If all else fails you can just throw things at a ghost and trap it in the refrigerator-she's sure she read that in a paper she wrote 15 years ago. She still hasn't finished reading the operating manual for the proton packs. She had pointedly predicted the link between PTSD and involuntary clairvoyance over a decade before all these ghosts started running around New York-but back then parapsychology was not a real science, and with every breakthrough her doubters dug their heels a little firmer into their ideas of whether women should do science at all. She is a generation removed from her colleagues and partners, an enthusiasm for "the good work we do" tempered by long years of academic and social isolation. Venkman was once highly respected among her peers for not simply burning the school down, with everyone in it. To this end, I've whipped up some alternative character backgrounds.ĭr. To simply "recast" the male parts, to find a woman who can do a dead-on of Bill Murray's deadpan, dismisses the work of the original cast and ignores the blaring, blatant context of being a woman with an educational background. Or just spread the article around and let the women I mention see that we know their worth. These are specters of my dreamscape-I invite you to chase them, catch them if you can. By collating our desires, by coming into the room with a briefcase full of intergenerational lesbian sweethearts, we could maybe push back against the media and deliver a more favorable outcome of diversity. And I gently press you all to commit your own act of fearless demand onto the media. I want to see films with the women I see every day: science-inclined women of color and super-intense older dykes. I won't dream of compromise, or pine for little scraps of diversity. I dream of a film casted wholly with the sort of women I see in my every day life. They have "limits" to the degree of reality they are willing to imitate. Maybe a trans woman, but it definitely cannot be played by an actual trans woman. The media wishes for us to trade in our hopes-we can have one person of color, or maybe one queer woman. When we ask the media "please include a person of color who is not entirely defined by their race and is not limited to a service role in the film's universe," we are called naysayers, braying spoiled brats. When Gozer comes around the mountain, I want to see queer women, women of color, older women, the women I have always counted on, to greet them goodbye. So instead, I present an idea for a remorselessly all-female Ghostbusters cast-no men, no mercy. Educated, upper class-people are notably, woefully absent in the military-what the hell makes you think they're going to slog through their PhDs to fight monsters?Ī quartet of female ghost hunters would be educated and dismissed, pioneers of societal contempt. It will be the same sort of women who do your hair, clean your hotel rooms. If pistol-whipping paranormal nightmares ever blossoms into a viable industry, it will not be congenial white women with book deals who save us all. To "remake" Ghostbusters with an all-white, all-heteronormative main cast would, while "equal," demonstrate that you really didn't get the first two films. It's a story about solidarity and friendship in the face of failure-the sort that steps on churches. They save New York not with a bang, but with a "oh wow, we lived! We saved New York! Maybe we'll pay our rent this month!" Our heroes are bitter, burned out-they bicker with their secretary and turn up the music to keep away thoughts of their own futitlity. Cavorting with incorporeal nymphomaniacs doesn't deify or aggrandize the characters, or make reassurances to the audience that hey, humanity will always win out over weird cosmic fuckdogs. But we could do better than "equal"-a lot better.Īt the core of Ghostbusters is a tender strength in the face of unknowable horror. A cast like this would be "equal" to the original-and could even kickstart a trend of "feminist" reboots. The planned all-female Ghostbusters remake has people (including one Bill Murray) speculating about casts with the likes of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Emma Stone.
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