Ghostbusters Director Calls Out "Assholes in Geek Culture"

[Davroth]

Thing is, "at least they don't start riots and kill people" isn't really a defense.

As someone else pointed out, the Westboro Baptist Church hasn't killed anybody either. Does that make them not awful?

If I complain that I have a bad toothache and you reply "Well at least you aren't starving to death", does my toothache go away?

And yes, sports culture does indeed house some right petty, violent fuckers. I assumed this was widely known.

I'm sorry, you are comparing geek culture to the Westboro Baptist Church? Don't you think that's just the tiniest bit hyperbolic?

To compare is not necessarily to wholly equate. But I suspect you know that already.

I am comparing them only so far as they both can be awful to people without killing anybody and pointing out their lack of body counts does not excuse their respective awfulness. Which was the first thing I said in the section you quoted, and presumably read.

If the comparison upsets you I'm sure I can come up with something else. Let's see...

If I were to bully, harass and stalk a workmate that would be a bad thing, yes? If someone were to call me out on my horrible behaviour and I were to reply, "Hey, I didn't kill anyone", would you consider that a sound and successful defense of my conduct?

Success of your defense wholly depends on your horrible behavior. If your horrible behavior consists on thumbs downing a movie trailer, I'd probably say that you didn't exactly need to defend your conduct. Disliking a movie trailer is not exactly the same thing as bully, harass and stalk someone, now is it? And of course, you are going to say what's happening to Paul Feig is somehow harassment, but seeing how he courted that behavior with his inflammatory behavior, I have trouble spotting an innocent party here. Hell, I even saw one of the actresses talk about how confusing the trailer was. Not sure how that is supposed to reflect on geek culture, though. Based on what metric are you associating this whole thing with the geek culture being awful?

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

It's just his opinion based on his experiences. Fair enough...

Put your head down and make the best thing you can, since you're in a position to do what many of us only dream of. Don't waste your time with the losers on social media. That would be my advice.

 

[Naldan]

I don't mean to be rude. But this, in large, is what happens all over the (western) world at the moment and is within my political party a massive problem. And stuff like exactly this polarizes unnecessarily.

You say things are polarising, so where would the compromise be for Ghostbusters for example? People hated it when they heard it was going to be an all women cast before they were even announced.

Do you think the polarising people are the ones saying that hey, who cares if it's an all women cast it's not like it affects the original movies in any way. Or is it the ones screeching from the rooftops about women Ghostbusters?

"People hated it". What people hated it purely because it was all women? Or was it maybe because it got hyped because it was all women?

Who are you even talking about? Until recently, you were generalizing all of geek culture. Curiously enough, you snipped that out of my post without giving a statement about what I take issue with.

The compromise for the new Ghostbusters would be to decipher what makes the new trailer so disliked. Maybe it's just not funny and maybe that's the main issue for almost A MILLION people, even excluding bots!?

If you really need to find out in this particular case who is misogynistic (maybe you're also interested in who isn't), then you would in theory need to actually read the majority of comments and break each up into specific points.

Tell me who took issue with Furiosa being arguably the main protagonist for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Yes, you're polarizing with gross generalization. I'm sorry if I previously failed to communicate my point properly. If you lump up everyone in two categories through misconception, it's bound to happen. I hope this is more clear, English isn't my first language (obviously probably).

The "Ignore this and focus on the real problems" argument. It's used to silence and ignore actual problems, with the excuse that there's always something worse. Seen it happen a million times, it holds no weight.

Yeah. That's what people have said since decades in fact. If you don't care, then OK, sorry for wasting everybody's time.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Isn't geek culture home to some of the biggest assholes on the planet? It also has some great people in it, but I've encountered more damn drama and harassment campaigns in my cursory involvement with geek culture than I have in any other internet subculture, even the ones I'm more heavily involved in. Now, I don't know if the new Ghostbusters will be good. I think it looks funny, but it may wind up being utter garbage. I did, however, get a big chuckle out of him calling out the assholes in geek culture.

 

[wulf3n]

If I were to bully, harass and stalk a workmate that would be a bad thing, yes? If someone were to call me out on my horrible behaviour and I were to reply, "Hey, I didn't kill anyone", would you consider that a sound and successful defense of my conduct?

If calling you out was an assertion that you were up there were with the worst people on the planet... yes.

If the accusation is that "you are the worst" then all you need to prove is that you're not. Having not intentionally killed someone puts a lot of people above you in the "bad person" category.

Now I'm guessing most of the "nerds are the worst" statements are somewhat overzealous hyperbole, but this is the internet, and lot of that doesn't come through.

 

[Gorrath]

Pretending people have a problem with Ghostbusters because of the trailer is just that; a pretense. People had a problem with it because it was an all-female cast. Attempting to pretend it's because of the trailer is just historical revisionism. It's a scapegoat.

Obviously I can only speak for myself, but speaking for myself, this is nonsense. When they announced the all-female cast, I was not only excited by the prospect, I posted on these very forums how I was hoping Pohler and Fey would be interested and get the nod since they a re two of the funniest women in television. Then, that horrid looking trailer came out and I changed my tune about the whole project. So unless I'm a magical unicorn, and I very much think I'm not, then stating that there aren't people who liked or just didn't care about the all female cast but hated the trailer is horse manure.

 

[Bedinsis]

Oh, hey, the sourced article has been updated, due to people misunderstanding it:

This article has been amended to reflect that Feig's comments were made in 2015, and were in response to general questions about fan culture, not about Ghostbusters, as the original article implied. We regret the error

 

[CimmerianKing]

What is baffling is that he is insulting fandom, which is no way to get fans on your side when you hope to produce works within that area in the future.

There is a lot wrong with the new Ghostbusters film, and even a 5 minute google search can tell you that.


update: Only two minutes. This guy breaks down all the details of why the new trailer is bad. And it's funny too.

https://youtu.be/ZbA9fLiEfuo

 

[Leg End]

Pretending people have a problem with Ghostbusters because of the trailer is just that; a pretense. People had a problem with it because it was an all-female cast. Attempting to pretend it's because of the trailer is just historical revisionism. It's a scapegoat.

That's a pretty big generalization as the final topping of not-being-the-case.
I've got a problem with it because it felt like it was trying way too hard to be funny and misses major potential in what a lot of people are actually complaining about. They could have had a good run as a all black female cast being stereotypical angry women and embrace the style of Blaxploitation movies. Rename it, use that concept and you've got something I'd see several times on release day.

 

[Yuuki]

He claims that the all-female cast is a mere co-incidence: the funniest people he knows just happen to be women

1) Is he serious? He can't be serious. He must not know very many people then.

2) Getting angry at the audience/fanbase is only going to make things worse, when will people learn?

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Ok i just won't go see the movie then. Or anything he ever makes again.
No big loss to me.

 

[MetalheroDamien]

Or Mr. Satan would become white or whatever.

Is he not? I always saw him as either Ethnically Jewish or Mediterainian.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

Well, maybe you should consider making trailers that don't show the lamest jokes in years, Mr. Whatever. You should also consider not saying that the trailer reflects the movie, 'cos no one is going to see the fucking thing.

 

[Strazdas]

If the movie trailer is a fair depiction on what this director considers funny then ill be one of the assholes and say that he certainly deserves a good slapping to get him back to his sense.

 

[Vigormortis]

Thing is, "at least they don't start riots and kill people" isn't really a defense.

I never said it was. I never attempted to defend bad behaviors. I said, despite the extreme actions some sports fans have taken, I'd never use them as evidence of sports fandom inherently breeding such behavior. I was alluding to the perception that geekdom somehow breeds bad behavior, simply because some geeks are assholes.

As someone else pointed out, the Westboro Baptist Church hasn't killed anybody either. Does that make them not awful?

Do we know that they haven't? And even if they haven't, they routinely call for the death of those they hate.

If I complain that I have a bad toothache and you reply "Well at least you aren't starving to death", does my toothache go away?

Of course not, but I never implied such a thing.

But if you say, "My last dentist botched my tooth extraction. Aren't dentists just the worst kind of people?", I think that's wrong.

That's all I was saying.

 

[Zhukov]

Thing is, "at least they don't start riots and kill people" isn't really a defense.

I never said it was. I never attempted to defend bad behaviors. I said, despite the extreme actions some sports fans have taken, I'd never use them as evidence of sports fandom inherently breeding such behavior.

No?

Huh. I'd certainly consider it.

As someone else pointed out, the Westboro Baptist Church hasn't killed anybody either. Does that make them not awful?

Do we know that they haven't? And even if they haven't, they routinely call for the death of those they hate.

And geeks routinely call for the death of people who apply feminist critiques to video games or lower the fire rate of weapons in online shooters.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I read the article and I can't tell if he's being attacked by pro-women geeks or anti-women geeks.

To be fair, these stories kind of write themselves these days. "Person involved in the creation of popular culture creates controversy through depiction of character or statement of opinion."

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

I'm going to put these two points as simply as I can.

1. When this first announced a while back, the only things we knew were that movie was going to exist and that all of the ghostbusters were going to be female.

Now, that raises a couple of alarms. Why? Simple: Out of everything they could've chosen to reveal about the movie, they chose the genders of cast. Not anything else that's actually relevant. One way or another, that didn't make me particularly hopeful for the movie. And thus far, I've yet to be proven wrong about this feeling.

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2. To those wondering why people get upset at these reboots despite the old movies/whatever still existing and being good, let me put it this way.

Imagine you have a neighborhood cat/dog/etc. You enjoy spending time with this animal and enjoy spending time with other people with this animal. One day, the animal dies. It's sad, but you all still had a lot of good memories with it.

One day, someone calls you over to see something. It's the dead animal in a weird outfit and being danced around like a puppet.

Are the memories and enjoyment of the animal gone? No.

Does that make it any less awful to see the animal's corpse paraded around in a shallow mockery of its former self? Also no.

While not exactly the same (cause, you know, animal lives versus media and all that), that's the general idea.

 

[Gengisgame]

Tired of people being defensive about the female cast thing.

Not liking the all female cast is a completely legitimate criticism. You cannot dictate to people what they should like.

It is loony brained unrealistic SJ'ism to say to a man "your experience watching all movies will be the same regardless of gender and if you feel otherwise you hate women"

Let's me be clear, if you prefer female Ghostbusters as a matter of preference that is fine, people are just voicing there criticism if they don't.

 

[Syzygy23]

"Look at that nest of angry hornets, what would happen if I started bugging the hornets? Why are the hornets stinging me now? It must just be the asshole hornets."

Thanks for the laugh

OT:

He claims that the all-female cast is a mere co-incidence: the funniest people he knows just happen to be women, which is why he has cast them in the movie.

Please don't insult our intelligence, Mr. Director Man. Bad enough you're making a shitty movie.

To be fair we don't know its a shitty movie, we just know it has a shitty trailer.

The black Ghost Buster says "I know the streets" as to why she should be on the team in this movie. It's going to suck.