Ghost Busters As Rightwing Agitprop

Reihan Salam has the goods:

Then there is my favorite example, and possibly my favorite movie of all time, Ghostbusters. (In this life, you are either a Chevy Chase man or a Bill Murray man. I am a Bill Murray man.) From start to finish, Ghostbusters is a powerful brief against the “reality-based community.” The academic establishment and the municipal powers-that-be have failed to tackle a grave threat, namely the menace posed by ancient Sumerian deities summoned by effete post-Christian necromancers who flourished amidst the moral turpitude of Art Deco New York. Only a small, nimble, private-sector cadre of “Ghostbusters” can meet the gathering storm – if only Walter Peck of the Environmental Protection Agency wouldn’t get in the way! I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost, and I ain’t ‘fraid of no bien-pensant anti-Ghostbusting bureaucrats either.

Quite true. Mass market comedy, as seen in Hollywood films, strikes me as a pretty good partner for post-Goldwater conservatism. Comedy, to be funny, usually requires the skewering of the powerful in some sense. But the mass culture marketing demands that your product not actually do much to challenge prevailing ideas in the world. It's a bit of a paradoxical situation, but it nicely mirrors the efforts of a political ideology designed to further entrench the privileges of the country's wealthy elite and its white Christian majority and somehow do so in the name of anti-elitism.

Comments

Fucking Sumerians. So that's why we invaded Iraq.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 25, 2007 9:57 AM

Could a movie like Caddyshack be made today? Where the young, irresponsible, pot-smoking, working-class caddies triumph over the rich, white, conservative (read GOP) elite epitomized by Judge Smails?

As for the Chevy Chase/Bill Murray question, I don't know anybody who favors Chase. Chase hasn't had a good film since Fletch, while Murray has What About Bob?, Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation in addition to his early work.

Posted by RickD | May 25, 2007 10:07 AM

Yeah, that's a pretty courageous stand, picking Bill Murray over Chevy Chase.

On the other hand, I've always thought it was cool to have an EPA bureaucrat as the villain. God damn, that was a great movie.

Posted by too many steves | May 25, 2007 10:12 AM

Hollywood seems to be astonishingly to the left of the mainstream for your theory that its comedic themes are always apologies for the capitalist system.

Posted by Chris | May 25, 2007 10:19 AM

Of course Caddyshack could get made today. I'll bet a remake is in the works already. The classic "slobs v. snobs" story neatly solves the paradox Matt cites. The conflict is over style, not substance. Remember, the driving force behind the final battle in "Caddyshack" was Rodney Dangerfield's nouveau-riche club member. It was the "nouveau" part of the equation that set him in conflict with the elite, not the "riche".

Posted by Paddy | May 25, 2007 10:24 AM

For all the condemnation of "PC Police" on the left it's the right that has laid waste to entertainment. Their desire not to be offended is renown. More so it's their desire not to have entrenched beliefs challenged that gets them unhinged over any particular production. Michael Moore cranks out a few tame, vanilla reels protesting various alleged injustices and you'd think FDR was packing SCOTUS again. What is it with these people that having their worldview questioned results in apoplexy? I think much of it has to do with lousy sex. The list of things "nice girls" shouldn't do runs to several pages. Imagine how shitty the sex is with a conservative woman. If Grover Norquist was getting sloppy, sweaty blowjobs from his wife bathtubs would be safe again for everyone.

Posted by steve duncan | May 25, 2007 10:28 AM

Bah!

So if you make fun of the NYC city government, or if your heroes own their own business, you're a right-wing agitator?

And I guess that scene where all of New York's immigrant and minority cultures come out into the streets together was meant to "entrench the privileges of the country's wealthy elite and its white Christian majority"?

Lay off Ghostbusters, dude!

Posted by Mr. Noah | May 25, 2007 10:28 AM

1. Yeah, hasn't EVERYBODY been a Bill Murray-over-Chase guy since, oh, the Invisible Man? Maybe at some point in the late 80s there was something close to an equal divide. But to add to the previous list, he also has Rushmore and the Royal Tennenbaums.

Its like saying, today, you're either a Metalica man or a Megadeth man. Not exactly a 50/50 split in 2007. One continued to be relevant after the 80s, one is not (though, to refute my own analogy, I'm a Megadeth man)

2. Hollywood is 'left' for America. You have to really, REALLY far left in America to find someone who isn't a capitalist. New York (where G'busters takes place)is super liberal for America, but its also the world center of capitalism. New Yorkers generally despise their government at all levels.

3. As far as Caddyshack being made today... with some minor changes (and fluctuation in quality), isn't that basically movies like all those crappy Van Wilder movies? Or Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison? Or Wedding Crashers or Old School? Those movies are all about losers (sometimes rich, sometimes poor) crashing The System and overthrowing The Man.

Posted by matthew c | May 25, 2007 10:33 AM

As I remember, in the mid-90s, the National Review named "Ghostbusters" a "top conservative movie of all time" in large part because Peck, one of the antagonists, was from the EPA.

This serves as a reminder that I have been reading the National Review for far longer than is healthy for a rational human being.

Posted by Constantine | May 25, 2007 10:40 AM

Chris:
You're mistaking the personal politics of those Hollywood celebrities you happen to know about with the business of moviemaking. For mass-market moviemaking, Hollywood turns out whatever it thinks sells. A few "prestige" or vanity projects aside, Hollywood lives by Samuel Goldwyn's old rule: "If you want a message, call Western Union."

Posted by CJColucci | May 25, 2007 10:51 AM

These people do not have any idea what reality-based means, do they? The Ghost-busters were vindicated because there were, in fact & reality, ghosts. The politicians and government regulators were tarnished because they were wrong that there were no ghosts.

If the NeoCons had been right, and there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and democracy was flourishing now (or heck, we'll settle for one of the two), they would be vindicated. But that's not what happened.

So very, very dumb.

Also, ask any leftist today, and we will assure you, we do not operate under a belief that Bush's EPA is filled with smarty-pants leftists.

Posted by MDtoMN | May 25, 2007 11:02 AM

If gays get married what's next? Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together!

Posted by Fledermaus | May 25, 2007 11:55 AM

Comedy, to be funny, usually requires the skewering of the powerful in some sense. But the mass culture marketing demands that your product not actually do much to challenge prevailing ideas in the world.

Northrop Frye has a pretty good take on this in Anatomy of Criticism, talking about the "satire of the low norm":

It takes for granted a world which is full of anomalies, injustices, follies, and crimes, and yet is permanent and undisplaceable. ... the satirist may employ a plain, common-sense, conventional person as a foil for the various alazons of society. ... The kind of American satire that passes as folk humor .. makes a good deal of [such narrators].

Posted by Antid Oto | May 25, 2007 12:26 PM

On the other hand, I've always thought it was cool to have an EPA bureaucrat as the villain. God damn, that was a great movie.

On the other hand Steven Seagal has played kickass EPA protagonists on (I think) multiple occasions. The operative question is really, are you a Bill Murray man or a Steven Seagal man?

And I guess that scene where all of New York's immigrant and minority cultures come out into the streets together was meant to "entrench the privileges of the country's wealthy elite and its white Christian majority"?

Wasn't that in the sequel? But the sequel sucked.

Posted by JP | May 25, 2007 1:11 PM

That's the first time I've seen "reality-based" used as a snide epithet. Hey, once you've got the other side tilting at the Windmill of Reality, it's over.

Posted by BruceR | May 25, 2007 1:31 PM

I guess that means I'm for Gozer/Zuul in '08.

Posted by sangfroid826 | May 25, 2007 1:56 PM

If Grover Norquist was getting sloppy, sweaty blowjobs from his wife bathtubs would be safe again for everyone

Ewwwwwwww

Posted by Sharon | May 25, 2007 2:20 PM

I think Matt's basically right on this.
Comedy has the potential to be revolutionary.
Too often it's reactionary.

Posted by thag | May 25, 2007 3:30 PM

"In this life, you are either a Chevy Chase man or a Bill Murray man. I am a Bill Murray man."

Actually, Salam, you're 100 percent Joe Piscopo.

Posted by Roger Ailes | May 25, 2007 4:07 PM

I think it would be more accurate to call Ghostbusters an example of ruling class ideological hegemony rather than rightwing agitprop.

Posted by blah | May 25, 2007 4:15 PM

RickD, Chase hasn't had a good movie since Fletch? C'mon, Three Amigos! Spies Like Us!

Posted by Sanjay | May 26, 2007 11:38 PM

Oh, please - tell us who amongst the "country's wealthy elite" cherishes the interests of the "white Christian majority" and seeks "to further entrench the privileges" of the latter equally with his own.

Who did you have in mind? Michael Eisner or David Geffen? Steven Spielberg? How have any of their actions served white Christians? Hollywood has for years catered to the basest instincts of its potential audience, and its coarse and vulgar products find their markets in the same way the offerings of dope peddlers and prostitutes do.

As for the rest of the "wealthy elite" I don't see that George Soros, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Warren Buffett, etc. give a fig for the "white Christian majority." Indeed, they despise and hold it in the same contempt that their Hollywood pals do.

Posted by Mike | May 31, 2007 12:07 PM