Ghostbusters re-sexed: classive movie reworked as feminist message
Hollwyood has run dry of ideas when you get the third film Ghostsbusters made with an all-female cast. The Hollywood Reporter notes:
Melissa McCarthy, who was already in talks for one of the leads, has signed on for the Paul Feig-directed reboot, and the studio is now negotiating with Kristen Wiig, as well as “Saturday Night Live” players Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon…
CNN spots that naysayers:
As some of the Twitterati accused the ladies-led “Ghostbusters” concept of being a “gimmick,” Feig swiftly responded, “Interesting how making a movie with men in the lead roles is normal but making a movie with women in the lead roles is a ‘gimmick.’ #its2014.”
How could reworking an old hit film to star women in place of men possibly be a gimmick?
It seemed like a great idea at the time, which was 1984, right in the heart of the Age of Second-Wave Feminism: Recast the greatest guy-comedy of all time, Neil Simon‘s The Odd Couple, not only with a female Oscar and Felix, but with their hard-drinking, crotch-scratching, stogie-smoking, moldy-sandwich-scarfing, deodorant-and-English-challenged poker pals all played by birds as well…
Between the Dallas tryout and the Broadway opening six months later, the opening-scene poker game had been replaced — I swear this is true — by Trivial Pursuit, which, to be honest, told you all you needed to know…
Aren’t there enough plas being written with female characters we can enjoy?
Maybe ghostbusting has become another routine, low-prestige and low-pay job that is coded as female. Maybe a female team is trying to break into an industry that has become a bastion of macho nerds.
Posted: 28th, January 2015 | In: Film Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
