Professional Ghostbusters and Unprofessional Critics

By Travis Johnson

Paul Feig’s upcoming reboot of the long-dormant Ghostbusters franchise has become a key point of contention in the Great Culture Wars, and if you think it’s not because the four lead characters are played by women, you’re lying to yourself. It’s not because we’re sick of remakes; we might be, but not significantly more sick of them than we were when, to pull out a recent example, Robocop got the treatment. It’s not because Ghostbusters is an untouchable icon of screen culture; it’s a really cool, very funny movie that is pretty much a lightning-in-a-bottle affair, a weird combination of second choices and compromises that came together in a special and probably irreplicable way. It’s not because the makers of the new Ghostbusters are “raping our childhood”, a truly odious term; you don’t see Michael Bay and co. copping nearly as much stick for their Transformers series, and those are nigh-unwatchable (and hugely profitable – not much boycotting going on there). No, it’s because instead of four guys we’re getting four girls, and that’s become reason for a dedicated, organised campaign of hate that saw the first trailer become the most downvoted video in the history of YouTube. You doubt me? Imagine a world where the mooted Christ Pratt/Channing Tatum reboot had made it into production, and the early results were of comparable quality to what we’ve seen so far of Feig’s version. Do you think for a second it would be subject to such vitriol?

And now we’re getting things like this:

That’s James Rolfe, aka The Angry Video Game Nerd, spending six minutes explaining why he’s not reviewing the new Ghostbusters film. You’ve probably seen that in the last couple of days, and there’s been plenty of commentary coming from all the usual corners; all else aside, Rolfe is significantly better known now than he was, say, three days ago. But he’s not alone. Take a look at this:

YouTube user stingfan9999, doing the Lord’s work here, has put together a playlist entitled Ghostbusters Fans Who Hate On Women, and it’s exactly what it says on the tin. It’s largely horrible, unintelligible stuff, and it’s hard to say who’s more pathetic – the dudes who try and hide their misogyny or the dudes who just own it.

But most of these guys can be ignored because they’re just angry freaks screaming into a microphone, like a baboon who’s found a ham radio. Rolfe, though, is a film critic. It says it right there on his self-edited Wikipedia page.

Except, of course, he can’t call himself a critic now. And nobody else should call him a critic either. Being a critic, even in this age of citizen journalism and democratised communications channels, connotes at least some rudimentary level of professionalism, and Rolfe has failed the test.

It’s simply this: you cannot judge a work of art you have not seen.

We’re not talking about Rolfe’s right not to view the new Ghostbusters, although I deeply side-eye his misguided choice to turn that decision into some kind of moral argument rather than a personal choice. Nobody sees every film ever released, and any given film commentator might miss any given film for any given number of reasons. You just can’t stand up and decry something as a piece of shit without having seen it. You can make the quiet call not to see it because you don’t think it’ll be any good, or perhaps that your audience does not care for the work or your response to it (and I guarantee you that Rolfe’s does; if they had no dog in this fight, they’d not be making nearly so much noise), but you cannot make a judgement call about a film that you haven’t seen and expect to be taken seriously. It’s a pretty basic tenet – hell, it’s about ethics in film journalism.

But the trailers look terrible! you might say. Perhaps, but that is making a call on the quality of the marketing, not the object itself. If you’ve never seen a good movie that had a crappy trailer, you need to see more movies. The reverse is also true; great trailers have blazed a trail for terrible films on countless occasions.

I’m not saying you can’t go in with preconceptions. It’s almost impossible not to in this age of 24 hour news cycles and constant PR bombardment. It often seems that everyone alive is not just engaged in watching films but watching the business of films, and you can have a conversation about weekend grosses, advance buzz and overseas markets with a random guy at a bar. Seeing a film tabula rasa is almost impossible, and any advance knowledge you have is going to colour your expectations one way or another. Every critic has walked into a movie they think is going to be awful; every good one in that situation has uttered the prayer “I hope it’s better than I expect.” There are no atheists in foxholes.

The thing about being a critic is that you get to see a lot of movies, but if you follow Sturgeon’s Law you must understand that you get to see more bad movies that good ones, and that’s fine – that is literally your job. You are paid to expose yourself to cultural items and then tell people if you think they’re good or bad – that’s it, everything else is bells and whistles. You are paid to watch bad art. You are a cultural mine canary. When you pre-judge a film to the point where you flat-out refuse to watch it, for whatever reasons you care to name, you’re not doing your job. Like Rolfe, you’re a canary faking a heart attack, and you are giving misleading data to people who trust you – and, directly or indirectly, pay you – to tell them what’s what.

I can’t tell you if the 2016 Ghostbusters is going to be any good. I’m right in the middle of the pack in terms of reaction to what’s come our way so far; the trailers look decent without blowing me away, but the talent in front of and behind the camera know their stuff and there’s every reason to believe it’ll be solid, and almost none to believe it’ll be horrible. Still, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, when I give my actual opinion it’ll be after I’ve seen the film.

Because I’m a critic.

And James Rolfe, whatever he might say, is not.