The new Ghostbusters is not particularly a movie that I had any intention of seeing. This has nothing to do with its quality or the acting or the characters, but rather because it is not the sort of movie that I'd like. I admit that I am not a big horror or comedy fan, more of a TV drama fan as well as a sci-fi and fantasy fan. However I was compelled to watch this movie because of one reason: The various Men's Rights movements and the Alt-Right have been hating on it just because it has a fully female cast, which they believe is pushing a supposedly left-wing, progressive identity politics, and politically correct agenda at the expense of film quality. The trailer for Ghostbusters has received the most dislikes out of any trailer for a Youtube movie, with many far-right commentators condemning the movie for pushing "SJW Values" over actual quality itself, with the implication that a movie with progressive identity politics is inherently bad. As a result, I chose to watch this movie on the basis of unpacking some of these worldviews and see for myself: "Is the all-female cast supposedly hiding the movie's flaws?"
My opinion of the movie is that the movie, after been seen for itself, is not a bad movie. It isn't objectively good but it is not the supposedly crap movie that the far right and sexists claim it to be. I give it a 3/5. And therefore, it is important to challenge them on this issue whenever they use social media to perpetuate their hatred. Before we begin my dissection of the far-right's worldviews it bears noting that simply fighting the far-right on issues of misogyny, racism and identity politics, while necessary, is not the solution to the "root of the problem", and that there needs to be progressive socioeconomic policies opposed to neoliberalism to go hand in hand with progressive identity politics in order to effectively defeat this growing far-right. Nevertheless, it must not be overlooked that the alt-right and the Men's Right's Movement are opposing the movie from the perspective of White Male Privilege, and must be confronted and called to account in battles between progressive forces and the alt-right over identity politics.
Admittedly, the movie itself isn't this bastion of progressive empowerment and progressive identity politics either. The movie I will say is problematic on it's own. That is because the movie has four main characters, three white leads and one black lead. The characterization of the black lead is where the movie proves to be problematic. The character of Patti, played by Leslie Jones, is billed as a "street smart" figure that supposedly dosen't have the engineering and scientific talent of the other women on the team(who are all apparently having graduated with a PhD, while she works at a subway station), these tropes actually existing with Patti's counterpart in the original Ghostbusters, who was also sidelined in favor of the white leads. Also note that Patti is introduced much later than the white leads, the white leads being introduced relatively early in the film. Thus it can be seen that the movie is problematic on its own and haunted by negative stereotypes regarding black people.
It also dosen't help that Patti is significantly less well-rounded than the white women. Patty embodies sterotypes of "the sassy black friend and she’s loud". She is portrayed as an outsider next to the educated scientists. She doesn’t seem to belong, and often exists only to react to circumstances in the story in the most exaggerated fashion possible.
Nevertheless, while there are legitimate criticism of Ghostbusters as a movie or as a progressive media, none of these criticisms are espoused by the alt-right. The alt-right justification is that "if a movie has feminist values, than it must be terrible". There are implications that had the movie had an all-male cast as before, or even still had the same negative racial stereotypes but with everyone(including the black character) as males, the alt-right would just not care. There are even people who believe "because the movie casts a all-female cast, it must be terrible, period, and therefore I will not review the movie because, despite not watching the movie and regardless of any lack of logic to my decision, it is terrible".
It is also hypocritical that Ghostbusters movie for casting women gets so much hate, but other movies that actually do negatively impact childhood nostaligia due to poor quality such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Avatar the Last Airbender, The Karate Kid, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Conan The Barbarian, and the Transformers movies, do not get such negative reactions from the fans judging my the trailers alone. In fact, most of the negativity actually emerges, in all these cases, with the movies being proven to be poor movies over simple backlash over the trailer. If a movie such as Transformers could be given a chance because of the trailer, despite what the movie actually was, than why not the New Ghostbusters?
Secondly, none of the reviews critical of the movie(outside of the alt-right sphere of influence of course...) have been hiding the movies flaws just because "of a progressive lead". If one were to look at the critical reviews for Ghostbusters, they tend to focus on not just acting, but things like script and special effects as to point out why the movie is bad. Likewise, others actually highted the cast as the best part of the movie, but dragged down by the script. The fact that some of the critics have actually called out the script for dragging down the leads show that on the side of those critical to the movie, there was no attempt to whitewash the movie's flaws simply because of gender parity.
Lastly, recent events have shown that alt-right critics of ghostbusters are not driven by actual concern for the quality of the movie or how the movie is problematic on its own right, but on the basis of racism and male chauvinism. This was evident in the tweets that sprang up attacking Leslie Jones after the movie was released. Alt-Right demagorgue and journalist Milo Yiannopoulos started a Twitter campaign against Leslie Jones, this campaign painted Jones as illiterate and deliberatly playing the victim, and included Donky Kong jokes and comparing Jones to apes. Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter permanently as a result. The racist comparisons of black people to apes has been an odious example of racial sterotyping going back to the middle ages, and the alt-right has chosen to perpetuate these stereotypes regardless of the consequences. This shows that regardless of concerns about the quality of the film, much of the discourse of the alt-right is driven by racial and gender hatred toward non male and non white identities seen as supposedly "contaminating" popular culture.
Overall, while Ghostbusters is problematic on its own and a average movie at most, much of the alt-right hatred can be seen to be justified on grounds of racial and gendered hatred towards non male and white identities. It should be noted that constantly calling the alt-right out and defeating them on issues of identity politics will not solve anything, the point of my blog being that the "root of the problem" of the alt-right needs as much progressive socioeconomic change(as noted here as well) as well as steadfast protection of non-white/cis identities. Consequently, it is not just enough to push for greater racial and gender parity in media or to have a woman president take office to defeat the alt-right(especially since the Hillary Clinton is a corrupt corporatist on her own right despite her co-opting of identity politics to appear more progressive when she really isn't, and the inevitable failings of her rightist/neoliberal policies will actually lead to the growth of the right wing and ensure more Trump-like people will appear). Nevertheless, the validity of one belief(progressive economic politics vs. progressive identity politics) does not necessarily invalidate the other, and thus it is important to call out the alt-right on their hatred whenever they seek to expand their culture war.
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