If I would just say, "Ghostbusters," how are high are the chances you have heard about the movie? Oh, you haven’t watched it? Me neither, but I have heard a lot about it. All sorts of things. Let’s wrap this up.
A major news site, that uses audience critics, has reported interesting trends about the audience’s opinion on the movie. IMDB presents us with the most telling review statistic of "Ghostbusters":
The trend clearly shows that while men hated the movie, averagely rating it with a 4.3, while women seemed to love it enough to rate it with eight points on average. There are similar stories on other sites, but what happened here?
Fascinatingly enough, some of these reviews raved on the Internet even before the movie was released. Online, you could hear rants of grown men trash talking the endeavor to boot an old classic from decades ago with only women. Gasp. Now, how can we get away with sexist tropes and still enjoy eye candy? Not anymore. Cue the man anger.
An example of a bad review for "Ghostbusters" can be found on IMDB. This particular user went on and on how this movie was bad, but doesn't offer clear arguments that support his opinion about why it was bad:
"I would say that this is the worst movie of 2016 so far, and yes, I am serious. But the worst thing is, Rotten Tomatoes actually likes this! Do not listen to Rotten Tomatoes because this movie is garbage. You will not laugh at all in this movie because you will be too busy trying to cover your eyes throughout the movie. This movie has got to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and the sad thing is that this movie is getting positive reviews so far. Do not listen to them! This is just a sexist movie who calls others sexist!"
Listen kids, this movie can be, if at all, called discriminatory against men for implementing a character whose sole purpose was to be eye-candy and didn't serve any higher purpose. Like, oh, wait. Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Really? Why? But it can't be sexist. Look up the terminology if you want to throw around such big words and accusations.
But what is it about the movie, besides the obvious attempt to destroy their childhood, that makes this movie so bad? Didn’t you know? Women can’t be funny, so this movie must be a flop. Maybe it’s because they can’t relate to the overly simplified male characters just existing for the male audience to portray them into their shoes and then feel manly and good about themselves, or maybe it’s even the fact that this movie was not catered to them.
A Tumblr user summed up pretty neatly why the hate comes so strongly for this movie:
“[Man] are mad about not being able to jerk it to the new "Ghostbusters" lineup. They’re mad because their expectations of getting at least one hypersexualized, female protagonist wasn’t met – not even one sexy secretary. That’s rough, buddy."
Or to put it even more eloquently, Meryl Streep commented at a speech on a panel in 2015:
“Women are so used to that active empathizing with the active protagonist of a male-driven plot. That’s what we’ve done all our lives. You read history, you read great literature, Shakespeare, it’s all fellas. But they’ve never had to do the other thing. And the hardest thing for me, as an actor, is to have a story that men in the audience feel like they know what I feel like. That’s a really hard thing. It’s very hard thing for them to put themselves in the shoes of female protagonist.”
One user on Twitter wanted to spark outrage within the “female audience” by pointing out, “What if we did all classic female movies with only a female cast and spun it the other way around?” Please do that and while you’re at it, show me the movies that have an all-female cast where males are just side characters and their character development doesn’t in any way influence the story or is even mentioned. Name 10 movies. I am waiting.
Fairly enough, I haven’t watched the movie before writing this, but as many others seemed to have a "guestimate" about the success of such a movie without seeing it and feeling justified in their highly emotional opinions, I feel justified in talking about people talking about a movie they haven’t seen yet. On the plus side, this ranting about a movie, that has nothing to do with the old movies, proved to be a perfect marketing campaign for the movie. So thank you, you irrational little crybabies for being so angry about this movie being made that you boosted it's advertising. Kudos.
Although I understand that this article could seem to come from a place of a "feminazi" man-hating Internet user trying to publish her “sexist” hate against men, this is simply a call out post making fun of those men who argue like that. We know that not all men are like that, however. Feel outraged that there are people out there thinking their reasoning is logical and totally valid. And maybe feel a little bit sad, too, for them.
(Note that the users' names are not cited as I am not yet at a point where I want to publicly humiliate anyone spouting such an opinion. Yet.)
