Ghostbusters (1984) with Horror Vanguard podcast

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Track 1: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I'm your host, Evan,

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Track 1: back again with another film discussion from the left.

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Track 1: You can follow the show at leftoftheprojector.com and wherever you're listening,

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Track 1: you can click, rate, subscribe, and all those fancy internet things.

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Track 1: This week on the show, I'm dialing it back to my childhood and maybe the most

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Track 1: catchy film theme song ever made.

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Track 1: And by that, I'm referring to 1984's Ghostbusters with me to discuss.

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Track 1: I have Ash and john of the horror vanguard podcast thank you for joining me today thank.

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Track 2: You for having us.

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Track 3: Thank you so much for having us on yeah.

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Track 1: Of course and i'm glad that we've uh alleviated our

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Track 1: technical difficulties and we can dive into this very iconic film but for maybe

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Track 1: the few people who who don't know or haven't heard of horror vanguard first

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Track 1: they should you know undo that but would you like to let everyone know how they

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Track 1: can or not how i guess everyone knows how they can listen to podcasts.

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Track 1: That's pretty simple. It's what they might listen to if they were to dial into Horror Vanguard.

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Track 2: In a nutshell, we do episodes that cover the intersection of horror movies and

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Track 2: kind of left political theory.

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Track 2: So if you like one or ideally both of those things, you're going to like our show.

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Track 1: Yeah.

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Track 2: Which if you're listening to this, you probably already like those things.

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Track 3: I would think so.

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Track 1: Yeah. I'm hoping that people already

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Track 1: know of Horror Vanguard because it is a similar intersection

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Track 1: but yeah with the horror focused it's uh lots

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Track 1: of films i have actually hundreds of films i haven't covered

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Track 1: on this podcast so you should check out check out that and

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Track 1: yeah and i think i told john this when we had talked before is that

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Track 1: the episode that i had found initially was that was the one on uh beetlejuice

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Track 1: and so that one was always uh you know maybe it's because the first one i listened

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Track 1: to it's like my favorite one just because of just my my love of beetlejuice

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Track 1: and left theory and movies so i just would uh wanted to reiterate that one yeah.

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Track 2: That was such a fun episode too it's it's really it's really glad to hear that

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Track 2: one that that one has love out there.

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Track 1: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that one. But so when we came to decide on this one,

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Track 1: I send you, you know, a list of films.

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Track 1: And I think pretty quickly you chose Ghostbusters.

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Track 1: So like, what made you think of it? Like, what makes it maybe an interesting

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Track 1: topic in, you know, 2025 to revisit it?

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Track 2: I think Ghostbusters as a film and as,

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Track 2: you know, to use the contemporary business parlance as an intellectual property

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Track 2: in a franchise is so ripe for left political discussion,

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Track 2: both in the original film and in how that film spawns a litany of media deeply

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Track 2: related to our contemporary political context.

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Track 2: Uh it's also like kind of

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Track 2: critically underexamined still i i would argue like there's so much conversation

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Track 2: on ghostbusters but most of that is limited to kind of like the noise of pop

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Track 2: culture fandom discussions and and less so like real tangible grappling with

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Track 2: with ghostbusters so that's that's kind of what keeps drawing me back to this movie.

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Track 3: Yeah i think that's i think that's very true actually

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Track 3: and i think it serves as so there's

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Track 3: so many reasons why ghostbusters is important it was it was one of the uh first

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Track 3: proper blockbusters of the 1980s it's been immensely culturally impactful um

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Track 3: but it's also become uh symptomatic i think of a particular mode of cultural

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Track 3: production under kind of contemporary modernity where,

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Track 3: It started out as like one thing and has become this multi-billion dollar franchise,

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Track 3: basically reiterating upon certain comedic, structural, formal,

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Track 3: artistic themes, which like we still live in the long 1980s in so many ways.

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Track 3: So I think like you can't get away from that.

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Track 1: Yeah, that's a that's a good point. And like to what you think,

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Track 1: Ash, I actually I was, you know, usually anytime I'm doing a film,

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Track 1: I'm like curious what other conservative media might have said about it or liberal media.

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Track 1: And there is very, very limited, you know, just articles or any discussion of

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Track 1: this film from any kind of even like mildly political lens.

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Track 1: Like, the only one I really found was calling it was the greatest movie ever

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Track 1: made about Republican economic policy, which I think is an interesting thing to discuss.

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Track 1: But, like, there's nothing really else out there. And it's kind of surprising,

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Track 1: you know, as opposed to that, they're just, you know, is new Ghostbusters woke

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Track 1: is like the article that you find when you search like Ghostbusters.

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Track 2: No, I completely agree. Like, I think Ghostbusters 2016 really forced the issue.

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Track 2: It forced a lot of political discussions. you know you had like you know

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Track 2: feige openly discussing gamer gate and stuff like

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Track 2: that like you know that that movie jumped in front of a bunch of bullets that

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Track 2: i'm not sure it was knowing it was jumping in front of but the rest of the ghostbusters

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Track 2: movies try to try to slide under the political radar as best they can even though

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Track 2: they like make the epa the bad guy in the first movie which is like that's like

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Track 2: a screaming political choice i don't know how we can ignore that yeah.

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Track 3: I mean uh reitman's who wrote the screenplay described himself as a conservative slash libertarian.

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Track 2: Um i would never have guessed yeah.

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Track 3: Yeah there's an amazing moment where walter pack visits um one of them goes

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Track 3: this is this is private property um and you're like.

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Track 2: Oh he's.

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Track 3: Making like a sovereign citizen argument it's so funny yeah.

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Track 1: The the politics of to say it's not,

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Track 1: political is is it's it's comical in

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Track 1: a sense you know it's uh i think even in like the

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Track 1: wikipedia page which is like you know we're not talking about

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Track 1: like deep level analysis but even they have a section on it

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Track 1: about you know private industry capitalism and all these things like there it's

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Track 1: it seems like people are starting to maybe examine it from more of a understanding

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Track 1: of 1980s politics and before we were recording uh john you mentioned you know

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Track 1: how it's hard to separate this from the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s.

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Track 1: And then, you know, I guess ending in the mid 1990s as like,

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Track 1: uh, you know, a backdrop for this and especially not,

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Track 1: you know, not leaving off the fact that they received the loan with what 19%

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Track 1: interest to, uh, to, uh, to open their

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Track 1: Ghostbusters, uh, you know, franchise or whatever you want to call it.

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Track 1: And I don't know if you have any like further thoughts on how that kind of frames

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Track 1: the film you know in the time that it was that it came out.

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Track 3: Yeah it's um it's a it's a finance movie right

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Track 3: what is what is what is it about it's about

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Track 3: um you know this is that this is

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Track 3: why this is why contemporary conservatives um actually

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Track 3: kind of liked the movie i think because they go well it's a pro

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Track 3: business movie um you get your startup

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Track 3: you get your startup capital um and you

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Track 3: have the private sector solving problems that the incompetent city bureaucrats

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Track 3: don't know how to deal with uh there's the incredibly revealing line of uh i've

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Track 3: worked in the private sector they demand results where you go oh yeah this is

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Track 3: a comedy because in the 1980s no they didn't,

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Track 3: no they didn't they demanded what they demanded was like

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Track 3: can you find a way of monetizing your rent extraction um

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Track 3: like that's that's what it was about yeah it's

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Track 3: it's it in in a way in a way that the the film is essentially it's a it's a

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Track 3: workplace sitcom right as essentially but the the ideological underpinning of

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Track 3: it comes from this um this space of kind of reagan era economic policy.

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Track 1: I'm glad you brought up that line about the, you know, the private sector and all that.

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Track 1: And like the backdrop of that too, is you have, you know, three,

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Track 1: three people who are, you know, receiving grants from Columbia university,

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Track 1: you know, a high end Ivy league institution, which,

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Track 1: you know, we could probably talk more about Columbia itself and,

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Track 1: you know, where they, where they sit today, but they're funding them.

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Track 1: And then they eventually pulled their funding because of the,

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Track 1: you know, they don't deem what they're doing as, you know, actually valuable,

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Track 1: you know, uh, valuable work.

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Track 1: And, uh, they're not really following protocols of, you know,

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Track 1: of, uh, research and all of these things and their methods are terrible.

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Track 1: And perhaps they were because that opening scene with, uh, Dr.

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Track 1: Venkman, uh, Bill Murray is, uh, pretty, um, uh, as I watched that again,

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Track 1: now I laugh kind of at the, his motive in his, uh,

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Track 1: pretty much just sleeping with the, uh, the students and not actually doing

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Track 1: any real work as you know.

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Track 1: And so like the, just like the whole idea of the, of the university being unable

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Track 1: to, uh, to do this through this, uh, funding, you know, governmental funding

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Track 1: or grant funding, wherever it's coming from.

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Track 1: And then going to the private sector, it's pretty comical just because of how

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Track 1: many innovations that were created by the public good and the government that

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Track 1: were then stolen by private sector to profit off them as you said.

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Track 2: Yeah absolutely i i think i think this is like such a

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Track 2: strong way to lead into the movie is really unpacking like

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Track 2: the base political context of like who the

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Track 2: ghostbusters are where they come from and what they wind up

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Track 2: doing you know and i think i think it like it kind

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Track 2: of like gets glossed over a lot

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Track 2: in the conversation that like like the business model that

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Track 2: the ghostbusters create you know they refer to themselves as

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Track 2: like pest control in air quotes but like the

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Track 2: the ghosts in this aren't like cockroaches or

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Track 2: something in that language like listeners if you're if

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Track 2: you're familiar with like carceral state and fascistic political

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Track 2: discourse like talking about like sentient beings as if they were pests and

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Track 2: cockroaches you start to get familiar but like the ghostbusters create a private

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Track 2: policing and private prison force yeah like yeah it's it's a it's a private

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Track 2: carceral state for ghosts is what they wind up making as like their fun times business model.

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Track 2: And I think that like, you know, like when, you know, sorry to keep bringing up Ghostbusters 2016.

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Track 2: I know that's like ringing some giant evil bell that's going to call darkness upon us all. But like.

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Track 2: You know, like everybody was talking about, you know, like when I say everybody,

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Track 2: like the reactionary right commentary, we're talking about Ghostbusters 2016

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Track 2: as if it stuffed politics down the throat of the Ghostbusters movies,

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Track 2: which were just like a wholesome comedy something.

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Track 2: They were just the state puff marshmallow man exploded all over them.

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Track 2: But like you go back and you look at the original one and it's like libertarian,

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Track 2: proto-fascist police force for the dead.

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Track 2: Yeah, I don't know. It's hard for me to watch the original Ghostbusters now

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Track 2: and not be like, oh, this is an extremely political movie that really has something

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Track 2: that's trying to get across.

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Track 3: Yeah, and what that is, is worth interrogating.

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Track 3: I mean, everyone goes, oh, oh, when you watch it, you realize that actually

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Track 3: the EPA are the villains.

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Track 3: And I'm like, I hate to be that person, but like, Walter Peck is correct.

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Track 3: Isn't this a thing that we all kind of gloss over where he comes and he's like, hey,

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Track 3: this seems really dangerous and they're like and then bill murray says that

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Track 3: he's dickless and it's like that's that's the joke but it turns out he's completely

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Track 3: right that their their storage facility is dangerous it does cause an explosion

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Track 3: and it's like we we all just kind of gloss over that bit.

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Track 1: Yeah it's yeah i mean it's you're just ignoring i

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Track 1: mean again it makes sense that the people who wrote this film

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Track 1: or you know as you said have like libertarian leanings where

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Track 1: they want to deregulate and they want it so the epa allows

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Track 1: you to you know put a bunch of like nuclear

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Track 1: ghosts in your wall of your like uh crummy whatever

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Track 1: uh firehouse that they they have and it's it's not safe in any way they they

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Track 1: basically say multiple times how they've never tested it like we're just using

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Track 1: these like proton packs that have like nuclear you know who knows what's in

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Track 1: there and they're just shooting them around in hotels in front of people you

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Track 1: know who cares and you're supposed to view the EPA as like,

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Track 1: maybe that's a bad idea as like the villain is just...

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Track 1: It's uh it is honestly really glossed over it's like it's pull it's it's it's

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Track 1: it's so drawn up with like for that comedic effect of the guy being this you

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Track 1: know complete tool that you're just uh assuming that he actually is bad.

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Track 2: And i i find like his status as a complete tool

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Track 2: to be really interesting too because he is right like

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Track 2: like he does seem like a jerk but like when you kind of take

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Track 2: a step back from and like kind of like look at the broader context like

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Track 2: i don't know like like my last watch of this movie you

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Track 2: know like a couple a couple days ago i like i was thinking

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Track 2: about like his condition and i'm trying to imagine myself

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Track 2: as like a middle level epa bureaucrat who's

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Track 2: been tasked to go like double check on what's going on with this weird new york

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Track 2: city tech startup and then i go in there and i find out that they have like

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Track 2: uh in the movies where it's unlicensed nuclear accelerators lying around and

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Track 2: they've been running around the city just kind of irradiating square blocks,

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Track 2: and that they have like a facility with no security whatsoever that has a single

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Track 2: switch that blows up part of New York City,

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Track 2: I too would be instantly transformed into the worst dick you've ever dealt with.

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Track 1: Yeah, and like the biggest mistake too is like, so the first time he comes,

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Track 1: like, okay, maybe he's acting kind of like a jerk to do it, but he has like

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Track 1: completely valid reasons.

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Track 1: And then when he returns again with like the con ed guy and like

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Track 1: one single police officer and like the the

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Track 1: con ed guy i guess or maybe they don't actually say it's con ed but

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Track 1: like that's the power you know in new york and it's like hey yeah just turn

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Track 1: off this turn off this weird button he's like i don't know if that's a great

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Track 1: idea but like do you have any better ideas like maybe we should bring in a team

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Track 1: to investigate do something else so like they're clearly making the epa also

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Track 1: seem toothless and like incompetent at the same time of them also being like the villain yeah.

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Track 3: I mean and this is what i mean when i say that we live in the long 1980s

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Track 3: right where it's seen

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Track 3: as you go people get annoyed when you

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Track 3: bring this up and talking about ghostbusters but i but i think this is broadly

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Track 3: because uh so much of the contemporary blockbuster which ghostbusters is one

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Track 3: of the kind of earliest examples of is deeply culturally conservative um,

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Track 3: And, you know, this conception that actually maybe you can't have the government

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Track 3: being the one which is actually correct about things. Or if they're correct,

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Track 3: they have to be annoying about it.

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Track 3: Yeah, it's a dream movie for the right, which explains in some ways the response

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Track 3: to Ghostbusters 2016, right?

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Track 3: Where the problem isn't that, oh no, they've made Ghostbusters again.

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Track 3: It's like, oh, no, they've made Ghostbusters in a way that we don't like and

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Track 3: that detracts from the overall and maybe even questions in the mildest possible

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Track 3: sense, the overall cultural conservatism of the present moment.

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Track 2: I mean, I mean, like, yeah, like I think like looking at Venkman's character,

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Track 2: I think is really interesting for this, like Bill Murray.

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Track 2: You know, like we have such like a cultural love affair with Bill Murray in

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Track 2: the world of cinema. He brings like such a I don't know, it's always a delight to see him on screen.

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Track 2: And I find that really interesting, too, when, like, you know,

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Track 2: like, considering Venkman as a character, right?

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Track 2: Because as we were talking about earlier in the episode, one of the first things

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Track 2: we learn about Venkman is that he's, like, a lecherous creep as a professor.

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Track 2: You know, like, his interest is in maybe manipulating his students into,

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Track 2: like, sexual situations rather than being an educator or a researcher.

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Track 2: Yeah. And then, like, he spends most of the movie, like, harassing Dana,

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Track 2: whose great crime is being a single mother in the eyes of this movie.

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Track 2: Even even in the world of gozer her great crime is

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Track 2: being without a male consort and so like

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Track 2: you've got like this film which is like partially architectured on like

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Track 2: being entirely uncritical about feminism and

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Track 2: about the kind of misogynistic attitudes it's reproducing it's

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Track 2: kind of no shock to me that you have a ghostbusters movie

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Track 2: that has like all women in

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Track 2: leading roles and kind of grapples with some like

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Track 2: oh it's the basement incel weirdo who's actually the real bad guy like it's

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Track 2: no wonder to me that the the kind of popular in quotes audience that is the

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Track 2: ghostbusters core fandom was like driven insane by that yeah it was a look in

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Track 2: the mirror they weren't ready for i.

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Track 3: Actually think this is why it's important to have a sense of the cultural politics of nostalgia.

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Track 2: Yes yes because.

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Track 3: Like that's that like nostalgia is not just a kind of subjective relation to

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Track 3: a sort of cultural, a lost cultural object or a lost cultural ideal.

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Track 3: Nostalgia now is a,

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Track 3: is a mechanism or an ideological structure by which

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Track 3: you are induced to relate to

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Track 3: cultural objects in a certain way right nostalgia is

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Track 3: um in other words like nostalgia is

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Track 3: very good marketing um and it's it's very

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Track 3: like uh like the

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Track 3: big failure of ghostbusters 2016 is not

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Track 3: that it's woke it's that it's just not very good or very

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Track 3: or very funny uh in my opinion but

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Track 3: and i'm like but nostalgia and like playing

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Track 3: off your nostalgic relation to kind of

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Track 3: original text is very good for the marketing of

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Track 3: it and and to to position a contemporary product in relation to the products

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Track 3: that it it it's that you remember is like that's the whole point of advertising

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Track 3: right it's nostalgia is the way in which your relationship to art is turned

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Track 3: into a marketable commodity yeah.

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Track 1: And that some of the irony there too is when you

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Track 1: look at the film like even just watching

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Track 1: the original film i don't think they probably knew how popular

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Track 1: it was going to be i mean it was a pretty low budget 25 30 million

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Track 1: made almost 400 million i think it was the second

Speaker: 00:18:13

Track 1: highest grossing film that year i believe

Speaker: 00:18:16

Track 1: i think beverly hills cops is the only one that was higher but you

Speaker: 00:18:19

Track 1: see in the film like the idea of that commodification of

Speaker: 00:18:22

Track 1: ghostbusters like in real time where people are

Speaker: 00:18:25

Track 1: like wearing shirts they're on every front page of magazines like they're almost

Speaker: 00:18:29

Track 1: creating the nostalgia like in the during the actual events of the film which

Speaker: 00:18:35

Track 1: then has now been used to also sell millions of toys and you know spawned now

Speaker: 00:18:40

Track 1: what three films in the last decade so it's uh.

Speaker: 00:18:44

Track 3: Yeah and i think i think this is certainly worth i think this is certainly worth

Speaker: 00:18:48

Track 3: kind of trying to pick at if you're a leftist who enjoys visual culture because I,

Speaker: 00:18:57

Track 3: I watched this movie a whole bunch when I was a kid. I loved the real Ghostbusters.

Speaker: 00:19:02

Track 3: You know, that show is awesome. And I think it's very important to recognize

Speaker: 00:19:08

Track 3: the degree to which mainstream cultural production depends upon the creation

Speaker: 00:19:12

Track 3: of a certain ideological relationship to a text that you...

Speaker: 00:19:16

Track 3: Like, it wasn't even a kid in the 80s.

Speaker: 00:19:18

Track 3: I saw this 15 years after it came out.

Speaker: 00:19:21

Track 3: But it's like nostalgia has its own set of cultural politics that's important

Speaker: 00:19:26

Track 3: for us to be aware of and the ways in which your own subjective emotional responses,

Speaker: 00:19:34

Track 3: your desires, your own...

Speaker: 00:19:37

Track 3: Well, I guess what I'm getting at is that libidinal economy is still an economy,

Speaker: 00:19:42

Track 3: right? It's still deeply profitable.

Speaker: 00:19:45

Track 3: And to be honest, it's still the dominant way that we recognize cultural history,

Speaker: 00:19:50

Track 3: right? Like Ghostbusters creates an image of what the 1980s was like.

Speaker: 00:19:55

Track 3: And I think the great modern example is probably something like Stranger Things, right?

Speaker: 00:20:00

Track 3: Where you go, what you sell an image of a certain kind of cultural history.

Speaker: 00:20:06

Track 3: That becomes accepted as in some way much more true than the actual messy wrestling

Speaker: 00:20:13

Track 3: with cultural history, you know?

Speaker: 00:20:15

Track 1: Yeah, in some way they're channeling that. When you watch a show like Stranger Things,

Speaker: 00:20:19

Track 1: you're saying in a way that your brain may tell you this is a throwback to Ghostbusters,

Speaker: 00:20:27

Track 1: but it decidedly ignores all of the social implications,

Speaker: 00:20:32

Track 1: especially in the political implications of it, and just kind of repackages

Speaker: 00:20:38

Track 1: it for you in a way that's palatable in a modern sense.

Speaker: 00:20:42

Track 1: And that's not to say there's some of the questionable aspects of Stranger Things,

Speaker: 00:20:45

Track 1: which we don't have to get into here.

Speaker: 00:20:50

Track 2: Definitely. I think that does, like, some people often talk about the Ghostbusters,

Speaker: 00:20:55

Track 2: the first Ghostbusters movie as if it's this kind of sacred emblem in horror

Speaker: 00:21:01

Track 2: cinema. It's one of those movies where you just can't critique it.

Speaker: 00:21:04

Track 2: You know, it's too baked into our nostalgia.

Speaker: 00:21:07

Track 2: It's too laden with all of this cultural history.

Speaker: 00:21:13

Track 2: But again like I think like you know we look at Ghostbusters and like it kind

Speaker: 00:21:18

Track 2: of mirrors exactly what John's been saying as a text itself right because Ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:21:23

Track 2: 2 comes out and then like rather than kind of grappling with like,

Speaker: 00:21:28

Track 2: Like, there is so much rich storytelling potential in a world where,

Speaker: 00:21:34

Track 2: like, imagine five years ago, a group of three chuckleheads who left an Ivy

Speaker: 00:21:40

Track 2: League institution, discovered ghosts were real, and you could put them in prison.

Speaker: 00:21:44

Track 3: Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:45

Track 2: Like, you just fundamentally rewrote every world religion, chunks of the human

Speaker: 00:21:51

Track 2: history, how we relate to ourselves, to our family, industry as a whole.

Speaker: 00:21:56

Track 2: You know like everything is now fundamentally different

Speaker: 00:22:00

Track 2: in a way that like there there is no comparison to

Speaker: 00:22:02

Track 2: that that would make that would make fire or the

Speaker: 00:22:05

Track 2: internet look like i don't know like a furby just

Speaker: 00:22:08

Track 2: like a flash in the pan little pop culture phenomenon and

Speaker: 00:22:12

Track 2: then what does the second movie do everybody just kind of forgets that

Speaker: 00:22:15

Track 2: the afterlife is real and that ghosts are real and that the ghostbusters saved

Speaker: 00:22:20

Track 2: the city it's just kind of like yeah let's just let's pretend like none of that

Speaker: 00:22:23

Track 2: ever happened and reset everything entirely you know so so here we have all

Speaker: 00:22:27

Track 2: the way back to the first sequel of the ghostbusters the pattern that we're

Speaker: 00:22:30

Track 2: stuck into this day still continues yeah.

Speaker: 00:22:33

Track 3: Because the the the the ultimate response this is the bit which does feel ideologically

Speaker: 00:22:39

Track 3: honest about the first ghostbusters movie and to the response to those questions

Speaker: 00:22:44

Track 3: of like of of existence of of religion is how do we monetize this.

Speaker: 00:22:52

Track 1: Yeah and like isn't the it's been a while since i've seen the

Speaker: 00:22:55

Track 1: second one i mean i i know sort of like the the you know

Speaker: 00:22:58

Track 1: the villain in that like the the uh the

Speaker: 00:23:01

Track 1: picture or the the you know vigo i think

Speaker: 00:23:03

Track 1: was his name right like the whole thing they're like isn't don't

Speaker: 00:23:07

Track 1: they also set up like a framework where essentially they've lost all the money

Speaker: 00:23:11

Track 1: that they made from that they may have made from like the original you know

Speaker: 00:23:16

Track 1: starting of the ghostbusters and now they have like a a bookstore or something

Speaker: 00:23:20

Track 1: isn't that right it's been a while maybe i'm just remembering it.

Speaker: 00:23:23

Track 2: That sounds right i know i know the bookstore isn't the bookstore in the cartoon too i.

Speaker: 00:23:28

Track 1: Think so it's also the cartoon.

Speaker: 00:23:29

Track 2: Or is or is the bookstore also part of the second phase of ghostbusters reboots

Speaker: 00:23:36

Track 2: afterlife and the other one yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:38

Track 1: It might be i saw afterlife but it's like kind of fuzzy kind of.

Speaker: 00:23:41

Track 2: I think i think that's like an important bit of cultural analysis like in and

Speaker: 00:23:44

Track 2: of itself too like my memories of the first ghostbusters movie are really clear

Speaker: 00:23:49

Track 2: my ability to generate memories of subsequent ghostbusters entries become increasingly

Speaker: 00:23:54

Track 2: fuzzy and difficult because it's like,

Speaker: 00:23:57

Track 2: undifferentiatable ghostbusters slop and less like i i don't know so something

Speaker: 00:24:01

Track 2: with like an aura or a sense of authenticity yeah.

Speaker: 00:24:04

Track 3: Get the merch get the merch you you do you remember do you remember the ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:24:10

Track 3: wasn't that cool so why don't you take your kids to see it now like that's.

Speaker: 00:24:14

Track 2: That's what.

Speaker: 00:24:15

Track 3: They feel like.

Speaker: 00:24:16

Track 2: Do you remember Harold Ramis who used to be alive and a person well I've got news for you laughing.

Speaker: 00:24:25

Track 1: Yeah in like the note in like the newest version of it maybe not the newest

Speaker: 00:24:29

Track 1: one i think they they refer to him or they like reference him if i again like

Speaker: 00:24:33

Track 1: as you're saying like all of these kind of slopped together is just kind of

Speaker: 00:24:36

Track 1: like they're about ghostbusters but like what are they actually about at this point anyway.

Speaker: 00:24:41

Track 2: Yeah yeah and i think like like that's that's that's

Speaker: 00:24:43

Track 2: a super important thing to flag up like what what they're about is about

Speaker: 00:24:46

Track 2: making money for the stakeholders in in ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:24:50

Track 2: the studio executives the investors you know

Speaker: 00:24:53

Track 2: like the the toy company people down the line and that's

Speaker: 00:24:56

Track 2: and that's why after harold ramis's death uh cgi effects

Speaker: 00:24:59

Track 2: company recreates him and makes him a character acting in the movie acting in

Speaker: 00:25:04

Track 2: quotes can a prop act can a dead man be a prop like this is you know as i was

Speaker: 00:25:09

Track 2: talking earlier about how like one of the overlooked aspects of the first ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:25:13

Track 2: movie is they create a prison for your soul and monetize it And then here in

Speaker: 00:25:18

Track 2: Ghostbusters Afterlife,

Speaker: 00:25:19

Track 2: Harold Ramis is unconsenting acting from the grave,

Speaker: 00:25:24

Track 2: you know, in a way recreating the initial precept of Ghostbusters.

Speaker: 00:25:29

Track 1: Just reminded me of what you're talking about as like this ghost for,

Speaker: 00:25:33

Track 1: you know, for, oh, sorry, this prison for ghosts and souls is it's like...

Speaker: 00:25:37

Track 1: It's not that, I mean, especially given the 1980s, it's sort of like a microcosm

Speaker: 00:25:42

Track 1: or like a, I don't know, that's not really the right word, but like the same

Speaker: 00:25:46

Track 1: way you would look at all the things that Ronald Reagan is doing,

Speaker: 00:25:49

Track 1: which this is, I think, the start of his second term, 1984, when it came out.

Speaker: 00:25:52

Track 1: And we're now seeing the you know massive weight

Speaker: 00:25:56

Track 1: you know wealth inequality is like skyrocketing you know

Speaker: 00:25:59

Track 1: all these different things that are happening and you're also now

Speaker: 00:26:01

Track 1: becoming the same you know prisoner i guess maybe in

Speaker: 00:26:04

Track 1: like quotes of all of these things that are now

Speaker: 00:26:07

Track 1: happening to you know the economy and society

Speaker: 00:26:10

Track 1: and everything i mean not that you weren't already that way under a

Speaker: 00:26:13

Track 1: capitalist system but it's like now magnified and

Speaker: 00:26:16

Track 1: it's only going to get worse as the you know the 90s and

Speaker: 00:26:19

Track 1: you know today when more ghostbusters are out you're just you're a prison to

Speaker: 00:26:23

Track 1: these things and rather than thinking like oh maybe we should uh decide uh you

Speaker: 00:26:27

Track 1: know have the epa come in and decide like this is let's try to fix this instead

Speaker: 00:26:31

Track 1: just like nah we're not going to do that we're just going to keep storing the

Speaker: 00:26:33

Track 1: ghosts or something yeah i mean i mean i.

Speaker: 00:26:38

Track 3: Think i think the the i think the big the big um political idea that we have

Speaker: 00:26:44

Track 3: to talk about here is it's uh neoliberalism,

Speaker: 00:26:48

Track 3: this collapse of you know

Speaker: 00:26:51

Track 3: the post-war consensus the idea that there was actually

Speaker: 00:26:54

Track 3: an important role for the state being replaced

Speaker: 00:26:59

Track 3: with the idea that actually all things are essentially reducible to market relations

Speaker: 00:27:04

Track 3: and therefore the the only way of managing any kind of like social field properly

Speaker: 00:27:11

Track 3: is to subordinate it to the logic of the market, right?

Speaker: 00:27:17

Track 3: If you can privatize something, not only do you reduce the capacity of the state

Speaker: 00:27:23

Track 3: to do things, but also you've created a new asset category.

Speaker: 00:27:28

Track 3: Right they like they charge they charge the the the nice hotel that they go

Speaker: 00:27:33

Track 3: to a huge amount of money um private prisons have always been very profitable.

Speaker: 00:27:37

Track 1: Yeah well and i saw

Speaker: 00:27:40

Track 1: something in the uh and like it's i mean it came where i read it but it was

Speaker: 00:27:44

Track 1: talking about the uh i think it was an article maybe like the washington examiner

Speaker: 00:27:48

Track 1: or something about this you know uh talking about and saying saying that the

Speaker: 00:27:52

Track 1: the movie is like an example of this like american free thinker kind of thing

Speaker: 00:27:57

Track 1: and like fighting government overreach.

Speaker: 00:27:59

Track 1: You know, if it weren't for the government's, you know, hand over me,

Speaker: 00:28:02

Track 1: I'd be able to innovate like super cool stuff.

Speaker: 00:28:04

Track 1: And like, I can't help but think about like in direct relation to 2025,

Speaker: 00:28:08

Track 1: you have this, you know, Elon Musk and his like stupid cars and Teslas and all these things.

Speaker: 00:28:14

Track 1: And like, you know, if only we can just get in there, I mean,

Speaker: 00:28:17

Track 1: and, you know, make the government less effective and be able to do these things.

Speaker: 00:28:21

Track 1: Like we'd have like double Teslas or something, like something even better that

Speaker: 00:28:25

Track 1: would make everyone great and you know in this movie it's like the proton packs

Speaker: 00:28:29

Track 1: and these just wild technology like if only the epa was get off our back we'd be able to you know,

Speaker: 00:28:35

Track 1: create proton packs that could actually you know not just for ghosts but for

Speaker: 00:28:40

Track 1: humans or something who knows like the like the i'm like i'm thinking even of like the,

Speaker: 00:28:45

Track 1: the expansion of privatized you know defense contractors in the 1980s you know

Speaker: 00:28:50

Track 1: with uh of course like star wars and all these things that they're building

Speaker: 00:28:54

Track 1: to you know fight the the evil soviets and so it's like this added component

Speaker: 00:28:59

Track 1: to it i know that's exactly what you were saying um john but.

Speaker: 00:29:02

Track 3: Yeah the most unrealistic part of this film is that they don't immediately get

Speaker: 00:29:06

Track 3: a massive contract from the department of.

Speaker: 00:29:08

Track 1: Defense like that's.

Speaker: 00:29:10

Track 3: That's the most unrealistic bit.

Speaker: 00:29:13

Track 1: Right yeah as they're sitting on the steps of the uh of columbia's library you

Speaker: 00:29:18

Track 1: know sipping on a bottle of like uh you know cheap i don't know what kind of

Speaker: 00:29:22

Track 1: liquor they had and they don't get a call you know in their office saying it's

Speaker: 00:29:25

Track 1: the uh it's the defense department they want to hire you to uh build a like

Speaker: 00:29:29

Track 1: a international soviet ghost trapping system or something yeah.

Speaker: 00:29:33

Track 2: Yeah a way to interrogate soviet ghosts.

Speaker: 00:29:40

Track 1: Yes that's exactly uh gosh like it almost would make even be funnier if it was

Speaker: 00:29:47

Track 1: had been like a satire of these things as opposed to being like a celebration

Speaker: 00:29:51

Track 1: of them like that would be an interesting you know film at that time but that's not what we got.

Speaker: 00:29:56

Track 2: Yeah i must feel like ghostbusters there's

Speaker: 00:29:59

Track 2: a struggle at the heart of this movie and it's and

Speaker: 00:30:02

Track 2: it's you know horror horror in the gothic more broadly is is a genre or our

Speaker: 00:30:08

Track 2: genres rather founded on so much ambiguity right it's really it's it's really

Speaker: 00:30:12

Track 2: hard to have square and easily fit discussions about anything spooky just because

Speaker: 00:30:18

Track 2: of the nature of what encountering the horrific.

Speaker: 00:30:20

Track 1: Is right.

Speaker: 00:30:22

Track 2: Right the horrific is always something on the periphery

Speaker: 00:30:25

Track 2: it's always something that's connected to the other and the monstrous even

Speaker: 00:30:28

Track 2: even in the context of a horror comedy right like to a much lesser extent sure

Speaker: 00:30:32

Track 2: but you still wind up going there and and i think in this movie like like i

Speaker: 00:30:38

Track 2: still like watching ghostbusters right like you know like owing to the nature

Speaker: 00:30:42

Track 2: of the kind of criticism we do you know like i come off as a scold all the time

Speaker: 00:30:45

Track 2: it's not like i dislike this stuff,

Speaker: 00:30:48

Track 2: Like, I talk about it because it's, like, the only thing that gets stuck in

Speaker: 00:30:51

Track 2: my head because I got lucky and that's how my brain works, I guess.

Speaker: 00:30:54

Track 2: Lucky and big ghosty quotes there.

Speaker: 00:30:57

Track 2: But, no, like, I think there is potential within Ghostbusters to find,

Speaker: 00:31:01

Track 2: like, alternate readings and stuff.

Speaker: 00:31:03

Track 2: Like, you know, like, you get the amazing line where, like, Louis Tully,

Speaker: 00:31:07

Track 2: who is now the key master, Vince Clortho, I think, is talking to a horse. Yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:15

Track 1: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:15

Track 2: You know, and he, like, looks at the horse and he's like, wait for the sign. then

Speaker: 00:31:18

Track 2: our prisoners will be released and then he like scampers off into the

Speaker: 00:31:21

Track 2: darkness and like like even as a kid like i really really

Speaker: 00:31:24

Track 2: liked that scene like that's one of the scenes in the movie that just like

Speaker: 00:31:26

Track 2: really stuck with me and like i didn't you know like like watching this movie

Speaker: 00:31:30

Track 2: as a kid and then like watching it you know like later as someone who had been

Speaker: 00:31:33

Track 2: to academia and then left academia like you know like you know there is always

Speaker: 00:31:37

Track 2: this connection to the ghostbusters themselves but for me like i i was way more

Speaker: 00:31:41

Track 2: interested in like slimer and the ghosts and

Speaker: 00:31:46

Track 2: kind of all of that stuff right this space where we can talk about and talk

Speaker: 00:31:50

Track 2: a bit more freely about like the

Speaker: 00:31:52

Track 2: condition of the other what it's like to depict people who are you know,

Speaker: 00:31:56

Track 2: alienated and marginalized by the societies in which they find themselves yeah.

Speaker: 00:32:00

Track 3: It's it's a very Nietzschean moment right and it's like what is it that Nietzsche

Speaker: 00:32:04

Track 3: apparently says to the horse it's like I understand you um.

Speaker: 00:32:07

Track 2: Yeah this idea you know Lewis Tully is Nietzsche yeah.

Speaker: 00:32:13

Track 3: Yeah he is you He is the man driven mad by God. It's done out of this,

Speaker: 00:32:20

Track 3: sense of his own insufficiency i actually think a nietzschean reading of lewis's

Speaker: 00:32:25

Track 3: uh tolia is very it's very reasonable.

Speaker: 00:32:30

Track 2: God god is gozer dressed in bubble wrap i i think.

Speaker: 00:32:33

Track 3: That's the case you know isn't that how the film ends god is dead and we have

Speaker: 00:32:37

Track 3: exploded him with our proton if.

Speaker: 00:32:39

Track 1: They ask if you're a god you say

Speaker: 00:32:42

Track 1: yes like that was always

Speaker: 00:32:45

Track 1: like as a as a kid like that was always like the like

Speaker: 00:32:48

Track 1: one of the one of like the main go-to lines of

Speaker: 00:32:51

Track 1: the of the film but like obviously i'm not thinking about it

Speaker: 00:32:54

Track 1: at that time as a you know like a little kid of you know what does that actually

Speaker: 00:32:58

Track 1: mean the idea of like god in this film and the you know the as you're saying

Speaker: 00:33:03

Track 1: the implication of like destroying him or destroying a version of him or something

Speaker: 00:33:06

Track 1: it's uh i don't even believe i don't even i don't have the uh the capability

Speaker: 00:33:11

Track 1: to even analyze that now i don't think.

Speaker: 00:33:13

Track 2: Oh yeah and And just to be clear about my earlier statement,

Speaker: 00:33:17

Track 2: like I liked that Lewis Tully line, not because like, I don't know,

Speaker: 00:33:21

Track 2: five-year-old me or whatever had some like, you know, prescient Marxist insight,

Speaker: 00:33:25

Track 2: but because five-year-old me liked the goofy guy talking to a horse.

Speaker: 00:33:29

Track 1: Oh, that's funny.

Speaker: 00:33:31

Track 2: It was much less sophisticated than it's become.

Speaker: 00:33:33

Track 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be quite something if you were watching that,

Speaker: 00:33:37

Track 1: be like, oh, that's Nietzsche right there. I get it.

Speaker: 00:33:42

Track 2: Yeah, yeah. What a wonderful childhood that would have been.

Speaker: 00:33:45

Track 2: All my friends are like, oh, have you seen the new Charizard card?

Speaker: 00:33:47

Track 2: And I'd be like, you know, actually, the new Charizard card reminds me of the Will to Power.

Speaker: 00:33:51

Track 2: I would have had so many friends on the playground.

Speaker: 00:33:54

Track 3: Yeah, but like, that's what you like now.

Speaker: 00:34:00

Track 1: Well, I guess it's a little more acceptable on the...

Speaker: 00:34:04

Track 1: Amongst your uh amongst your peers perhaps to uh to have that nuanced uh conversation and uh like.

Speaker: 00:34:10

Track 3: What does what does Slimer.

Speaker: 00:34:11

Track 1: Mean to you now I also yeah like loved uh lived and died with Slimer as a kid oh yeah I mean Slimer.

Speaker: 00:34:20

Track 2: Is Slimer rips.

Speaker: 00:34:21

Track 3: Maybe we should talk about Slimer though like

Speaker: 00:34:24

Track 3: maybe uh yes as a

Speaker: 00:34:27

Track 3: left symbol right what is Slimer is

Speaker: 00:34:30

Track 3: uh an an illegalist uh doesn't

Speaker: 00:34:33

Track 3: care about privatized property rights um but

Speaker: 00:34:37

Track 3: it's also like this this utopian excess you

Speaker: 00:34:41

Track 3: know he's because he's eating not because he

Speaker: 00:34:45

Track 3: needs to right but because there's this kind

Speaker: 00:34:47

Track 3: of like libidinal joy in it um

Speaker: 00:34:51

Track 3: in a space where where food is so often like deeply commodified and it's become

Speaker: 00:34:56

Track 3: this kind of exclusive thing that only money will give you access to um isn't

Speaker: 00:35:03

Track 3: that isn't that why they they call the the ghost police on him yeah.

Speaker: 00:35:09

Track 1: The stories in private property and uh drinking all the booze and the food.

Speaker: 00:35:15

Track 3: Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker: 00:35:17

Track 2: Like what was slimer before.

Speaker: 00:35:19

Track 1: Like what was his.

Speaker: 00:35:20

Track 2: What was.

Speaker: 00:35:21

Track 1: He in that in the in human form what was his uh you know i don't know.

Speaker: 00:35:25

Track 2: And i'm sure i'm sure there's like an answer in the comic books or something

Speaker: 00:35:28

Track 2: i'm sure we've got the the slimer origin story comic or whatever.

Speaker: 00:35:31

Track 3: Yeah yeah there's there's like three people listening to this yelling at their

Speaker: 00:35:36

Track 3: phone screens right now yes.

Speaker: 00:35:38

Track 2: His name was john john slime man and he liked.

Speaker: 00:35:41

Track 3: Eating hot dogs in his life and then he became.

Speaker: 00:35:43

Track 2: Slime really goes to something silly but but no like like i i totally agree

Speaker: 00:35:48

Track 2: with this this reading and i think it's really exciting to kind of like follow

Speaker: 00:35:51

Track 2: this path more broadly too because like you know like like now looking at slimer

Speaker: 00:35:55

Track 2: like yeah this this is like the kind of utopian excess. This is the release...

Speaker: 00:35:59

Track 2: He is like the spirit of cathexis for the pent-up libidinal anxieties of the working poor.

Speaker: 00:36:06

Track 2: What if you could just eat the hot dogs? What if you could just go to the hotel and party?

Speaker: 00:36:10

Track 2: What if you didn't have to worry about money? What if you could just walk through

Speaker: 00:36:13

Track 2: the damn walls and take the stuff that was yours to begin with?

Speaker: 00:36:17

Track 2: You know, Slimer represents all of that stuff. and

Speaker: 00:36:20

Track 2: there's something like kind of about his freedom and his

Speaker: 00:36:24

Track 2: kind of like this like this like like i don't know like

Speaker: 00:36:26

Track 2: almost nihilistic glee that he represents that's just

Speaker: 00:36:29

Track 2: like exciting to like we what if we took the same

Speaker: 00:36:32

Track 2: lens and applied it to the rest of the ghosts and ghostbusters you know what

Speaker: 00:36:35

Track 2: if we give them the same grace that we were giving slimer you know like like

Speaker: 00:36:38

Track 2: what does it mean to like look at them look at all the other ghosts as we've

Speaker: 00:36:42

Track 2: been like kind of you know negatively looking at uh the ghostbusters themselves

Speaker: 00:36:46

Track 2: and you know instead give like a positive credence to these spirits.

Speaker: 00:36:49

Track 1: Well yeah absolutely well as i say you don't

Speaker: 00:36:52

Track 1: get any other than i guess like the librarian at

Speaker: 00:36:55

Track 1: the beginning you know in the basement of the library you don't really get any

Speaker: 00:36:58

Track 1: visions of any of the other ghosts you just kind of

Speaker: 00:37:01

Track 1: have the montage of them like strutting through the streets holding

Speaker: 00:37:04

Track 1: their little uh you know their little um traps with

Speaker: 00:37:07

Track 1: their like smoking nuclear fission something

Speaker: 00:37:10

Track 1: or others like you know that's all you really get you don't actually there is

Speaker: 00:37:14

Track 1: no they're like very much dehumanized in like a very deep way in the way that

Speaker: 00:37:18

Track 1: they're depicted not just like being put into this prison in the wall of the

Speaker: 00:37:21

Track 1: of this building just treated as uh you know i think you either you may have

Speaker: 00:37:26

Track 1: said ash like othering them in a way that's kind of completely ignored yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:30

Track 3: I mean this is this is uh we talked about i think we absolutely have to talk

Speaker: 00:37:35

Track 3: about walter benjamin as well uh famously wrote the theses on the philosophy

Speaker: 00:37:40

Track 3: of history benjamin says something so interesting which is like writing in a

Speaker: 00:37:44

Track 3: time of fascism, which is that not even,

Speaker: 00:37:48

Track 3: Not even the dead will be safe if the opponents of a communist revolution win.

Speaker: 00:37:55

Track 3: Fascism will dig up the bones of the dead and co-opt the dead into their struggles.

Speaker: 00:38:01

Track 3: And I'm like, oh, this is what the Ghostbusters is.

Speaker: 00:38:07

Track 3: No, you don't get to be at peace. You don't get to be even a revenant of a different

Speaker: 00:38:14

Track 3: kind of possibility if you're a ghost. what you get is you get incarcerated.

Speaker: 00:38:18

Track 2: And especially too like we can kind of like do the

Speaker: 00:38:21

Track 2: inverse reading and and like but what if we look at the

Speaker: 00:38:24

Track 2: kind of soviet cosmism of what the ghostbusters could have

Speaker: 00:38:27

Track 2: been of what it would mean to like redeem

Speaker: 00:38:30

Track 2: and liberate the dead from the terrors that they've experienced like

Speaker: 00:38:34

Track 2: what if we could really save everybody you know

Speaker: 00:38:38

Track 2: and like there's there's something about that in the ghostbusters we're

Speaker: 00:38:41

Track 2: like kind of you know confronting think exactly what you're

Speaker: 00:38:43

Track 2: saying john like almost implies or

Speaker: 00:38:47

Track 2: forces the thought and the the kind of contravening direction you know

Speaker: 00:38:50

Track 2: like because i was thinking like you know you mentioned the librarian

Speaker: 00:38:54

Track 2: and like the only other ghost i can think of unless it's gozer

Speaker: 00:38:56

Track 2: a ghost i don't think there's a ghost the ghost is ghost ghost type

Speaker: 00:39:00

Track 2: gozer's a ghost type pokemon i don't know what the subtype

Speaker: 00:39:03

Track 2: of gozer is um but like

Speaker: 00:39:06

Track 2: the only other ghost i could think of that had like a real solid identity

Speaker: 00:39:09

Track 2: was like the taxicab driver skeleton yeah yeah

Speaker: 00:39:12

Track 2: yeah and like even even this vision of the ghosts like

Speaker: 00:39:15

Track 2: so many people like you know you come back from the dead and now you're at you're

Speaker: 00:39:19

Track 2: you're still a taxicab driver you know like you're still kind of like the job

Speaker: 00:39:23

Track 2: that you had in life you work again in death with the sole exception of slimer

Speaker: 00:39:27

Track 2: and he winds up becoming the one that's like friends with the ghostbusters or

Speaker: 00:39:31

Track 2: at least tolerated by them in a weird way yeah.

Speaker: 00:39:33

Track 3: Sort of a mascot and i actually do think this is an important thing about like

Speaker: 00:39:37

Track 3: being someone who is politically left-wing which is that,

Speaker: 00:39:43

Track 3: The whole point of being oriented towards a kind of revolutionary situation

Speaker: 00:39:49

Track 3: is not that you're just trying to make the present better.

Speaker: 00:39:53

Track 3: Because the present is the cumulative work of multiple failed revolutionary struggles.

Speaker: 00:40:02

Track 3: And so this is the Benjaminian point, which is that if you count yourself as

Speaker: 00:40:08

Track 3: revolutionary in the present, you're not just trying to redeem the present.

Speaker: 00:40:12

Track 3: You're trying to redeem the past as well, right?

Speaker: 00:40:15

Track 3: The dead are unquiet in their graves.

Speaker: 00:40:19

Track 3: And the entire point is, are you going to allow not just the current political

Speaker: 00:40:25

Track 3: situation to enact a kind of closure, but are you going to allow history itself to be papered over?

Speaker: 00:40:32

Track 3: And, you know, the fact that the ghosts, what is it the ghosts want?

Speaker: 00:40:35

Track 3: They want to break free of what they were and what they have become, which is imprisoned.

Speaker: 00:40:41

Track 2: And I'm just right now thinking of a lot of the scenes we see of the ghosts,

Speaker: 00:40:46

Track 2: you know, like what we see them kind of materially doing.

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Track 2: And a lot of them are kind of just like flying around and reveling.

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Track 3: Yeah.

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Track 2: You know, like, and visually that's expressing some kind of,

Speaker: 00:40:56

Track 2: like, boundless freedom.

Speaker: 00:40:58

Track 2: There's a kind of joy in these ghosts that, you know, like, because if you can't

Speaker: 00:41:04

Track 2: rent-seek on someone, you have

Speaker: 00:41:06

Track 2: to incarcerate them in order to create the context for that rent-seeking.

Speaker: 00:41:11

Track 2: And I'm just like, oh, like, the mirrors to broader political context are so grim.

Speaker: 00:41:17

Track 3: Yeah.

Speaker: 00:41:19

Track 1: Like if you're talking about the ghost as kind of just

Speaker: 00:41:22

Track 1: they're just trying to live their they're just not live their life

Speaker: 00:41:25

Track 1: i guess but like really that's all they're trying to do they're just kind of they're

Speaker: 00:41:28

Track 1: just trying to exist in this space of just like freedom

Speaker: 00:41:31

Track 1: from all the things that they once had to maybe deal with

Speaker: 00:41:34

Track 1: and then then being re-incarcerated again is

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Track 1: just just a real kick in the you

Speaker: 00:41:40

Track 1: know it's uh and

Speaker: 00:41:43

Track 1: and actually so do you do you both want to know what the backstory the

Speaker: 00:41:47

Track 1: non-canonical backstory of of slammer is

Speaker: 00:41:50

Track 1: or do we want to leave it oh yeah yeah i need to

Speaker: 00:41:52

Track 1: know okay so there's so there's two so the in the comic book

Speaker: 00:41:56

Track 1: apparently it explains that he was king remilis an

Speaker: 00:41:59

Track 1: obese king who died of heart failure failure and then

Speaker: 00:42:03

Track 1: in the film the 2016 which they deleted from the from the film was he was a

Speaker: 00:42:09

Track 1: gangster who was killed who killed a restaurant waiter that got his order incorrect

Speaker: 00:42:14

Track 1: resulting his imprisonment and execution and then after his death they encounter

Speaker: 00:42:18

Track 1: him haunting that same restaurant over and over again so oh okay.

Speaker: 00:42:23

Track 1: Yeah both are our reasons i guess both are

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Track 1: things that's fine i suppose yeah nothing that seems

Speaker: 00:42:30

Track 1: quite cool yeah that's a little that's interesting you know

Speaker: 00:42:33

Track 1: i guess but to me that like takes away from

Speaker: 00:42:36

Track 1: what it is in the actual film which does have like political you know implications

Speaker: 00:42:41

Track 1: of him just trying to be this this uh thing or whatever this uh phantasm that's

Speaker: 00:42:49

Track 1: uh just trying to he's trying to enjoy something and they're just trying to

Speaker: 00:42:52

Track 1: shoot at him with ray guns.

Speaker: 00:42:56

Track 2: Yeah yeah slimer much like you know philosopher shlavoj zizek enjoys eating a lot of hot.

Speaker: 00:43:01

Track 1: Dogs yeah.

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Track 2: I i don't think this is some kind of crime absolutely i think,

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Track 2: oh go on go on i'm.

Speaker: 00:43:08

Track 3: Just gonna say if you see somebody enjoying a massive plate of cakes no you

Speaker: 00:43:13

Track 3: didn't like it's it's fine.

Speaker: 00:43:17

Track 2: Yeah see see something spectral say nothing that's that's the line but no like

Speaker: 00:43:23

Track 2: i i think i think that kind of those backstories are really you know like like

Speaker: 00:43:27

Track 2: now that we're hearing them they're interesting for like a discursive standpoint

Speaker: 00:43:29

Track 2: too like if you want to have some fun with them like you know like like both

Speaker: 00:43:33

Track 2: of those imply that slimer's state in the afterlife is carceral.

Speaker: 00:43:36

Track 2: You know, that his kind of gluttonous nature is some kind of like divine punishment

Speaker: 00:43:44

Track 2: or rectification for the sins of his life.

Speaker: 00:43:48

Track 2: Whether he was the kind of gluttonous king that dies of heart failure,

Speaker: 00:43:51

Track 2: or he's the mob boss who kills a restaurateur, you know, he's being appropriately

Speaker: 00:43:57

Track 2: punished by his status as Slimer.

Speaker: 00:43:59

Track 2: Although neither of those really answer the slime question, which I think is

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Track 2: the definitive factor here, but I'm going to leave that aside.

Speaker: 00:44:05

Track 3: No, I knew you were going to bring up the slime. I need you to talk to us about

Speaker: 00:44:11

Track 3: why is it important that he gets slimed.

Speaker: 00:44:16

Track 2: Okay, sorry, we could totally derail everything I was just saying because John's

Speaker: 00:44:20

Track 2: making me talk about slime.

Speaker: 00:44:23

Track 2: You're twisting my arm here. So I think, because obviously we get all the slime

Speaker: 00:44:30

Track 2: stuff in Ghostbusters because it's heavily influenced by turn-of-the-century spiritualism.

Speaker: 00:44:35

Track 2: Which invents things like ectoplasm and ectoplasm photography and stuff like

Speaker: 00:44:39

Track 2: that, mediums using ectoplasm.

Speaker: 00:44:42

Track 2: You know, that's why Ghostbusters has all of this kind of like effugence in slime.

Speaker: 00:44:48

Track 2: But I think like from kind of like a weird left perspective,

Speaker: 00:44:52

Track 2: you know, we can get really like sticky with this, you know?

Speaker: 00:44:55

Track 2: Like what is slime if not kind of this unacknowledged and boundless potential,

Speaker: 00:45:01

Track 2: right? You know, like, like it's, it's kind of like a grand unifying substance.

Speaker: 00:45:05

Track 2: All, all humanity comes from some protoplasmic slime.

Speaker: 00:45:08

Track 2: When we go back far enough in time, we're all reduced to some element of slime.

Speaker: 00:45:13

Track 2: At some point in our life, our bodies are always erupting with these uncomfortable

Speaker: 00:45:16

Track 2: slimes and Ghostbusters externalizes that, right?

Speaker: 00:45:19

Track 2: Ghostbusters is constantly dumping buckets of slime on people, you know?

Speaker: 00:45:22

Track 2: And like, this is coming out within the same like rough decade

Speaker: 00:45:25

Track 2: where we get like the gunge train in the

Speaker: 00:45:28

Track 2: uk and we get like nickelodeon dumping gack on on contestants and tv shows we're

Speaker: 00:45:34

Track 2: seeing like like this 90s return to slime that that's about to come that's like

Speaker: 00:45:39

Track 2: kicking off here in the ghostbusters and it never really goes away i mean like

Speaker: 00:45:42

Track 2: today we've got people play with it i think like there's this unbreakable fixation

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Track 2: we have with something that is like,

Speaker: 00:45:48

Track 2: protoplasmic and free form something that kind of resists,

Speaker: 00:45:51

Track 2: Like, you know, like even when we look at like, you know, you buy prepackaged

Speaker: 00:45:54

Track 2: slime at stores, but like half the success of like these slime influencers are

Speaker: 00:45:59

Track 2: the fact that you could just like order Elmer's glue and make it yourself.

Speaker: 00:46:02

Track 2: There's like a DIY component to this as there was with spiritualism.

Speaker: 00:46:05

Track 2: And I don't know really where I'm taking this. If somebody wants to like jump

Speaker: 00:46:08

Track 2: in the slime bucket with me, I'm kind of just rambling at this point.

Speaker: 00:46:13

Track 1: Well, like, but how does that like square?

Speaker: 00:46:16

Track 1: I mean i don't know but like the the the

Speaker: 00:46:19

Track 1: idea that like is it meant to also be seen as like

Speaker: 00:46:22

Track 1: some kind of like magic substance where it's what it's

Speaker: 00:46:25

Track 1: what allows the ghost i guess to make it so that humans in our you know our

Speaker: 00:46:30

Track 1: version of reality or dimension are able to like see it you know is it this

Speaker: 00:46:36

Track 1: like uh magic force and i can't also help but think about like the goo and the

Speaker: 00:46:40

Track 1: like the invasion of the body snatchers like from.

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Track 2: The yeah like the.

Speaker: 00:46:43

Track 1: Second film especially like this extraterrestrial like goo that comes which

Speaker: 00:46:49

Track 1: also has an interesting like i don't know you could probably talk about how

Speaker: 00:46:52

Track 1: it might compare to that film in in some way but that's like the first thing

Speaker: 00:46:55

Track 1: that i i couldn't stop thinking about when i was watching it also on my favorite film so.

Speaker: 00:46:59

Track 2: I i think the blob is such a good place to go to too right

Speaker: 00:47:02

Track 2: there's oh yeah there's there there is

Speaker: 00:47:05

Track 2: this kind of like e slime is often used

Speaker: 00:47:08

Track 2: in cinema to like encode like this inherent fear of

Speaker: 00:47:11

Track 2: like communistic attitudes you know like it's it's

Speaker: 00:47:14

Track 2: it's no wonder that the libertarians of the ghostbusters are

Speaker: 00:47:17

Track 2: made natural enemies to the the slime of the

Speaker: 00:47:20

Track 2: spirit world you know and then like in the blob right it's

Speaker: 00:47:23

Track 2: this kind of like faceless all digesting you know

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Track 2: mass versus the brave individualistic

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Track 2: americans um and i think

Speaker: 00:47:32

Track 2: like you know like ectoplasm is is the medium it's

Speaker: 00:47:35

Track 2: you know like to to speak to like spiritualism and how this context enters

Speaker: 00:47:38

Track 2: ghostbusters it's it's the medium through which the

Speaker: 00:47:42

Track 2: the spirit realm intersects the the realm

Speaker: 00:47:45

Track 2: of the living right it's the medium by which ghosts are realized on

Speaker: 00:47:48

Track 2: the mortal plane and and i think like like

Speaker: 00:47:52

Track 2: if we were to like spin this in a left direction and like to take

Speaker: 00:47:54

Track 2: this conversation there right like this does this does like

Speaker: 00:47:57

Track 2: ground us back to like materialistic conversations that

Speaker: 00:48:01

Track 2: even like one thing i appreciate about the ghostbusters is that

Speaker: 00:48:04

Track 2: like no matter how libertarian it gets no matter how like you're like oh wait

Speaker: 00:48:08

Track 2: they're it's this misogynistic sex pest who hates the epa is our hero like question

Speaker: 00:48:13

Track 2: mark like we are constantly like hit in the face with material conditions you

Speaker: 00:48:19

Track 2: know like like these ghosts have day jobs.

Speaker: 00:48:22

Track 2: Right like the you know like these people are like able to acquire

Speaker: 00:48:25

Track 2: unregulated nuclear fissile materials or

Speaker: 00:48:28

Track 2: something but also the bank is screwing them over for

Speaker: 00:48:31

Track 2: like the triple mortgage they have to get or something right it's like like

Speaker: 00:48:35

Track 2: we're we're kind of never it's and it's weird to say this about ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:48:39

Track 2: but we're never like blindsided by a bunch of movie magic and a bunch of stuff

Speaker: 00:48:42

Track 2: is swept under the rug you know the movie is like very open about the weird

Speaker: 00:48:46

Track 2: material conditions going on yeah.

Speaker: 00:48:48

Track 3: I mean that's that's uh ernie hudson's role right in in the entire film you

Speaker: 00:48:55

Track 3: know just to just to be the the guy who needs a job um and things have got they've

Speaker: 00:49:00

Track 3: gotten so successful at what they do it seems to be a pretty seems to be a pretty good gig now.

Speaker: 00:49:06

Track 1: Apparently they were supposed to include backstory for

Speaker: 00:49:09

Track 1: that character where he was formerly like in the military but then

Speaker: 00:49:12

Track 1: they scrapped it and didn't you know didn't include it i don't know if it

Speaker: 00:49:14

Track 1: ever i don't know maybe it was just like in the production of the movie that

Speaker: 00:49:18

Track 1: was what they're going to go with and that's why he might show up but i think

Speaker: 00:49:21

Track 1: it's much better this way where he's not former military and he's just simply

Speaker: 00:49:24

Track 1: he's like i'll believe in what i don't remember the exact line i'll believe

Speaker: 00:49:28

Track 1: in you know whatever if you know as long as it pets a paycheck yeah so,

Speaker: 00:49:33

Track 1: it's it's like the perfect encapsulation of of that time of uh you know he's

Speaker: 00:49:38

Track 1: looking through the wanted ads and like the only option is like to work for

Speaker: 00:49:41

Track 1: the ghostbusters like like you have to tell your like your mom later like yeah

Speaker: 00:49:45

Track 1: what's your interview about it's like i'm gonna go work for some ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:49:48

Track 1: and they just like laugh at you for half for half hour well.

Speaker: 00:49:52

Track 3: I'm gonna go work in private security.

Speaker: 00:49:54

Track 1: Yes there you go private ghost security we just incarcerate you know uh you

Speaker: 00:50:02

Track 1: know spectral whatever specters like.

Speaker: 00:50:07

Track 2: Dude there's there there's a lot of pathos to that character too like you feel a lot of like,

Speaker: 00:50:11

Track 2: Like the weight of class politics hangs heavy on the shoulders of Ernie Hudson,

Speaker: 00:50:16

Track 2: you know, because like you really feel for somebody living in like a city as expensive as New York.

Speaker: 00:50:20

Track 3: Yeah.

Speaker: 00:50:21

Track 2: To trying to make it. And then like, you know, the only thing that's hiring

Speaker: 00:50:25

Track 2: is private security. And in this case, what's even worse, a private security startup.

Speaker: 00:50:30

Track 3: Yeah. You know, like.

Speaker: 00:50:32

Track 1: Hey, he could get in on that early stock options.

Speaker: 00:50:36

Track 2: Yeah, early stock options. Get the Ghostbusters stock options.

Speaker: 00:50:39

Track 3: Yeah leverage it into like an associate position at palantia or.

Speaker: 00:50:43

Track 1: Something right.

Speaker: 00:50:44

Track 3: At least you get benefits right.

Speaker: 00:50:47

Track 1: You also don't really other than like dana you

Speaker: 00:50:50

Track 1: don't ever get to see like the conditions of the others but

Speaker: 00:50:53

Track 1: they also all are living because they have to

Speaker: 00:50:55

Track 1: be on call at the as ghostbusters you know presumably as professors or no i

Speaker: 00:51:00

Track 1: guess they're not even well i guess they're you know working at columbia they

Speaker: 00:51:04

Track 1: get a decent enough stipend to be living you know living in new york city and

Speaker: 00:51:08

Track 1: now they're they're stuck sleeping in a room uh you know the three of them together

Speaker: 00:51:13

Track 1: and or i guess four of them after the ernie joins i.

Speaker: 00:51:15

Track 2: Think that that too plays into like is something

Speaker: 00:51:18

Track 2: that's been central to like capitalist myth

Speaker: 00:51:21

Track 2: making is that like the ghostbusters lift themselves up by their bootstraps

Speaker: 00:51:26

Track 2: they do this from the ground up they they quit their stable jobs they they start

Speaker: 00:51:30

Track 2: an independent business and yeah they have to rough it for a while and the man

Speaker: 00:51:34

Track 2: tries to shut them down but ultimately they're heroes and everyone loves them for it, you know?

Speaker: 00:51:39

Track 2: And then, like, you know, when the sequel wasn't planned, it's easy to close

Speaker: 00:51:42

Track 2: your eyes at the end of the movie and imagine them as, like,

Speaker: 00:51:45

Track 2: you know, CEOs and presidents and the kind of classic mythology of, like, oh, Bill Clinton,

Speaker: 00:51:51

Track 2: you know, grew up in nowhere, Kansas, and lifted himself up by the bootstraps

Speaker: 00:51:55

Track 2: so hard he became president.

Speaker: 00:51:57

Track 2: Or Arkansas or wherever Clinton is from, I don't remember. It does not matter.

Speaker: 00:52:02

Track 2: Clinton is not a character in the Ghostbusters, which means he is canonically

Speaker: 00:52:05

Track 2: unimportant in this conversation.

Speaker: 00:52:07

Track 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:52:08

Track 1: Well, he too probably would have been trying to go after Dana,

Speaker: 00:52:12

Track 1: you know, Sigourney Weaver. Trying to trick her into doing something.

Speaker: 00:52:18

Track 1: Which we didn't even, like, really talk about her character or her in this.

Speaker: 00:52:22

Track 1: And, you know, I, I, again, like Sigourney Weaver in the eighties,

Speaker: 00:52:26

Track 1: like as an icon of like alien and this and all this, like, it's such a,

Speaker: 00:52:29

Track 1: like, I think I joke, like, you know, uh, she, you know, she's,

Speaker: 00:52:33

Track 1: you know, beautiful. And like, also it's so, also is her home.

Speaker: 00:52:36

Track 1: I don't know. Like she lives in this like beautiful apartment and like this,

Speaker: 00:52:39

Track 1: I mean, great that she's a musician and, you know, presumably like a very good.

Speaker: 00:52:44

Track 1: And, you know, she's playing at a Lincoln center, I guess she has a,

Speaker: 00:52:47

Track 1: they don't ever say what exactly does she say?

Speaker: 00:52:50

Track 1: What instrument she plays? this is like pointless but did they say i.

Speaker: 00:52:54

Track 2: Do not know.

Speaker: 00:52:55

Track 1: She just says.

Speaker: 00:52:55

Track 3: Carrying a cane or something.

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Track 1: A violin uh.

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Track 3: Yeah yeah i thought it was a string instrument right yeah.

Speaker: 00:53:01

Track 1: I guess it had to be.

Speaker: 00:53:02

Track 3: And it's a good example that like the 80s were

Speaker: 00:53:05

Track 3: a good time for the right like it was a very

Speaker: 00:53:08

Track 3: successful class war right the middle classes did very well

Speaker: 00:53:11

Track 3: um the the the those who

Speaker: 00:53:14

Track 3: were involved in sort of finance did it even better well until

Speaker: 00:53:18

Track 3: you reach the the crisis of the late 80s and

Speaker: 00:53:21

Track 3: and it's it's interesting that so much of this revolves around possession and

Speaker: 00:53:26

Track 3: it all starts in that beautiful kitchen you know the great that amazing 1980s

Speaker: 00:53:31

Track 3: uh refrigerator uh yeah what do you what do you both think about that i think

Speaker: 00:53:37

Track 3: there's some interesting things here about,

Speaker: 00:53:40

Track 3: domesticity and property particularly.

Speaker: 00:53:42

Track 1: And they also very clearly have, you know, the Rick Moran as Lewis character

Speaker: 00:53:46

Track 1: who also works in finance, kind of, he's an accountant.

Speaker: 00:53:49

Track 1: So he lives down the hall and they're like, he's constantly trying to go after her.

Speaker: 00:53:53

Track 1: And you have this, you know, single man, single woman in the building,

Speaker: 00:53:56

Track 1: like, shouldn't they just get together and have more money and have a bigger apartment or whatever?

Speaker: 00:54:01

Track 1: I don't know. It's, it's very much like almost demonizing this idea of a single

Speaker: 00:54:06

Track 1: woman. I think you mentioned earlier.

Speaker: 00:54:07

Track 2: John, like a.

Speaker: 00:54:08

Track 1: Single you know a single mom or something like i think it's very much like a

Speaker: 00:54:11

Track 1: demonization of this you know like you should be with a ghostbuster or the accountant

Speaker: 00:54:15

Track 1: like those are your choices yeah yeah.

Speaker: 00:54:17

Track 2: And i mean like especially like when we like do

Speaker: 00:54:20

Track 2: a little compare and contrast here with sigourney weaver's character

Speaker: 00:54:24

Track 2: in alien versus her character in ghostbusters it is

Speaker: 00:54:27

Track 2: you know like it's such stark relief

Speaker: 00:54:30

Track 2: to have like the the the

Speaker: 00:54:34

Track 2: badass independent in charge queer coated ripply contrasted

Speaker: 00:54:38

Track 2: with like the dana who's just almost

Speaker: 00:54:41

Track 2: very nearly a lampshade and there's just something something

Speaker: 00:54:45

Track 2: for bill mary's character to oogle after and

Speaker: 00:54:48

Track 2: then eventually get turned into some kind of sexy ghost and like

Speaker: 00:54:51

Track 2: the issue of domesticity is also really important here too

Speaker: 00:54:54

Track 2: because like it's it's her a whole central part of

Speaker: 00:54:57

Track 2: the conflict is about her agency over a domestic space right

Speaker: 00:55:00

Track 2: it's and it's about her role in relation to that domesticity right does she

Speaker: 00:55:05

Track 2: own the apartment uh as dana or does the apartment kind of own her as the gatekeeper

Speaker: 00:55:10

Track 2: you know is is her status as a single woman who owns her own apartment such

Speaker: 00:55:15

Track 2: an affront that like you know not only do like the you know like,

Speaker: 00:55:20

Track 2: two two contrasting male characters of this have to constantly be like well

Speaker: 00:55:23

Track 2: why are you single you know woman living alone yeah but that the very the very

Speaker: 00:55:27

Track 2: spiritual realm has to render her a functionary part of that domestic landscape

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Track 2: rather than an agent inside of it.

Speaker: 00:55:33

Track 3: Yeah because it's a built it's an antenna right you know it's that's it's it's

Speaker: 00:55:38

Track 3: a designed space that is there to to kind of serve a function beyond the commodification's property.

Speaker: 00:55:44

Track 1: But what do you make it that that they were that she it becomes like the gatekeeper

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Track 1: of you know of gozer like specifically do you think as this and then i guess

Speaker: 00:55:55

Track 1: the the the accountant you know is the the key master.

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Track 2: As these like separate.

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Track 1: Like it seems like a very like it almost seems like a sexual um like reference

Speaker: 00:56:04

Track 1: to in some way maybe maybe i'm over thinking it.

Speaker: 00:56:07

Track 2: Yeah i think that's i think that's like the oh there's so much to unpack with

Speaker: 00:56:13

Track 2: her becoming the gatekeeper like and And I think it has such a weird valence

Speaker: 00:56:17

Track 2: to it when you consider like the kind of backlash against the 2016 Ghostbusters

Speaker: 00:56:21

Track 2: that like the leading woman of the first one is the gatekeeper in quotes,

Speaker: 00:56:26

Track 2: you know, like so much so much is kind of foretold in this movie that like the

Speaker: 00:56:32

Track 2: the sniveling spineless nerd guy winds up, you know, being the guy who's forever

Speaker: 00:56:38

Track 2: frustrated over the status of the gatekeeper,

Speaker: 00:56:41

Track 2: unable to access her and crawling around the bushes talking to horses.

Speaker: 00:56:45

Track 2: Um no it's so much is foretold in this moment but

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Track 2: but i think like a thing like it's

Speaker: 00:56:52

Track 2: almost really tragic what what becomes of

Speaker: 00:56:55

Track 2: dana's character right like she she is never really

Speaker: 00:56:57

Track 2: allowed by this movie to have her express her own agency you

Speaker: 00:57:01

Track 2: know she she's always kind of like a functionary mechanism in in the plot of

Speaker: 00:57:05

Track 2: someone else yeah and and that that is that's kind of like you know like her

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Track 2: and ernie hudson there's like a there's like a real tragic sense of pathos to

Speaker: 00:57:14

Track 2: a lot of these characters that's like just under the surface of the comedy here well.

Speaker: 00:57:18

Track 3: I think the thing that comes into this then is class relationships as well i

Speaker: 00:57:22

Track 3: mean it's it's very notable that you brought up ripley uh.

Speaker: 00:57:25

Track 2: You again.

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Track 3: Very quick hooded but also quite obviously working class.

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Track 2: Yes yes and.

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Track 3: Dana is not right dana if you are if you've got if you've got that gorgeous

Speaker: 00:57:35

Track 3: apartment in i'm assuming it is in manhattan right yeah.

Speaker: 00:57:39

Track 1: She lives like right along central park which is like a very fancy place.

Speaker: 00:57:42

Track 3: Yeah that's like central park i'm sorry central park west.

Speaker: 00:57:46

Track 2: That is that.

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Track 3: Is not a working class neighborhood.

Speaker: 00:57:50

Track 1: No like the building that they actually the exterior building shot is actually

Speaker: 00:57:54

Track 1: it's multiple buildings like conglomerate but the building that they actually

Speaker: 00:57:57

Track 1: shoot on the outside like david dacovny lives there and like in real life yeah.

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Track 2: Whereas whereas.

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Track 3: Like uh wilfred or any hudson is is probably coming in from like brooklyn right Yeah, for sure.

Speaker: 00:58:12

Track 3: This goes all the way back to Ellen Moore's famous book on literary women from the 1970s,

Speaker: 00:58:19

Track 3: which pointed out that what she termed the female gothic is about this relationship

Speaker: 00:58:25

Track 3: of essentially a middle-class protagonist to the domestic sphere.

Speaker: 00:58:30

Track 3: It's the space which is both paradoxically the thing which imprisons you,

Speaker: 00:58:33

Track 3: but it's the area in which you can exercise agency.

Speaker: 00:58:37

Track 3: It's something that's a work in Dana's character, right? then it doesn't really

Speaker: 00:58:41

Track 3: need to or get to have agency beyond being the catalyst for like the restoration

Speaker: 00:58:46

Track 3: of of normality at the end of things right.

Speaker: 00:58:49

Track 1: And it almost gets even worse when you

Speaker: 00:58:52

Track 1: look at her character in the sequel which she

Speaker: 00:58:55

Track 1: again also has no agency they've really treat her almost worse i think in the

Speaker: 00:58:59

Track 1: second one she's divorced and has like the small child but it's not the child

Speaker: 00:59:04

Track 1: of peter bankman and like they also weren't married i don't believe maybe at

Speaker: 00:59:08

Track 1: the end they get can't even remember but then like she's then you know as this

Speaker: 00:59:12

Track 1: you know um prize of vigo the like,

Speaker: 00:59:16

Track 1: malevolent painting spirit or whatever so she again is like the same like lusted

Speaker: 00:59:21

Track 1: upon and used as some kind of tool as like the gatekeeper and all these things

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Track 1: and not actually as you said like given any kind of agency or free will of any kind well.

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Track 2: This is this is like a really good uh like point to talk about like sylvia federici's

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Track 2: caliban and the witch and like bring in.

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Track 1: Bring in some.

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Track 2: Other kind of like elements of left discourse too because like you know

Speaker: 00:59:43

Track 2: like you you were talking about like the the key master and

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Track 2: the gatekeeper being you know like like it's like a sex metaphor

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Track 2: and like i think that's like really important politically on top of like the

Speaker: 00:59:52

Track 2: the kind of the kind of like you know like oh it's the joke like like do you

Speaker: 00:59:55

Track 2: get the joke do you get the joke everyone in the audience please clap um but

Speaker: 01:00:01

Track 2: like you know dana's value has kind of reduced to her reproductive capacity.

Speaker: 01:00:06

Track 2: You know, as the gatekeeper, she means nothing unless unified with the key master.

Speaker: 01:00:10

Track 2: You know, and like the kind of scenes we get with Dana are her like orgasmically

Speaker: 01:00:14

Track 2: writhing in bed, whereas the key master gets to go have this funny little adventure.

Speaker: 01:00:18

Track 2: You know, he gets to go scamper and talk to horses while she just gets to be sexy and tied up.

Speaker: 01:00:23

Track 2: And then, you know, you can trace this to the second movie and like her value

Speaker: 01:00:26

Track 2: still doesn't matter. It's now only her reproductive capacity.

Speaker: 01:00:29

Track 2: You know, she's not a person. She's a mom.

Speaker: 01:00:32

Track 2: Is kind of the attitude of the second movie. What she wants and needs really doesn't matter.

Speaker: 01:00:36

Track 2: What matters is that her baby took an evil bubble bath and that's her fault for being single.

Speaker: 01:00:42

Track 2: Or something like, these movies have very confused and reactionary politics

Speaker: 01:00:46

Track 2: towards women in general.

Speaker: 01:00:48

Track 1: Yeah.

Speaker: 01:00:49

Track 2: Which, like, if we extend that to our contemporary political moment,

Speaker: 01:00:51

Track 2: like, it's really important to look at all these intersecting forms of oppression, right?

Speaker: 01:00:55

Track 2: Because, like, you throw somebody under the bus and then, like,

Speaker: 01:00:57

Track 2: your capacity to continue throwing people under the bus never ends.

Speaker: 01:01:00

Track 2: Like, look at Columbia. Yeah, it's a great example. Now they've got ICE agents

Speaker: 01:01:03

Track 2: deporting students for the crime of, I don't know, protesting on campus,

Speaker: 01:01:09

Track 2: question mark, for thought crime.

Speaker: 01:01:12

Track 2: You know, so it's like the capacity for, you know, sliding towards the right

Speaker: 01:01:18

Track 2: is something that like the kind of business institutions represented by the

Speaker: 01:01:23

Track 2: libertarian Ghostbusters don't have a backstop for.

Speaker: 01:01:26

Track 2: And we see that play out over the course of all three of these movies,

Speaker: 01:01:28

Track 2: because by like by like the time we get to Afterlife or was it Frozen?

Speaker: 01:01:33

Track 2: Ghostbusters meets Elsa, whatever the other one was.

Speaker: 01:01:35

Track 3: Yeah.

Speaker: 01:01:35

Track 2: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Track 1: Yeah.

Speaker: 01:01:37

Track 2: Do you want to build a Venkman? Yeah, I remember that song. It was really good.

Speaker: 01:01:42

Track 2: Um, but like by that time, like they're like appropriating the ghost of Harold

Speaker: 01:01:47

Track 2: Ramis just for like, you know, if you listen to the people who made it,

Speaker: 01:01:51

Track 2: they're like, oh, we're doing a send up and this is in his honor and his memory.

Speaker: 01:01:55

Track 2: And it's like, or on the other hand, it's going to make a lot of money.

Speaker: 01:01:59

Track 2: This is about making money. This is about corporations. This isn't about celebrating

Speaker: 01:02:03

Track 2: the lifetime achievement of an actor.

Speaker: 01:02:05

Track 1: Yeah, I was about to say, they said that while they like held like a,

Speaker: 01:02:09

Track 1: you know, a bag of money behind their back, like getting ready to make whatever.

Speaker: 01:02:14

Track 1: I don't know how much, let's see how much that one made. That one made,

Speaker: 01:02:16

Track 1: they all made, it made 200 million.

Speaker: 01:02:18

Track 1: That's still on the hundred billion dollar budget. That's successful.

Speaker: 01:02:21

Track 2: Yeah, yeah. And that too, like, that's not just about like, oh,

Speaker: 01:02:25

Track 2: we're just doing this this one time for Harold Ramis.

Speaker: 01:02:27

Track 2: And it's appropriate because it's Ghostbusters and he's a ghost and whatever.

Speaker: 01:02:31

Track 2: Like, it starts here. And eventually it becomes like, oh, no,

Speaker: 01:02:36

Track 2: they've mo-capped every, like, martial artist that works in Hollywood.

Speaker: 01:02:40

Track 2: And now you don't need the martial artist because you have all their mo-capped maneuvers.

Speaker: 01:02:44

Track 2: And you could just CG map those onto whatever actor you want.

Speaker: 01:02:47

Track 2: And to be honest you don't really need the actors because we have full 3d body

Speaker: 01:02:50

Track 2: scans of them all so so we can kind of just plug and play with whoever you want you.

Speaker: 01:02:55

Track 3: Want keanu.

Speaker: 01:02:56

Track 2: Reeves and chris farley to star in a space adventure sure whatever we can make

Speaker: 01:02:59

Track 2: the robots make this for us now you know it's like like this is this is kind

Speaker: 01:03:04

Track 2: of like the long trajectory of removing human agency from the ability to be creative yeah.

Speaker: 01:03:09

Track 1: And some of these actors like bruce willis is actually already given basically

Speaker: 01:03:13

Track 1: his rights the rights of his like like this.

Speaker: 01:03:16

Track 2: To do.

Speaker: 01:03:17

Track 1: Whatever they want like you know like bill murray dies in five ten years they'll make another.

Speaker: 01:03:21

Track 3: Ghostbusters with him too it

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Track 3: won't matter i i mean i think this is

Speaker: 01:03:28

Track 3: there's a there is this common thread between um

Speaker: 01:03:32

Track 3: you know uh this ai empowered

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Track 3: technology that will literally you know

Speaker: 01:03:38

Track 3: resurrect the dead to be this uncanny

Speaker: 01:03:41

Track 3: valley puppet that is danced around the screen

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Track 3: on the one hand and a direct link

Speaker: 01:03:47

Track 3: with that technology to police institutions

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Track 3: which are coming through social media posts to find

Speaker: 01:03:53

Track 3: mentions of palestine um and cross-referencing that with student enrollment

Speaker: 01:03:59

Track 3: records at private universities which are going to do nothing to protect the

Speaker: 01:04:03

Track 3: students that they collect money from i mean uh this is what when they they

Speaker: 01:04:07

Track 3: were in the the media saying this the other day that like If you're not an American student,

Speaker: 01:04:11

Track 3: you probably shouldn't say anything about Palestine anymore because no one will

Speaker: 01:04:16

Track 3: protect you. Those two things are not

Speaker: 01:04:19

Track 3: Those two things are not different phenomenon, right? They have their roots

Speaker: 01:04:23

Track 3: in exactly this 80s ethos that the only solution to kind of societal problems

Speaker: 01:04:29

Track 3: is that you actually reduce the capacity of political forces to interfere with

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Track 3: the effective functioning of capitalism.

Speaker: 01:04:38

Track 1: And then you unleash like unknown technologies onto the public to try and improve

Speaker: 01:04:45

Track 1: things when really you're just, you know, like in Ghostbusters,

Speaker: 01:04:48

Track 1: you're using these proton packs and God knows what.

Speaker: 01:04:50

Track 1: And now, you know, which were developed by Columbia, which I think also is,

Speaker: 01:04:54

Track 1: you know, comical in that sense.

Speaker: 01:04:56

Track 1: And then now Columbia is using AI to, as you said, to like police its students

Speaker: 01:05:00

Track 1: and ensure that there's a safe, you know, in big air quotes,

Speaker: 01:05:04

Track 1: a safe environment on campus for their students, which they could give two shits about.

Speaker: 01:05:09

Track 1: It's purely, again, also about the profit motive, too. That's also why it wasn't

Speaker: 01:05:12

Track 1: profitable to have, you know, Venkman at your university because it might detract

Speaker: 01:05:17

Track 1: actual people who could bring them profit from the university.

Speaker: 01:05:21

Track 3: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 01:05:23

Track 3: Yeah but those those two things those that ash pointed out those two things

Speaker: 01:05:27

Track 3: are not separate those are those are two sides of the same coin as it were.

Speaker: 01:05:33

Track 1: Yeah absolutely uh this is this is completely less uh uh just because we're

Speaker: 01:05:39

Track 1: talking about the ai and the effects like what do you this is maybe not a political

Speaker: 01:05:44

Track 1: question at all but what do you think of like the effects in the film like just

Speaker: 01:05:47

Track 1: has like a you know standing the test of time of like you know stay put marshmallow man and.

Speaker: 01:05:53

Track 2: Some of the things.

Speaker: 01:05:54

Track 1: Like you know it's it's not too bad given you know some of the films of the era i think anyway.

Speaker: 01:06:01

Track 2: I i mean i i think these effects are great yeah and i think like like i mean

Speaker: 01:06:05

Track 2: like part of that is like you know obviously like i i drank from the poison

Speaker: 01:06:08

Track 2: font of nostalgia right so i can only ever see ghostbusters in a certain way

Speaker: 01:06:12

Track 2: a critic lod's movie they saw at formative year should be the headline there um but like,

Speaker: 01:06:21

Track 2: we were talking on hv recently i forget the movie we're talking about

Speaker: 01:06:23

Track 2: um it's probably a horror movie um we were

Speaker: 01:06:27

Track 2: talking about how like special effects i think there's a magic to practical

Speaker: 01:06:32

Track 2: effects that not and my god this sounds this is most like hollywood critic i

Speaker: 01:06:38

Track 2: have ever sounded but like i think there's a magic to special effects that makes

Speaker: 01:06:42

Track 2: it immune to aging poorly,

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Track 2: uh because the worst a special effect can ever be

Speaker: 01:06:48

Track 2: is a bad special effect you know i've never like

Speaker: 01:06:51

Track 2: seen a practical effect and been

Speaker: 01:06:54

Track 2: so terribly discharged but i've seen like a lot of practical effects that

Speaker: 01:06:57

Track 2: fail and are bad and don't look right

Speaker: 01:07:00

Track 2: you know but but i'm i'm able to kind of accept those as like a certain layer

Speaker: 01:07:04

Track 2: of stage magic where i think a lot of like cg stuff hits the uncanny valley

Speaker: 01:07:09

Track 2: really quickly right it doesn't quite feel right and like when you know when

Speaker: 01:07:14

Track 2: i'm watching the kind of like new ghostbuster reboots like there's a lot that just kind of feels,

Speaker: 01:07:19

Track 2: off it just feels kind of wrongly placed.

Speaker: 01:07:23

Track 2: And I think like, you know, like this, this is kind of a political question

Speaker: 01:07:27

Track 2: in a way too, because like the move away from special effects was,

Speaker: 01:07:31

Track 2: was both an exploration of how can new technologies create art,

Speaker: 01:07:34

Track 2: which is something that we kind of just do as a species.

Speaker: 01:07:37

Track 2: We invent a new technology and we see how we can make art out of it for better

Speaker: 01:07:41

Track 2: and for worse, you know, but also it is a way to strip Hollywood of,

Speaker: 01:07:48

Track 2: of working class talent, right?

Speaker: 01:07:50

Track 2: It's a way to move working-class talent into capital and into funding apparati.

Speaker: 01:07:55

Track 2: Because if you don't need practical effects artists, you could just kind of

Speaker: 01:07:59

Track 2: like hire some CG art farm in some place where you don't know anyone to kind

Speaker: 01:08:06

Track 2: of jam out whatever effects you want.

Speaker: 01:08:08

Track 2: And then now that the kind of machine learning

Speaker: 01:08:11

Track 2: graphics are are slowly improving we're

Speaker: 01:08:15

Track 2: getting to a point where like you don't really need to farm out

Speaker: 01:08:18

Track 2: to these cg factories anymore you can kind of

Speaker: 01:08:21

Track 2: just contract out to a single like machine learning slash ai company to do it

Speaker: 01:08:25

Track 2: for you but yeah the effects in the first ghostbusters movies are at the very

Speaker: 01:08:29

Track 2: least really interesting to look at and at the best are immersive and stylistic

Speaker: 01:08:35

Track 2: and interesting and create and character in and of themselves for the ghosts especially.

Speaker: 01:08:40

Track 1: The like sort of the opening effects you get in the in the library in the basement with the.

Speaker: 01:08:45

Track 2: Cards and the slime.

Speaker: 01:08:46

Track 1: All around like that is like that moment is like it looks really good and i

Speaker: 01:08:50

Track 1: think it makes you really do you really do get a sense of like the feeling of

Speaker: 01:08:54

Track 1: the movie and the ghosts and you know all of that so for me it's uh hard to

Speaker: 01:08:59

Track 1: separate the nostalgia too.

Speaker: 01:09:00

Track 2: No and i think like that scene is really good dimension too because Like if

Speaker: 01:09:04

Track 2: you try to do that with CG,

Speaker: 01:09:06

Track 2: like what you what you have to do is, you know, you have your actors like the

Speaker: 01:09:09

Track 2: scene is we have actors who are testing out new dangerous ghost hunting technology

Speaker: 01:09:14

Track 2: and they're about to encounter their first spirit and they are they are tensely

Speaker: 01:09:19

Track 2: stalking the underused storage halls of a library.

Speaker: 01:09:23

Track 2: And then you would have to give them a cue. The director would be like,

Speaker: 01:09:26

Track 2: okay, and turn around and react to the call card drawer popping out and react

Speaker: 01:09:30

Track 2: to the card spraying out or something.

Speaker: 01:09:32

Track 2: You know, and you've been covered in slime. React to being covered in slime.

Speaker: 01:09:36

Track 2: Okay, okay. You have to mimic it in a certain way in order for the CG art to hit you right.

Speaker: 01:09:40

Track 2: You know, and then you're doing it against a green screen background on top of that.

Speaker: 01:09:43

Track 2: So you're an actor in a green void and someone has a tennis ball on a stick

Speaker: 01:09:47

Track 2: and they're like, that's the ghost.

Speaker: 01:09:49

Track 2: You're scared of the ghost. Look at the ghost. Whereas like with practical effects,

Speaker: 01:09:52

Track 2: there's something there for the actor to respond to.

Speaker: 01:09:54

Track 2: When they deliver their dialogue, when they look at something,

Speaker: 01:09:57

Track 2: when they move through and around things, they have a physical component to respond to and with.

Speaker: 01:10:03

Track 2: And it does kind of fundamentally change how acting is done as a job.

Speaker: 01:10:07

Track 2: Job and i think like you know like with acting like it's really easy to like

Speaker: 01:10:11

Track 2: we were talking about dana as like you know is she working class is she not

Speaker: 01:10:15

Track 2: working class because she's like.

Speaker: 01:10:17

Track 2: The most white collar a job can be she's a musician

Speaker: 01:10:20

Track 2: that's so successful that she could buy a penthouse suite like you

Speaker: 01:10:23

Track 2: can't get more like okay this is really blurring the lines between do

Speaker: 01:10:26

Track 2: you work for your money or is your money making you money but like

Speaker: 01:10:30

Track 2: most most actors are like they're they're jobbing they're just

Speaker: 01:10:32

Track 2: like regular people with day jobs you know

Speaker: 01:10:36

Track 2: who have to like like i think about uh bruce campbell a lot in

Speaker: 01:10:38

Track 2: this context too from from his book if chins could kill

Speaker: 01:10:41

Track 2: you know because we see him as like a big horror movie star and he talks

Speaker: 01:10:44

Track 2: about in the book where he's like yeah i'd be doing really successful movies

Speaker: 01:10:46

Track 2: and then next year i'd be like you know sending resumes to office jobs because

Speaker: 01:10:51

Track 2: i was unemployed again and it's like you know i think it's it's kind of important

Speaker: 01:10:55

Track 2: to you know like focalize the working context here sorry it's kind of rambly yeah.

Speaker: 01:11:01

Track 3: I agree I think special effects you are essentially talking about a labor issue.

Speaker: 01:11:09

Track 2: And the material.

Speaker: 01:11:11

Track 3: Conditions under which a film is made real if you will,

Speaker: 01:11:18

Track 3: you know you talk about Bruce Campbell and I was thinking about Tom Savini who

Speaker: 01:11:24

Track 3: was a who was a wolf photographer film uh before coming back to make horror.

Speaker: 01:11:30

Track 2: Movies um i'm like yeah that's appropriate yeah.

Speaker: 01:11:34

Track 3: That's entirely appropriate there is there is a material history

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Track 3: to um how uh

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Track 3: how a film becomes a real thing

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Track 3: and it becomes this object that we get to engage with and

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Track 3: yeah i think obviously the effects are great and i think incredibly um like

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Track 3: hold up incredibly well do not seem to have aged and put you into the world

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Track 3: but i also think that it's um it's important not to let the like i hate the

Speaker: 01:12:02

Track 3: term movie magic because you go.

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Track 2: Actually that's not magic it's.

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Track 3: Not it's not magic at all.

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Track 2: Right yeah.

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Track 3: These are things which were made to achieve specific effects and the fact that

Speaker: 01:12:14

Track 3: you get to see that effect on the screen is the product of like countless people's hard work yeah.

Speaker: 01:12:20

Track 2: You can visibly see it,

Speaker: 01:12:23

Track 2: Weirdly, one of the things that's made me think about is architecture.

Speaker: 01:12:27

Track 2: Because you hear a phrase like, oh, why don't people make buildings like they

Speaker: 01:12:29

Track 2: used to? There used to be so many decorative elements.

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Track 2: Like whenever you go to an old house or maybe a hotel or historic building,

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Track 2: you'll notice that the doorknobs and the plates covering the doorknobs are ornate

Speaker: 01:12:39

Track 2: and detailed and the moldings all have their own style to them and all of these things.

Speaker: 01:12:45

Track 2: And that's because those were made by artisans who eventually got fired by factory,

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Track 2: not fired, but they got their livelihoods stolen by the factory.

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Track 2: Their labor displaced by the machine.

Speaker: 01:12:55

Track 2: And then now we look at movies and people go like, oh, why don't movies look

Speaker: 01:12:58

Track 2: the way they used to? Why don't the effects aren't as good? Why are the actors so plastic?

Speaker: 01:13:03

Track 2: And it's like, oh, well, look at the machine.

Speaker: 01:13:06

Track 2: Again, it is like the factory context stealing from the laborer.

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Track 1: Yeah, but if you're a libertarian making a film,

Speaker: 01:13:15

Track 1: then, you know, that's just wasted resources when, you know,

Speaker: 01:13:20

Track 1: they could just make a box for people to be imprisoned or to be imprisoned literally

Speaker: 01:13:26

Track 1: as prisoners, you know, or incarcerated or.

Speaker: 01:13:29

Track 1: Sorry, sorry. That's the movie magic.

Speaker: 01:13:34

Track 1: Oh but yeah i mean that's like the the yeah i i i was gonna say something else

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Track 1: but i forgot what it was i was thinking about tom savini oh.

Speaker: 01:13:43

Track 3: Tom savini uh any any any final any final thoughts that we want to bring up.

Speaker: 01:13:48

Track 1: I think that's i don't have any anything left or any what about either of you yeah.

Speaker: 01:13:52

Track 2: I'm i'm i'm content i'm content if this is where we want to wrap things.

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Track 1: Yeah talk.

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Track 2: About ghostbusters all day but there's only so many podcast listening hours in the.

Speaker: 01:14:00

Track 1: Day listeners uh the.

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Track 3: Only thing the only thing i would add is um uh the ghosts um have civil rights uh yes yes they do.

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Track 1: Oh yeah.

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Track 2: The other magazine headline or whatever.

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Track 1: Oh that's right those yeah those i tried to find out like a still of all those

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Track 1: because there are some pretty spectacular headlines what was the one that was

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Track 1: really good oh i think one of them oh no i don't know i can't find anyway,

Speaker: 01:14:27

Track 1: That's a good place to leave it if I can't think of any follow-ups on that.

Speaker: 01:14:31

Track 1: But John and Ash, thank you both for coming on and talking about Ghostbusters.

Speaker: 01:14:38

Track 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. This has been a really good conversation.

Speaker: 01:14:41

Track 2: Always here to talk about horror movies. And you should pop over on Horror Vanguard

Speaker: 01:14:44

Track 2: sometime. We'd love to have you on.

Speaker: 01:14:46

Track 1: Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, I'm happy to do it.

Speaker: 01:14:50

Track 1: This was a lot of fun. and i know i think i mentioned in our last uh episode

Speaker: 01:14:55

Track 1: or when when john and i had discussed the host do you want to remind everyone

Speaker: 01:14:59

Track 1: too about your about your great book that people should also read in case they

Speaker: 01:15:03

Track 1: didn't they didn't remember or they didn't buy it last time uh.

Speaker: 01:15:05

Track 3: Yes you can you can get capitalism horror story from wherever you get your books

Speaker: 01:15:11

Track 3: from uh preferably your local leftist bookshop i'm sure they have a copy if

Speaker: 01:15:15

Track 3: you ask nicely um but you can and then yeah please do

Speaker: 01:15:20

Track 3: check out horror vanguard you can get that at all local podcasting outlets um

Speaker: 01:15:27

Track 3: we're on blue sky we're on tiktok we're on instagram um yeah come say hi.

Speaker: 01:15:31

Track 1: And don't listen on amazon podcasts perhaps maybe well i guess that's the words in your mouth.

Speaker: 01:15:38

Track 2: Oh yeah i mean don't.

Speaker: 01:15:40

Track 1: Yeah i i was actually not aware that i guess it's like audible podcast which

Speaker: 01:15:45

Track 1: i didn't know was a thing but.

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Track 2: No i did not know podcast aggregator.

Speaker: 01:15:50

Track 3: I don't actually think you can get us on Amazon podcast.

Speaker: 01:15:53

Track 1: Oh, really?

Speaker: 01:15:55

Track 3: They might be wrong about that.

Speaker: 01:15:58

Track 1: Listen on the good podcasting platforms, not the bad podcasting platforms.

Speaker: 01:16:04

Track 1: It was a pleasure to have you both on, and we'll catch you all next time.