Roundtable for One: Ghostbusters

The release of Ghostbusters came at a unique time - the idea of a female driven comedy is sort of divisive in and of itself. It shouldn't be but ALAS the patriarchy is still alive and well. (: The more it gets threatened the harder it tries to regain its strength. Cue the campaign to 'Make America Great Again.' The word again implies the act of revisiting - but when we revisit we sacrifice the potential opportunities of the future.

Prior to Ghostbusters' release it was met with criticism by people who were threatened by the idea of a reboot of a classic movie that ironically was doing exactly that - rebooting it. To sum it up: change is good but it also makes you want to protect the thing that's being changed.

There's this complicated relationship between change and comfort that as humans, we all are slightly acquainted with. But let's separate that from Ghostbusters just for a sec. While I would have initially liked to have seen this amazingly talented and hilarious group of women come together for the first time on the silver screen for a movie with an original non-franchised story, after actually seeing Ghostbusters my mind was changed.

Each character stands on her own - DING! They support each other and show us the ~ power ~ of friendship - DING! And let's not forget to mention that they're bomb ass scientists who are good at what they do -DING! Well there you have it, that's already THREE POINTS on the symbolic feminist movie scoreboard. I didn't think I'd come out of seeing this movie feeling almost obligated to draw a deeper than surface level meaning of it. Maybe it's all contextual, and the mere act of watching four women have to try to convince people that the evidence they have of ghosts' existence is legitimate and empirical is innately going to elicit a different response and hold a greater significance in the story's plot.