GHOSTBUSTERS (2016)

GHOSTBUSTERS. Paul Feig, dir., co-script. Katie Dippold with Feig, script, "based on the 1984 film GHOSTBUSTERS," written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. John DeCuir (as John De Cuir), production design and art direction. USA: Columbia, Ghostcorps, Village Roadshow Pictures et al. (prod.) / Columbia Pictures (US dist.), 2016. See IMDb for details on production and distribution companies.[1]

Science fiction — the Ghostbusters insist that their operation is scientific — plus supernatural/paranormal fantasy comic film. As in the earlier GHOSTBUSTERS of 1984[2] and 1989,[3] ghosts can be trapped, transported, and contained with and inside of retro-looking, "industrial" electro-mechanical "proton pack" devices and storage/transport units, with some cybernetic suggestions.[4] In the 2016 version, the portal allowing ghosts from the Beyond (our term) into New York City is specifically called a "machine" in the dialog and is in the same esthetic as the proton pack, but bigger, immobile, retro unto downright Steampunk-ish, and associated with picture frames that appear to be the immediate portals once opened and, until opened, the most immediate block keeping the ghosts out of the world of the living, or at least downtown New York.[5] Note also a number of comic small weapons for the blowing up, shredding, or otherwise on-site disposal of ghosts. Ghosts coming through the "machine" portal, or destroyed or trapped by the various devices, offer interesting images of the superimposition upon, utilization of, or usually destructive interaction with the electro-mechanical-cybernetic by what we might call the ectoplasmic: ghosts made quasi-material and significantly associated with gooey green slime.

For an elegant discussion of the cultural/political significance of GHOSTBUSTERS 1984 and 2016, see Stuart Klawans's "The ‘Ghostbusters’ Trolls Were Right (In one sense: The jokes do change when the characters are women, who incite you to laugh through a graveyard of America’s bloody history)" in The Nation 15-22 August 2016.[6]

Reviewed by Tania Darlington, SFRA Review #318 (Fall 2016): pp. 30-31, dealing mostly (and usefully) with gender issues but also with the science and technology in the film, with reference to “The Real Science in the New Ghostbusters,” Science Friday, Public Radio International, WUFT, Gainesville, FL, 15 July 2016.[7]

RDE 24, 26, 28/VII/16; 4Sep21