Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The upcoming all-female reboot of Ghostbusters is controversial to diehard fans of the 1984 original, so much so that many have gone on record proclaiming that the July release is going to ruin their childhood. (If your childhood will be ruined by a gender-swapping version of your favorite movie, then congratulations! You had a pretty great childhood.)
But the negative reaction to this new blockbuster starring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy isn’t just another internet argument between “social justice warriors” and male trolls. It’s a deeply political argument, because the original Ghostbusters is a movie for Trump supporters, not feminists.
How ironic is it that some of the countercultural pranksters of 1970’s-era Saturday Night Live would find their greatest box-office success with a movie that is actually a subversive piece of conservative propaganda? None of the anarchic spirit of Aykroyd’s road trip classic Blues Brothers or Murray and Ramis’ military-skewering Stripes exists in their hit 1984 collaboration Ghostbusters.
The story of a group of supernatural exterminators in New York City was also a movie that was pro-deregulation and pro-business. The ethics of Reagan conservatism, which are still alive and tea partying to this day, inform Ghostbusters. Instead of a team of post-hippie miscreants, the Ghostbusters are entrepreneurs who just want to get rich without big government getting in the way. That Ghostbusters, either consciously or subconsciously, has a conservative subtext makes total sense in a way: by the mid-eighties, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman were comedy superstars worth millions. There is an old political joke that says a conservative is a liberal who just got mugged. But the truth is a conservative is a liberal who just got rich. Ghostbusters uses the comedic vocabulary of the left in order to tell a story that has traditional right-wing values.
The anti-authority wiseacre Bill Murray still sticks it to the system, but in Ghostbusters, the system are institutions that are not necessarily core conservative constituents. In his past movies, Murray sneered and rolled his eyes at snooty country club Republicans, incompetent drill sergeants, and other buttoned-up squares. He’s a born-again working class hero in Ghostbusters, a film that played to the sentimental conservatism sweeping the nation in the mid-Eighties. Rock stars sang syrupy ballads about the heartland. Sitcoms were no longer biting social satires but love letters to the nuclear family. At the movie theater, a former Nixon-impersonator and his wisenheimer friends donned all-American firefighter uniforms in order to fight demons. American paranoids, Puritans, and doomsday salesmen all love a good witch hunt.
Ghostbusters is still a very funny movie. But its conservative nods can’t be ignored. The movie is full of values that the average fan of right-wing radio would not argue with. Whether or not one agrees with these values is a totally different issue. Here are some reasons Ghostbusters is actually a conservative treatise.
The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the main villains
When the EPA succeeds in shutting down the Ghostbusters’ spirit containment system, all hell literally breaks loose. To your average conservative, this is what always happens when a government regulator interferes in the free market. The agency that attempts, sometimes vainly, to prosecute polluters is an object of ridicule in Ghostbusters. Dr. Venkman is right: Federal bureaucrat Mr. Peck is a pecker.
The New York City political machine hinders more than helps
The idea that New York would have a Republican mayor in ten years was probably as impossible as the idea that ghosts could ever terrorize the subway system. So it’s no stretch to imagine the mayor in Ghostbusters is a Democrat. Mayor Lenny (we only get his first name) eventually bails out the Ghostbusters after the EPA blew up their firehouse. But let’s be honest: if the local government hadn’t incompetently arrested the Ghostbusters they could have gotten to the fight against Zuul and Gozer the Gozarian sooner.
The Ghostbusters decide to become small-business owners
Instead of going corporate or returning to the sheltering arms of a university, the Ghostbusters decide to go into business for themselves. Even if it means going into debt and purchasing a questionable piece of real estate. Instead of revealing to the world that there is an afterlife and that they have developed groundbreaking technology that can track and capture ghosts, they decide to make a buck. There is nothing more conservative than a belief in the sacred profit motive. So very Ayn Rand.
Columbia University fires the Ghostbusters
Academia is an indisputable pillar of the liberal establishment, and they fire our heroes. This proves that the Ghostbusters are not elites or swells. It also strengthens the conservative notion that academia is an intellectual racket that punishes free-thinkers and innovators. (In an ironic twist, this movie probably increased enrollment in struggling parapsychology departments.)
A tax accountant is severely punished
Rick Moranis plays Louis, a bumbling tax accountant who exploits the labyrinthine tax-code of the United States for a living. No massive and overly-complicated tax system, no bumbling tax accountants. He is then turned into a demon dog. There is a direct correlation between these two facts. Long story short – tax accountants deserve to be possessed by evil supernatural forces.
Winston Zeddemore is not an affirmative-action hire
Ernie Hudson turns in an underrated hangdog performance as the fourth Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore. Winston is just hired because he was the right man at the right time. The color of his skin had nothing to do with it. He’s just a hard-working guy looking for a steady paycheck. By this point in the movie, the Ghostbusters have transformed themselves into working stiffs who look and act like guys who might have gone out flower child bashing ten years earlier. Winston fits in. But he will never have any equity in the company. When they sell to the Vatican for billions, Winston will be laid off.
Women have specific roles in society
Conservatives love the gender binary, and so does the original Ghostbusters. Men are fully realized human beings and women are women. What happens to a society without a without a rigid caste system based on genitals organ? Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! The 1980s were a difficult time for conservative men, because, suddenly, women were wearing shoulder pads like football players and expecting to be treated like fully realized human beings. (You could still, though, stalk a woman into dating you.) But Ghostbusters presents women, and men, with three comforting choices: you’re either a sassy, nearly sexless, administrative assistant, or a stuck-up professional who needs to be rescued, or a ghost who loves to give blowjobs.
Science is only important if it is weaponized
It’s a common misconception that conservatives are anti-science. They just like science that has a practical application – like killing bad guys. There’s not a religious conservative alive who thinks nuclear missiles are powered by prayer. Which is why the Proton Packs are so awesome; they’re basically nuclear-power light saber cannons.
The end-times are coming
Traditionally, liberals are a bunch of soulless atheists. They take their ideological marching orders from their iPad, not an invisible old man with anger issues who lives in space. But thanks to Ghostbusters, every liberal knows if someone asks if you’re a god to say “yes.” Ghostbusters is not a spiritual movie, per se. But it does posit the idea that the end-times can come at any moment, which is pretty standard conservative fire-and-brimstone boilerplate. Conservatives have exploited this fear enough that in many ways they’re the original Ghostbusters. Of course, in the case of those rabble-rousers, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man never really shows up… but better cast that vote than be sorry. The Ghostbusters just made the apocalypse seem cool.
[Where to stream Ghostbusters]
John DeVore is a writer who lives in Brooklyn, the Paris of Long Island. Follow his undiagnosed narcissism on Twitter at @JohnDeVore.
