THUNDER BAY -- Did Ghostbusters’ 2016 reboot lead to the rise of Donald Trump?
Two Lakehead University associate English professors are at least willing to make the argument there are similarities between the outrage at the all-female lead cast of the remake of the ‘80s iconic film and some of the anger and vitriol being spewed by many supporters of the American president-elect in the run-up to the U.S. election last November.
They'll be delivering a public discussion topic on the subject on Friday.
Pre-release haters of the new Ghostbusters, perhaps clinging to a sense of franchise entitlement, panned the movie immediately, the uproar starting the moment the trailer was released. Starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones in place of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, in their minds the film strayed from canon and was an insult to their childhoods.
And they made their feelings brutally clear on the world wide web, believing they were agents of change, dissidents who were standing up to Hollywood elites messing with a movie that didn’t need a reboot, all the while denying their outrage was sexist or racist.
It’s not all that dissimilar to the fury surrounding Gamergate, the video game controversy that took aim at several women in the industry and progressive attitudes by certain developers, or so-called affirmative action in science fiction novels, which came to a head during the 2015 Hugo Awards.
Professors Monica Flegel and Judith Leggatt said the same elements were at work with Trump, seen by many as an outsider with no ties to beltway politics.
“In both the case of Hillary and Ghostbusters, they were judged by incredibly different standards,” Flegal said on Wednesday, two days before she and Leggatt plan to deliver their paper, Did Ghostbusters 2016 Lead to Trump?
Clinton was tied to scandals involving her use of a private email server and her role in the deaths of American embassy personnel in Benghazi. Trump, on the other hand, escaped rather unscathed from accusations of sexual misconduct and labeling Mexican immigrants as rapists.
“It’s hard to escape the sexism,” Leggatt said, adding those commenting on the Ghostbusters trailer on YouTube made direct connections between rejecting the film and rejecting Clinton.
“They believe ghostbusters shouldn’t be women and presidents shouldn’t be women.”
Their talk will also delve into the relatively new phenomenon that outsiders are more qualified than insiders, pointing to the reaction to opinions of professional critics, which differed greatly than those of long-time fans of the Ghostbusters franchise.
“The fans did have some legitimate complaints, but they were characterized by critics as just angry nerds. That didn’t help. When you think of politics more broadly,” Flegel said, “there were some legitimate complaints from some Trump supporters, but they aren’t listened to because they’re all tarred with the same brush.
“That kind of discourse, we see it in politics and pop culture, as well as the nostalgia and the mistrust of expertise.”
Friday’s one-hour public talk begins at noon in Room 5036 at Lakehead’s ATAC building.
