What Miller and troub said :). I totally didn’t get the Exorcist reference; it came across to me as a faith-healing schtick. The first one doesn’t have her saying “I’m dumb,” but her comments sure imply something along those lines. And the boob joke make the clueless dude the butt of the joke. The joke wasn’t, “Ooh, ghost with tits!” the joke was, “look at this jackass who put tits on a ghost.”
If you didn’t get the multiple Exorcist references then I don’t get what would have seemed Christian about it at all, much less a specific flavor of Christianity. (And The Exorcist is of course about a *Catholic exorcism.) There’s no overt religious symbolism, slapping sense into someone is a time-honored cliche and not a part of any real or fictional faith-healing I’ve ever seen, and the Leslie Jones character (Patty) explicitly calls upon her own power rather than any divine power. This scene does evoke some unpleasant stereotypes about Angry Black Women, so I’m not saying it’s great, but she’s not a “pretend faith-healer”.
Showing the women cringing uncomfortably doesn’t make awesome dude Chris Hemsworth the butt of the joke. Quite the opposite. There may be some greater context to this scene in the movie, or it may not be in the final edit of the movie at all, but as presented in the trailer this joke seems designed to appeal to the sort of knucklehead that thinks a movie about female Ghostbusters is feminist propaganda.
Since there’s nothing like that in the American trailer and the decision to feature a Chris Hemsworth scene at the end of the Australian trailer is presumably because he’s Australian, I’m happy to give the actual movie the benefit of the doubt when it comes to dumb boob jokes. However, I do find it a bit troubling that of these two very similar trailers, the one that’s supposedly the better one ends with the female Ghostbuster team being meekly embarrassed by the casual sexism of the one significant male character. IMHO that’s worse than anything in the American trailer, which does at least end with one of the Ghostbusters saving her friend from a ghost.
*In what was perhaps the biggest fish-out-of-water moment in my life, I accompanied a co-worker to a service at her friend’s church, which said on its website that it was “non-denominational”. I assumed this meant they were basically Unitarians or something, and boy was I wrong. :eek:
Harley has a baseball bat, genius level intelligence, a psychology degree, top level acrobatic abilities, and actual superpowers - thanks to her association with Poison Ivy, she’s got a complete immunity to toxins.
FWIW, I thought the Exorcist reference was obvious–it was the only thing that I thought was funny in the original teaser. The Australian trailer, for me, was less obnoxious but still pretty unappealing.
And yet.
What? Sure it does. When they’re cringing, his suggestion is to make the breasts bigger. The look the women give each other makes it clear they think he’s a damn idiot. How on earth are you not seeing him the butt of that joke?
Because he’s not the one who’s made to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed in that scene, the women are. I don’t want to get into my own experiences here, but in real life there are men who say and do inappropriate things in the workplace that make their female coworkers cringe, and this does not generally leave the women feeling like they won. In the trailer the Ghostbuster women don’t firmly say “No” to the logo, they don’t laugh at the Hemsworth character for being dumb, nor do I see that they so much as exchange knowing glances with each other. They just look uncomfortable and one of them goes “Ah…” That is, sadly, a realistic reaction, but what I want out of a Ghostbusters movie with a female Ghostbusting team is not a realistic depiction of women resigning themselves to casual sexism in the workplace.
I suspect that in the actual movie this all plays out a bit differently. But I also suspect that some of the “feminist propaganda” jerks are going to enjoy seeing female characters they perceive as invading a masculine realm made to squirm by Mr. Big Action Hero, and there is nothing in the trailer to indicate that he gets any kind of comeuppance.
The relevant question is, who are we meant to identify with in that exchange. Clearly it’s not the idiot drawing the absurdly sexist logo.
What? Casting out things is pretty much only a Christian thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an exorcism in fiction that wasn’t Christian. (I do believe I’ve actually heard that there are some Jewish exorcists.)
I have no knowledge of the Exorcist–I don’t like those types of movies. But I knew it was a “cast out the demon” scene, riffing on the power of violence instead of the power of God.
Personally, I liked the joke, but now that I know about it, it won’t be funny in the movie.
I think plenty of creeps out there would be all too happy to identify with handsome action star Chris Hemsworth drawing a sexist logo, especially if the only other people in the scene are women too embarrassed to stand up for themselves.
As for me, I do identify with the embarrassed women, and I don’t like it. They’re not Pam on The Office, they’re the damn Ghostbusters, and they shouldn’t be worse at standing up for themselves than I am. If, as suggested upthread, Hemsworth was supposed to be representing the “What? Wimmin Ghostbusters!?” contingent then showing the women Ghostbusters themselves being total doormats about it in the trailer isn’t helping.
If it’s just a dumb boob joke then fine, that’s not my preferred style of humor but it’s not shockingly offensive either. Even so, replacing a scene where a Ghostbuster saves someone from a ghost (even if this scene has its own problems) with one where the Ghostbusters passively cringe at a dumb boob joke does not make this version of the trailer seem better to me.
I think “doormats” is a bit harsh. Comedy often works by what’s not said, not y what is. It’s not a matter of them passively accepting his sexism but of being so dumbfounded by its absurdity. The women are in a superior position; Hemsworth’s character is just oblivious to this fact.
“The power of <usually Christ> compels you,” was not a line invented for the movie The Exorcist. It’s something actual, real-world Christians say when they’re trying to “cast out” spirits in someone they believe to be so afflicted. There’s often also an element of energetic action - full on belting someone in the face isn’t common, but “blasting” people with some sort of divine energy is often a part of it. Here’s a pretty amusing example, although that one’s not in the context (so far as I can tell) of faith healing.
Clearly, you need someone to explain what sexism is to you.
Okay, no, I’m kidding. But I don’t read that scene remotely the same way you do. For one thing, they’re not embarrassed by their co-worker, they’re embarrassed by their employee. Hemsworth is their receptionist. If they’re uncomfortable with his behavior, there’s absolutely nothing stopping them from kicking him out on the street. They don’t come across as at all meek or doormats to me, so much as some very smart women trying to figure out how to deal with a dumbass politely. There’s certainly an argument to be made that they shouldn’t need to deal with a sexist dumbass politely, but I suspect Hemsworth’s really excellent biceps have something to do with that - the other significant appearance of his character in that trailer looks like him getting hired based purely on being hunky.
And I’ll tell you this much: if the sexual objectification of Chris Hemsworth is a significant theme of this movie, they don’t need to show me any more trailers: I’m there on opening day.
And for the cherry on top: if we just came into that exchange cold, or if the premise had been that Hemsworth sketched this on his own initiative – yeah, okay, we’d have to remember that he’s their employee. But instead, they take a moment to spell out that she asked him to slap together a couple of logos – setting up the punchline of (a) this being the best he could do, and (b) not understanding which part they find unsatisfactory; it’s not like he just swaggers in with a beer in one hand and a drawing of boobs in the other, saying he’s got a cool idea y’all should look at.
Women in STEM fields encounter clueless sexism from men they outrank, including their own students, pretty often. Sometimes they may find themselves at a loss as to how to react, but that’s not something I consider a great closing gag for the trailer of a Ghostbusters movie. Not least of all because it doesn’t even involve busting ghosts. If they’d encountered a sexist ghost then that would have been funnier to me, especially since a sexist ghost would presumably have soon learned the hard way not to underestimate these women.
But the Leslie Jones character doesn’t invoke the power of Christ, God, the Holy Spirit, or any other divine power. She uses her own name, which seems like a big hint that she’s not relying upon her religious faith to save Melissa McCarthy.
Nothing but their own seeming inability to stand up for themselves.
I could easily believe that in the actual movie their reaction will seem less like “We’re so embarrassed and don’t know what to do” and more like “Oh honey, how could someone so hot be so dumb.” At this point I’m not going to condemn the movie for one joke, since the full scene may be better than it looks to me in the trailer or it may not be in the final movie at all.
What I am objecting to here is the defense of this gag as supposedly sticking it to the haters who didn’t think women should be Ghostbusters. Showing an appealing dude being sexist while smart, tough women cringe and gape helplessly seems a lot more like throwing a bone to the haters, intentionally or not.
Right, but my objection isn’t, “The black person has religious faith,” my objection is, “the black person acts like a revivalist preacher.” Yeah, she’s not performing a theologically valid religious ritual, but that’s not my point. My point is she’s acting like the guy in that clip I linked to in my last post, and that - alongside the other issues raised in this thread - contributes to what appears to be a heavily stereotyped character.
I don’t see any of those things in their reactions in the trailer. There’s nothing in their responses that reads to me as helpless, cringing, or meek.
I saw that scene as Hemsworth being the gender reversal of the naive but hot blonde secretary cliche- He’s trying to draw a female ghost (because, of course, they are women) and is too innocent to see why the big boobs would be inappropriate, while his bosses don’t want to upset him telling him outright because he’s, well, too hot.
That’s kind of how I saw it, too, especially the last bit. Hemsworth’s role appears to be dumb eye candy, and this is part of how he gets that character. The ghostbusters, OTOH, are being depicted as shallow enough to hire an idiot if he’s hot enough–and this is how THEY get THAT character.
If the trailer reminded you of that clip then that’s legitimate in that it’s your honest personal reaction, but I don’t see the resemblance. I’ve seen faith-healings and I’ve seen The Exorcist, and the trailer (with the spinning head, the leap out the window, and the parody of the famous “Power of Christ compels you!” quote) only reminded me of the latter – which I think was the intent. I note that Leslie Jones also accomplishes on her own what it took an old priest, a young priest, and the power of Christ to do in The Exorcist.
That she also comes across as a stereotypical Angry Black Woman dealing with things by yelling and slapping someone is problematic, but the foreign trailer replaces a scene where Jones saves the day with one where she falls on the floor and is “mad as hell”. So as far as stereotypical depictions of black women go, I’m not convinced this is an improvement.
When first shown the logo Melissa McCarthy covers her face and Kristen Wiig softly says “Oh…you do see how this might make us look bad?” When Chris Hemsworth suggests making the boobs bigger, McCarthy looks down at her paperwork and Wiig says “Ah…” The only one who isn’t being completely meek is Kate McKinnon, who stares at Hemsworth with a frown, but she doesn’t say anything. Short of bursting into tears, I’m not sure how they could have been more helpless. And they’re the heroes of this movie.
Hemsworth has two speaking scenes earlier in the trailer, one where Kristen Wiig looks him over and immediately hires him (so yeah, he’s eye candy), and one where he stands in front of the Ghostbusters wearing a professional looking outfit and saying “We need to build something to fight these damn ghosts!” with a cut to the proton pack. That doesn’t seem like he’s supposed to be an idiot who they put up with because he’s so hot. It seems like he’s meant to be a valuable colleague, maybe even a leader.
Upon watching the trailer again, I noticed that in making room for Hemsworth this version eliminated the only scene where McKinnon spoke. (Which in fairness was a bit that I didn’t think was especially funny, although maybe I just didn’t get it.) It left in shots of her smiling, winking, and licking her gun, and while she is still described as a brilliant engineer the editing seems to credit Hemsworth with inventing the proton pack.
That said, the two versions of the trailer are pretty similar. Much of the content is exactly the same, and when it comes to the parts where they differ I’d say each version has its strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think either one is especially good or especially awful. But that the trailer people were reacting to with horror is the one where the focus is squarely on the women being Ghostbusters while the supposedly much better one cuts their screentime for the sake of Chris Hemsworth and closes with a dumb boob joke doesn’t sit well with me. Trying to persuade me that the second trailer is somehow putting sexist trolls in their place by showing heroic women turn into doormats when their own employee designs an inappropriate logo does not make me feel better about this. It makes me feel worse.
EXACTLY. They’re not doormats at all, IMO. Just trying to be…delicate with him. They don’t just take it, she says “You can see how this might make us look bad?” and he comes back with “Oh, yeah, I can make them bigger” – that makes him the “dumb blonde” archetype who doesn’t really understand what’s going on or what people are trying to say to him. The last shot (with McCarthy’s “Ah”) is of the women staring at him like he’s a damn fool, not looking at all helpless or like doormats. It looks to me like they’re trying to keep from just yelling at him.
And while I get the same sense of the “casting out of demons” scene as invoking the revivalist preacher as well (and the “one too many” slap gag is, IMO, as old as the hills and pretty unfunny at this point), I can see it working if it’s actually the setup to another line or joke that recognizes the cliche. Sort of like the stage-diving bit: we’ve seen it before, where people successfully dive onto the crowd, and then for one person they move out of the way and they hit the floor (at least one example), but this time it’s followed by a nod to gender and race. What I think is interesting here is that when we’ve seen this gag before (as in the link above) the joke was (IIRC) “you’re so big/fat we’re afraid to catch you.” Here, she makes the nod to gender (which “everybody”/the audience is aware is a “thing” with this movie) AND to race, which is also a “thing” since she’s the only black one. While the actual and unfunny, non-sexist non-racist reason they moved out of the way might simply be because she’s freakin’ huge. Look at the pictures of this ensemble, she’s WAY taller than the others. It takes the funny part of the familiar cliche and turns it into the unfunny part of the new joke, which itself is kind of funny. I’m not saying this is Arrested Development-level layering of references and expectation-reversal, but like I said before it does make me think that maybe the jokes are a bit more nuanced than the first trailer made it look.
Nobody is trying to persuade you of anything like that.
I guess I imagined posts like these, then:
I was initially content to dismiss this as just a dumb boob joke, and as far as the filmmakers and marketing team are concerned that’s probably all it was intended to be. It wasn’t my idea that the Hemsworth character was meant to represent those who had a problem with female Ghostbusters, but interpreting the scene that way makes it much worse than just a dumb boob joke. It lets the haters be Chris Hemsworth, who is not depicted as a creep or idiot in the rest of the trailer, pitching a “Har har, boobs!” Ghostbusters logo, while the female Ghostbusters themselves sit there cringing.
I do identify with the women in that scene and not the Hemsworth character, and it does not make me feel good to see the tough, cool, funny heroes I’m identifying with unable to manage a firm “No” or witty remark when confronted with sexism. Especially not after seeing the American trailer, where they’re shown going around being Ghostbusters and not having to deal with sexism at all.
Why should they try to be delicate with someone who you said represented the people who made a big deal about women being Ghostbusters? Their delicate reaction is not “skewering” such views, it’s letting him get away with it.