By Neil Hogan
This case study explores the ‘failure’ of the 2016 female-led ‘reimagining’ of the 1984 male-led Ghostbusters movie, the 2014 trend of changing the gender of popular characters, and discusses how abusive, possessive and toxic fans within participatory culture can have a detrimental effect on the success of a creative work. This popular culture issue is important culturally and socially as techniques need to be found to avoid or reduce toxic attacks on creations, creators, and participants.
The Ghostbusters franchise started in 1984 with the movie ‘Ghostbusters’, with a sequel released in 1989. It is about four men with limited funds who decide to pool their scientific and social skills and earn money fighting ghosts. It generated a huge fan following which also led to a cartoon spin off as well as a wide selection of toys and figures. Many fans looked forward to seeing another Ghostbusters movie, and were actively cosplaying, writing fan fiction, sending letters, emails and tweets to the cast, and generally being active members of a fan community—the participatory culture of the franchise.
In 2014, director and writer Paul Feig announced he would be remaking the 1984 Ghostbusters film with female leads. This was met with disappointment, derision, and hate. “Feig’s choice to recast a predominantly male cast as female, particularly after a decade plus of proposed sequels by the original creators, prompted an immediate vocal response.” (Bryan & Clark 2019, p. 149). Fans were angry and filled many digital forums with hundreds of thousands of negative comments. “[Fans] seize televisual property only to protect it against abuse from those who created it and who have claimed ownership over it.” Jenkins (2006, p. 59). This suggests fans think they have some intellectual property right over a creation due to being fans. “[Fans] frequently stake a militant response in defence of their preferred views on those properties.” (Bryan & Clark 2019, p.147). While participatory culture is an important factor in marketing, the ‘toxic fans against women’ issue was not something Feig was interested in addressing. He was quoted as saying, “The ones who are hating it because it’s about women? That’s just a non-starter.” (Shoard 2016). It is not understood whether Feig was following any particular agenda besides making a women-led comedy, though with so many gender changes happening in entertainment at the time, it was possible Feig was also following the trend.
2014 was a time when a trend for replacing traditionally male characters in a franchise started to gain ground. West (2014) announced in April of that year that Daisy Ridley would play the character of Rey in Star Wars, with Eisenberg (2014) confirming she would be the first female lead in a Star Wars franchise. Feig’s announcement for the female-led Ghostbusters was in August. Marvel (Kastrenakes 2014) announced in October that Captain Marvel would be female in their movies, a role that had been mostly male in the comics since 1967. Then, it was confirmed in November by the BBC (Debnath 2014) that the on-screen character that had been played by Michelle Gomez in Doctor Who since August was the new female Master, a male character since the Master’s first episode in 1971. This emerging trend in 2014 meant that, by the time the new Ghostbusters trailer appeared (GHOSTBUSTERS – Official Trailer (HD) 2016), many science fiction and fantasy fans, mostly straight white males, had had enough of seeing the narratives of their favourite shows being transformed, and took out their frustration on not only the new Ghostbusters trailer and film, but also the actresses that appeared in it.
Ironically, male characters were replaced by female characters due to participatory culture, ie, creators listening to their fans. It was something many fans wanted, but it was quickly labelled as a politically correct action and an obvious show of resistance to the patriarchy by fans in participatory culture that did not want it. “We might talk about feminist or queer appropriations of materials from mass media that encouraged the questioning of patriarchy or allowed for the expression of alternative sexual politics.” (Jenkins, Ito & Boyd 2015, p. 15). This suggests that, rather than simple and ongoing requests from female fans for representation, this was more of a feminist strike against male dominance of franchised entertainment. “Like fans, feminists are intimately invested in practices of remediation and in the creation of transformative works.” (Ferreday 2015, p. 23). Feminists and female fans who have fought long and hard for more female leads would also have influenced Feig in considering a female-led Ghostbusters. “For writers like the Ringer’s Lindsay Zoladz and Vulture’s Jada Yuan, who were obsessed with the original movie as girls, the new “Ghostbusters” is a long-overdue vindication of the idea that you don’t need to be a man to strap on a proton pack.” (Adams 2016). Though, interestingly, with the Ghostbusters franchise, many cosplay fans had already integrated into costuming the idea of multiple Ghostbusters around the world, beyond the main four leads. According to Kerzner (2018), cosplayers create their own characters. This suggests there should not have been such a backlash against the female Ghostbusters if it had not been part of a ‘gender change’ trend. Also, the movie made $229.1 million worldwide, which suggests that it was successful for what it was. Adjusted for inflation, the previous movies made $295m and $215m respectively, worldwide. (The Numbers n.d.). “The story [Ghostbusters] in 2016 is about the adversity women face from men in all directions and how they surmount these challenges.” (Kies 2016, p. 267). This suggests that even the plot of the movie might have been a problem for some men, if they were already angry at women being in the lead roles.
The other thing that may have disappointed straight male viewers was the 2016 version has a distinct lack of male gaze. “The male gaze objectifies female characters. But more importantly, the male gaze also reaffirms the power of the patriarchy to use women as props in service of the heterosexual male narrative.” (Leonard 2021). Ghostbusters 2016 had no scenes of a lascivious Sigourney Weaver in a bed possessed by a demon, or sexily dressed ghosts floating through the city—prominent features of the 1984 version. Also, all the women in the 2016 version are strong, intelligent, and interesting. “There is never any fuss about the women either being scientists, businesswomen or action heroes…They wear loose grey jumpsuits…and at no point is any of them, or any other woman, glamorized or sexually objectified.” Brooker (2016). This was probably due in part to the strong influence of the female co-writer.
The screenplay was a collaboration between Paul Feig and Katie Dippold. Dippold confirmed she is a ‘superfan’ (Brown 2016) and said she exchanged long and detailed emails with Feig about issues while writing it. She also said that she was regularly on set, able to make sure her script made it to screen correctly. Dippold, being a Ghostbusters fan, is a great example of a previous member of participatory culture that has progressed to more active creation. A result of this is that the 2016 Ghostbusters film fulfilled the goal of finally getting females into the Ghostbusters uniforms, and it was full of Easter Eggs for eagle-eyed fans, thanks to a fan writing it. However, a fan writing it was not enough to prevent the abuse.
The worst of fan abuse was directed at comedian Leslie Jones, a woman of colour, who played Patty Tolan in the movie. The attacks are too vile to reproduce here. In a Guardian article, Jones’s tweet says “I see the words and pics and videos. Videos y’all. Meaning people took time to spew hate” (Woolf 2016) and in another Guardian article, “I mean on my worst day I can’t think of this type of hate to put out.” (Shoard 2016). Misogynist trolls continued to attack Jones until she was forced to close her Twitter account, but not before Jones received outpouring of love and support from many well-known people including previous Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd and Presidential-hopeful Hillary Clinton. A case study on Jones’s abuse suggested that with Clinton involved, “this event is embedded within larger systems of inequality and the mainstreaming of al-right politics.” (Lawson 2018, p. 823). This spurred more people to click dislike on the Ghostbusters trailer (GHOSTBUSTERS – Official Trailer (HD) 2016) following a campaign to give it a million dislikes. They succeeded in that year, with Feig dismissively saying during the campaign, “That’s not a majority by anybody’s standards.” (Shoard 2016). Unfortunately, the female-led Ghostbusters lost $70m after costs, so the sequel was cancelled, with Feig receiving the brunt of criticism for not doing something about the toxic fans that caused it. (Jirak 2019; Cancelled Movies Wiki n.d.).
The issue of toxic fandom is important to me and my career plan as I plan to produce my own space fiction streaming series called Stellar Flash. I recognise that my series may come up against a lot of toxic fans in participatory culture, especially considering I would have female directors, a number of roles played by minorities and non-anthropomorphic aliens, and promote a future of equality without guns or money. It seems to me that the best way to counter fans wanting to change the narrative is to keep everything a secret until it is screened—something that Ghostbusters 2016 failed at.
In summary, I believe Ghostbusters 2016 was a successful reimagining of a popular movie but that, due to ignoring the participatory culture’s negative views and abuse, and allowing the toxic side of participatory fandom to discredit the movie, it failed to be profitable and lost a chance at a sequel. Unless this popular culture issue is addressed, either through utmost secrecy, or actively engaging with abusive fandom, less works will be created as a result.
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