Sunday, October 7, 2018

Blogtober Day 7: Who Ya Gonna Call?


What I watched to review for today's post was full of fun, nostalgia, and slime. No, it wasn't Nickelodeon, it was Ghostbusters! I love this movie because while it's about demons and ghosts disturbing New York, it's approached in a fun way and you instantly feel for the characters from the emotion of the story and from how they treat one another- you understand and sympathize with the "underdog" more geeky characters early on. 

It's the beginning of the team's journey as Ghostbusters and you really get behind them when they discuss this finally being the take-off point. Everyone knows the feeling of trying at something you're not sure about but want to succeed, and failing over and over until finally things shift and the first thing goes right, and the movie gets you remembering that feeling and excited for the Ghostbusters.

The movie is from 1984 and definitely speaks true of many parts of the 80s. I don't miss the pepto-pink aesthetic of Sigourney Weaver's apartment, did you? A salary of $11,500 a year, Twinkies, smoking around the office, and there's the term "icebox" thrown around outside of the England/Scotland border (which is where the term fled to apparently), and little baby Larry King talking about the Ghostbusters on the radio with his young voice and face.
But on an upsetting note, one of the most 80s thing about this movie for me was the diversity. They made a movie set in a diverse city, and made the cast and major characters they interact with in the city white. To make up for it they introduced one African American Ghostbuster, not at the beginning of the movie and not with the same amount of dialogue and backstory. When diversity is approached, it's done with noticeable parody. The Ghostbusters spend a teensy amount of time in a prison cell with other prisoners and they start using terms they never have and acting oddly. 


I was thinking in today's world, there wouldn't be a big parade and happy people filling the street during the last scene, because New York has basically been turned into a portal to a demon realm before the end of the world. I would imagine today that the city would be shut down, evacuated, there would be panic instead of parades. But the crowded streets, the reporters milling around to catch one glimpse of the story so they can relate it to everyone else, curious families and children looking up in wonder, it highlights the most realistic part of the movie, which is the human spirit in the face of great danger. 

When the Ghostbusters are pushed back to the edge of the roof, stories and stories up above the street, they get back up, look at one another resolutely, and do what they've decided they have to.
We humans are to curious for our own good, and it would lead us to filling the streets and putting ourselves and our children in danger. While it's not the smartest thing, the resounding quality of humans is what would come after. After the disaster, when people are battered and bruised but still crowded around one another, we talk. We regroup, we refocus, we tend to our losses and pick something to do going forward, even if we don't know what's best. 


This movie is an icon of the time and earned itself many lifetime fans and inspired many, many spin-off works and fan creations. It still stands today for having great camera work, I won't post the clip but when Sigourney Weaver, possessed, is being drawn to the window to look at the destruction outside, her approach to the window is filmed by looking at her in the mirror, and sometimes from an angle below her face so that the lighting and the wind frame her face in a very spooky and demonic way. 

Did you like this movie?






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