Reply To: Molehill Mountain Episode 7 – Quietly Into the Night
7 of the first 10 results on Google either bluntly state that the backlash is because of misogyny, or at least suggest it by speaking about the criticism in terms of misogyny and nothing else.
[quote]Feig has said previously that the negative online reaction to the film’s trailer stems from a “very small minority” of “bullies” in the geek community who “write misogyny and hate and threats.”[/quote]
[quote]The seemingly concerted effort to snub the trailer, combined with the internet’s original reaction to news of an all-female lead cast, suggests the hate may be more complicated than people “disliking this movie because it is a shitty remake.” After first announcing the gender switch last year, the Guardian reported that Feig said the backlash was “some of the most vile, misogynistic shit I’ve ever seen in my life.”[/quote]
[quote]At the annual Produced By conference held on June 4, Feig, who also directed the women-led Bridesmaids and Spy, addressed the criticism his movie has faced since the all-female Ghostbusters remake was announced in 2014. “I have been hit with the most misogynistic stuff,” he said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “The onslaught that came in was just so chilling.[/quote]
[quote]Could “Ghostbusters” seriously be that bad? It seems highly unlikely, and as ScreenCrush noted, “ What is actually happening is that a certain subset of people on the Internet have an unhealthy fixation with hating on the ‘Ghostbusters’ remake and are teaming up to downvote it into oblivion.”
Who is that subset of Internet people? Dare we say trolls with a lot of time on their hands? As Forbes theorized, and we agree, these are the same people who threw a hissy fit when, after six consecutive “Star Wars” films focused on male heroes, the following two (with two still to come) featured female leads. The same people who verbally attack a female film critic for panning a beloved comic book film. The same people who send death threats, forcing female writers into retirement, and generally set out to make women’s Internet lives total hell.
It’s not surprising that the same set of sexist Internet trolls, Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs), and misogynists who harass women online would band together to make sure that Feig’s all -female “Ghosbusters” was the most disliked trailer in You Tube history.[/quote]
[quote]Baby-men liked old movie that baby-men saw when baby-men were babies, before internet was place where baby-men could put angry baby-thoughts. New movie no have men, have women. Women confuse baby-men. Women not men. Women not men at all!
Baby-men bang head against keyboard until form mad baby-words. Baby-men put mad baby-words on internet. Baby-men shriek into void.[/quote]
[quote]Right is now horribly wrong. The torch has been passed from the heroes of yesterday (aka your childhood) to new heroes who might just inspire the same kind of love for a new generation of movie lovers. And now a new vocal and irate critic has weighed in with a rallying volley for the misogyny-flecked backlash against the all-female Ghostbusters.
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Extend that theory to low-key Ghostbusters misogyny and you get what Birth Movies Death’s Devin Faraci perfectly describes in a piece titled “The Soft Sexism of Hating on the New Ghostbusters.”
Every conceivable minor quibble with a movie no one has yet seen has been tallied to add up to the inalienable conclusion that Ghostbusters the remake is an abomination created to devour and erode and co-opt that thing from your childhood that you loved and allowed to partially define you.
Retrograde gender politics and a resistance to a progressive future go hand in hand, in pop culture and elsewhere. And if angry video game nerds can’t see that ugliness in their undue animosity toward a female-fronted movie that doesn’t directly impact their actual real lives, then we all have a lot more to be afraid of than ghosts.
Or, as Feig himself so aptly put it in response to the hateful misogynist fanboys of the Internet: “Geek culture is home to some of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met in my life.”[/quote]
[quote]The undercurrent of misogyny isn’t too hard to see, even if it’s not stated explicitly, and the all-female principal cast has riled up many male YouTubers since the trailer first dropped. The notion that an actor without the proper genitals would dare to star in a previously-established film property has, for some reason or another, gravely offended the denizens of YouTube.[/quote]