Did ‘Ghostbusters’ Trailer Become ‘Most Disliked’ Ever Because of Misogyny?

Have you seen the new Ghostbusters trailer? If you have yet to do so, take a moment here. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve seen it… I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts and burning questions. One: Why are we still making reboots if they seem doomed to suck? Two: What does it say about women in Hollywood if the only time they’re placed in a movie that can pass the Bechdel test, it’s story line completely falls apart? Three: What does it say when instead of putting the work in to establish the story line for the female characters from the Ghostbusters original comic, you simply expect women to fulfill men’s roles? 

There is no new plot here. It’s packed full of offensive stereotypes about women of color. The CGI is lackluster, lazy and obvious. All of these women can do better. What’s happened here is what happens with all remakes. In an appearance on The Johnjay & Rich Show, Melissa McCarthy tactfully and covertly displays some of her disappointment with the trailer, she claims she had raised her concerns with the producers before it was released:

I think it’s very confusing. But then everyone said, ‘We don’t care what you think.’

And it seems that’s what happens when you want to stamp your project with feminism as a brand to make a couple bucks instead of actually, you know, trying to embody feminism.

Instead of relying on the artistic direction of a project, the novelty of the story becomes lost in a gimmick. It’s no longer adding to the story to enhance it; it’s recreating it to exploit our childhood memories. The original Ghostbusters worked not because men were cast–the right women could have filled those roles if they were given a fair shot–but because actors with a very specific voice, perspective and chemistry were put in roles that spoke to their strengths. These women have been forced to grab the short straw because instead of reinventing Ghostbusters, they are going to be put in a position in which they are constantly compared to our beloved classic.

We, the viewers, whether consciously not, have taken notice to the cheapening of the original. We know that something is amuck and we’re retaliating in the only way we know how in the internet age. The trailer has now earned the title of most disliked video in Youtube history with a whopping 507,610 dislikes and growing. If that number sounds low, it is but the day is still young. From Screen Crush:

Justin Bieber’s “Baby” (#1 on the list) has a whopping 6 million thumbs down votes, but that’s on 1.36 billion views for a 226:1 ratio of views to dislikes. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video (#4 overall) has almost 1.5 million thumbs down on 2.5 billion views for a relatively high ratio of 1,666:1. The Ghostbusters trailer is remarkable in that it has 507,610 dislikes on just 28.7 million views. That’s a staggering 56:1, almost exactly four times the amount of dislikes per view of Bieber’s aforementioned most disliked video on all of YouTube.

It’s not that everyone has switched their hate over Ghostbusters when they’ve been hating on Bieber since 2006, it’s just that a disproportionate percent of the people who have seen this god awful trailer have decided that they hate it.

But because any thoughtful analysis is incomplete without a conspiracy theory, Ghostbusters hasn’t necessarily earned its trailer. I mean it’s bad… it’s real bad, but the standard person who watches a Youtube video and finds it unpleasant is more likely to close out the video than they are to dislike it or comment on it. Because of the high number of dislikes, it is extremely likely that a larger conspiracy rallied behind the misogynistic critique of an all-female ghost battling crew is at play.

Take what you may. I’m going to give my money to this thing out of curiosity, however I know I’m not going to like it. This project wasn’t created to give the people what they want, it was created with haphazard artistry (if we can even call it that) to somehow reinforce that men did this first, and they did it better. To that I say, f**k all this.