray]
” with four female, not male, performers had some wisdom to it. It makes the long-delayed reboot instantly different. It also allows the new cast members to blaze their own trail while escaping the shadows left by the original team. Who wants to measure up against Bill Murray? Anyone?
What’s the bottom line?
That casting decision unleashed the full force of modern political correctness. Some saw the casting choices as insulting the original film’s legacy. Others viewed it as a chance to flex female power at the box office. Finally.
In the latter case, “Ghostbusters” is now not just another movie reboot. It’s a cause celebre, If it fails, women in Hollywood will be hardest hit. So now everything surrounding the project has a PC charge to it.
It’s why TheVerge.com felt compelled to publish this essay, entitled, “How to talk about the new Ghostbusters movie with friends, family, and commenters.”
Ghostbusters is a difficult topic. To help you through the next few months, we created a simple guide to writing about or discussing the film. Whenever you feel yourself bubbling with rage about four women destroying everything you’ve ever loved, open this page and protect yourself and the internet from inexhaustive rage.
Sound unnecessary? Movie fans are already upset that one of the four new characters isn’t a scientist according to the film’s first trailer. The reboot, like the 1984 original, focuses on three paranormal experts – read scientists – who battle a wave of ghosts in New York City.
RELATED: Is Comedy Tide Turning Against PC Culture?
Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig play the three scientists, with Leslie Jones joining the team already in progress. The first three actresses are white. Jones is black. Guess what happened next?
Why couldn’t Leslie Jones be a scientist? WOC are capable of being more than the sassy sidekick. #ghostbusters
— Maria (@BeLikeAudrey) March 4, 2016
That’s only one of many outraged tweets. The trailer even inspired one YouTube regular, Smoothiefreak, to record this charming rant.
Comedy in 2016 is already on life support. Comedians live in fear that a particular joke will outrage someone, anyone, and the blowback will go viral. Jobs are at stake. So are livelihoods. When Jerry Seinfeld, the squeakiest of squeaky clean comics, complains about people taking his jokes the wrong way, there’s a problem.
The upcoming documentary “Can We Take a Joke?” lets stand-ups speak out against the PC Police. Will it arrive in time to change hearts and minds?
We just watched an entire Oscars ceremony begging us to forgive Hollywood for being racist. What happened next? People were upset by jokes they say targeted Asian-Americans.
Would you want to write comedy for a living today?
Lost in the kerfuffle? The first “Ghostbusters” trailer just isn’t funny. Not even close. The finished product could still be a blast. The film’s cast is impressive and director Paul Feig previously delivered “Bridesmaids.”
“Ghostbusters” hits theaters July 15. By then, will anyone be in the mood to even watch it assuming the current PC dialogue continues?
UPDATE: According to The Washington Post, we’re only allowed one point of view on the new “Ghostbusters” trailer.
FLOP!
“It also allows the new cast members to blaze their own trail while escaping the shadows left by the original team.”
How exactly? all anyone I know is talking about is which chick is supposed to be which original Ghostbuster?
“Movie fans are already upset that one of the four new characters isn’t a scientist according to the film’s first trailer”
No, they are upset that the one non scientist is the one minority cast member. What, the sassy black chick couldn’t have been a physicist?
Everything I’ve seen so far makes this look like a parody of the original film. Not really interested.
I think they would have done better to cast a small woman with an irritating voice as The Black Character, someone built like Butterfly McQueen. Instead, they chose a woman who is built more like Hatty McDaniel. I don’t know about others, but I’m tired of movies that stereotype all black people as large, noisy, and more violent than everyone else around them. And I think they could have gotten more laughs casting the small woman with glasses as a tyrannical boss or human resources manager constantly threatening and bullying all the larger women and threatening to withdraw their funding. I don’t know whether the actresses were given any chance at all to improvise or build out their characters, but if not maybe they should shoot a few outtakes where they do just that, then incorporate the better ones into the film for flavor. A cameo with Tracy Morgan would also be a value enhancer, given the number of Saturday Night Live alumnae.
I predict a massive box-office failure. Not that such losses deter SJW types. Propaganda rarely produces a profitable product.
25% of the Ghostbusters are black……that’s about double the black percentage of the U.S……I think we should get rid of that character and make some unimportant character black, so we can arrive at something hopefully closer to being representative.
RE: Feminist Insanity
It progresses apace. They’re even tearing each other up already.
“To help you through the next few months…”
Do they really think it will be around for “the next few months.”
they should have made the uneducated one a white red neck woman and had a really attractive black scientist….a little hostility to smart people.. (maybe racism)..personal growth, and an ability to provide the necessary mechanical and transportation back up to save the day.
But not with the stereotypes they used.
I think that was supposed to be a satire of the “How to Talk About…” genre. But it ended up just being an example of it.
This is not the reboot you are looking for.
I hope the movie does well for Kate McKinnon. She’s got great range and is extremely funny. The recent SNL skit on the three people abducted by aliens is one of the best things SNL ever did.
The trailer wasn’t funny, except for the slap at the end.
I loved the original movie. I’m fine with the reboot but it shouldn’t have been a roboot.
…. lower expectations?
I thought the slap at the end was the worst part of the trailer.
Dumb and dumber 3: Ghostbusters.
Hey, if you cast Jim Carrey and Jeff McDaniel as two of the ghosts, and let them improvise, you could turn things around. I don’t know what it would do to the film budget, though.
I think the Trump phenomenon is best understood as a rebellion against political correctness.
He’s the leader of the new free speech movement.
Well, I’d hand that title to Milo Yiannopoulos or perhaps Christina Hoff Sommers.
Nero is the Emperor of the New Free Speech Movement!!
Irony/sarcasm is tough to detect online.
What’s really bad is the Internet. No matter what happens, five people will take offense, post a YouTube video, and the media will act as if Jane Doe is the spokesperson of a generation. The thrust of the article is correct.. can’t we take a joke? It’s like how with Looney Tunes, Speedy Gonzales is now seen as a stereotype but Elmer is not seen as a bad stereotype for older white men. (Btw, neither is a stereotype. Speedy was based on a real person from Mexico that the animators knew, and he was always proud of being a cartoon character who always won.)
The trailer didn’t look all that funny, and that’s okay. Other than some one-liners and a few scenes, the original film played it straight for large stretches at a time. It was fun, not the Marx Brothers. Yes, it’s strange I would find myself defending this reboot, but it really doesn’t look that bad.
As for Leslie Jones, does not the random YouTuber realize that Ernie Hudson played it about the same way? He was an everyman (toned down from being special forces in an early script) and some of his scenes in II would be excoriated today (“Judge, I have seen s**t that will turn you WHITE!”) for not being PC enough.
DID ERNIE HUDSON SCREAM ALL HIS LINES
Fair enough… hopefully she isn’t like that throughout the movie.
Also Ernie didn’t act & talk ghetto.
He was great – hit all the right notes.
NO, he just acted…that’s why this movie will flop…they’ve tried to hard to use a stereotypical black ghetto bitch type…when they just needed “everywoman” type…but that’s what happens in Political Correctness racism comes out in unintended ways…
But Ernie Hudson DIDN’T play it the same way. Winston Zedmore was a normal guy looking for a job who got drawn into the exceeding weirdness surrounding the founding trio. The Leslie Jones character character is depicting as a fan girl looking to buy her way with little more than force of personality. These are almost polar opposites.
I didn’t get that from the trailer, but okay…
Still scratching my head about why they put out such an awful trailer.
It’s all they had.
I’ve seen trailers for bad movies that made me want to see the movie, though. Anchorman II comes to mind. TERRIBLE sequel.
Either they gave the trailer to the wrong company (which I doubt) or – that’s the funniest parts of the movie.
Don’t worry, Lady Balzing Saddles will be better.
Before I even heard that the leads would all be female, I thought a remake of Ghostbusters was a mistake. The original was a lightning in a bottle kind of thing that hit theaters at the right time driven by the right cast. I don’t think the sequel(s)? did well, I know I never saw them or had any interest in seeing them.
I’ll wait and maybe see this one on Blu-ray/Netflx eventually if it gets good reviews. Not something I’m interested in seeing in the theater.
“Lightning in a bottle… at the right time”, indeed.
That was my favorite line in the whole movie.
The chemistry between the leads in the original was a critical element. I’m just not seeing that in the trailer for the new movie. The individual performers may be fine but the effect of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts is missing.
Completely agree, I was trying to think of a list of male actors who could do a reboot and came up empty. I just think it’s a bad idea and wonder what the actresses agents were thinking. Kind of like pitching a remake of ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ today. ???
Women aren’t funny.
Cloris Leachman is.
Wendy Liebman isn’t.
Buckle up buckaroo.
Carol Burnett? Lucille Ball? Lilly Tomlin? Hilarious
Madeline Kahn? Gilda Radner? Tracy Ullman? Funny too
Sara Silverman? Amy Poehler? Amy Schumer? I guess it’s a matter of taste.
Yep. Should have stopped at Tracy Ullman.
Not too may belly laughs from this gang, at least for me.
You forgot Miss Homemade Chubby Porn.
Carol Burnett was a force of nature, Lucille Ball as well. Some of the others have some genuine comedy chops, but none of them can open a movie. I could be missing something here but comedy is largely the enjoyment of watching people fall down and half the population has it as their duty to prevent such from happening to the other half. At least, that’s my working theory.
Carol Burnett transcended comedy to also showed us great dimensions of pathos, suffering, and human tragedy. Her mother-daughter performances with Vicki Lawrence were often heartrending. Her insights into the human condition were often extraordinary, yet disguised as entertaining skits.
People happen to mis-speak when they say “women” aren’t funny.
The people who ain’t funny, and who have no sense of humor, are FEMINISTS!!! Not “women.” Does that clear up the confusion?
You kind of go down hill the further you go. I think you just proved that MODERN women aren’t very funny.
Everyone in the first paragraph is great. Poehler is terrific, and Schumer can be very funny on occasion. But Sarah Silverman is the most overrated comic on Earth. They gave her an Emmy recently for a TV special that had about three laughs in it. If you want to see an example of Einstein’s theories about time slowing down in action, watch her gross, deadly bit from last week’s Oscars about having sex with James Bond. Hard to believe that lasted only a little over a minute.
Rita Rudner.
I’m sick of staking the comedic fortitude of all of women on fucking Lucille Ball. Her show went off the air in the 50’s, find someone else who’s funny by now.
Go home Jerry Lewis, you’re drunk.
Sales figures don’t lie.
Can’t believe it needs to be said, but it does.
Exclude the women with male writers. Lucy goes down in flames on that one, as do all the older generation comics.
Any still standing?
Maybe the modern “comedians.” Now, how many of those women can make a joke that doesn’t involve their who-who-dilly? Can you think of a single bit Schumer or Silverman does that doesn’t boil down to “Cute girl says dirty things for cheap laughs?”
That leaves 0.
How about excluding those born before a certain date? Or, those that were/are strait or lesbian?
How about Phyllis Diller? I don’t know how her “My husband Fang” would sit with the Asian-American community today, but in her time she was pretty funny.
I was there in her time, and she wasn’t really very funny.
RE: Women Aren’t Funny?
Rather FEMINISTS aren’t funny.