A Thought About Ghostbusters
Wednesday, 14 September 2016 10:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lea_hazelMy new phone has a lot more space in it than the one that got stolen, so I have been lenient with downloading apps. For example, I downloaded a podcast app that lets me get new episodes wherever there is wireless, without having to remember what day everyone updates. I was wandering around looking for interesting podcasts and happened across Galactic Suburbia and their episode on the new Ghostbusters. I've been listening to it in bits and pieces since it's fairly long and I usually listen to podcasts on the bus.
It got me thinking again about what I did and didn't like about the movie. It also made me want to go look for a supercut of all the times the 2016 movie referenced iconic lines from the original, but that involves going on YouTube and I bet I don't need to explain why I don't want to do that.
See, I kind of love Leslie Jones's character, and I especially love that she's full of knowledge about history and architecture, even though she isn't a professional academic. Not like we go deep into her backstory or anything, so for all we know she has three masters' degrees in art history or urban planning or something like that. But I like to think of her as an enthusiast, because knowledge, and the love of knowledge, don't need to be restricted to people who make it their career. You can learn all there is to know about something for love of the thing itself. Except, it still really bothers me that there are four women here and the only one who isn't an acknowledged expert in her field is the black lady.
What got me thinking is that this is actually tangentially related to a different thing, and it occurred to me that there's a huge missed opportunity when it comes to Kate McKinnon's character, Holtzmann. As the team's gadgeteer genius she's required to have a great deal of expertise in putting together sciencey-looking shit and making it explode. And she needs to do it out of a crappy rented apartment instead of a legitimate engineering lab or whatever. This is such a golden opportunity for a character who's an autodidact. It plays right into the trope where the quirky genius can do the supposedly impossible, because they taught themselves everything and didn't get the kind of formal education to teach them that it should be impossible.
Erin is the character who tries to make it in traditional academia. Abby is the one who's academically educated, but too weird to ever really try to fit in. Patty is the one who's an expert on something that's only just barely related to her job because it's less labor, more love. And I just think it's a missed opportunity, because Holtzmann would have made a fantastic "garage gadgeteer" character.
(Probably I will cross-post this to Tumblr later, but I have it StayFocusd-locked for work hours and I want to get some writing done. I just needed to get this off my chest.)
It got me thinking again about what I did and didn't like about the movie. It also made me want to go look for a supercut of all the times the 2016 movie referenced iconic lines from the original, but that involves going on YouTube and I bet I don't need to explain why I don't want to do that.
See, I kind of love Leslie Jones's character, and I especially love that she's full of knowledge about history and architecture, even though she isn't a professional academic. Not like we go deep into her backstory or anything, so for all we know she has three masters' degrees in art history or urban planning or something like that. But I like to think of her as an enthusiast, because knowledge, and the love of knowledge, don't need to be restricted to people who make it their career. You can learn all there is to know about something for love of the thing itself. Except, it still really bothers me that there are four women here and the only one who isn't an acknowledged expert in her field is the black lady.
What got me thinking is that this is actually tangentially related to a different thing, and it occurred to me that there's a huge missed opportunity when it comes to Kate McKinnon's character, Holtzmann. As the team's gadgeteer genius she's required to have a great deal of expertise in putting together sciencey-looking shit and making it explode. And she needs to do it out of a crappy rented apartment instead of a legitimate engineering lab or whatever. This is such a golden opportunity for a character who's an autodidact. It plays right into the trope where the quirky genius can do the supposedly impossible, because they taught themselves everything and didn't get the kind of formal education to teach them that it should be impossible.
Erin is the character who tries to make it in traditional academia. Abby is the one who's academically educated, but too weird to ever really try to fit in. Patty is the one who's an expert on something that's only just barely related to her job because it's less labor, more love. And I just think it's a missed opportunity, because Holtzmann would have made a fantastic "garage gadgeteer" character.
(Probably I will cross-post this to Tumblr later, but I have it StayFocusd-locked for work hours and I want to get some writing done. I just needed to get this off my chest.)
