Either/Or vs. Paul Feig
“It’s Ghostbusters but with women.” “It’s like Star Wars for black people” “The first Marvel movie with an Asian lead.”
There’s a motif in pop culture where you take something successful, rotate out one of the parts, and re-release. This is slightly more sophisticated than the other prevailing design philosophy, which is to take something successful, and re-release. The Ghostbusters redux flopped hard, and on its way down the drain it caught flak for being exactly this kind of reskin. Critics said that it was a soulless paint-by-numbers remake, with a veneer of feminist empowerment put on in an attempt to exploit political solidarity for theater tickets. Defenders said that the critique itself was a reactionary misogynist reflex, with a veneer of complaints about artistic merit in an attempt to avoid political backlash.
How many times did I use the prefix “re-” in that paragraph? Both sides of this debate take the 1984 movie as their axiom. Actually, they both claim the exact same thing about the 2016 version. They both believe it is “just like the 1984 movie, but with women” — but to critics this is a failing, while to defenders it is the entire motivation for making the movie in the first place.
Kierkegaard, in his analysis of Don Juan, suggests that there is such a thing as an “enduring classic”, a piece of art that is refined to near-perfection and cannot be made more beautiful. There are many classics, but they are not evenly distributed. Abstract mediums, such as visual art or music, have very few possible classics, while concrete mediums such as novels have very many. The reason for this is simple: a novel can be set in different countries, different times, feature different characters, all of which prompt a different path of refinement toward perfection. But a melody made more perfect will tend to overlap with many other melodies, as there are relatively few notes to choose from compared to words. The most beautiful melody now will remain the most beautiful melody one thousand years from now, because the notes never change. There are only a few possible “perfect” songs which all enduring music converges to, compared to many possible “perfect” novels which all enduring novels tend toward. If you’re mathbrained you might say novels have many local maxima, which represent perfection in the area of artistic space they each govern, while music has few maxima in comparison. Incidentally, this is all assuming some objective form of beauty which supersedes everything else, including morality and even the physical world.
We can leave alone the aesthetic existentialism for now, and just take advantage of this sliding scale of abstract vs. concrete. Let’s apply it to Ghostbusters. Pretend, for a moment, that the 1984 release is an enduring classic (bear with me here). That is to say, it can’t be improved upon — any change we make to it at this point will either degrade its quality, or transform it into a different work entirely, a different classic with a separate progression toward perfection. The argument of critics is that changing the main characters from men to women does not fundamentally change the movie to a different one, but only weakens it. A step down the ladder from perfection, a move down the gradient away from local maximum. It’s “the same movie but worse”, and therefore does not deserve to exist.
Supporters would say it fundamentally transforms the movie. Genderswapping makes the 2016 movie a different film entirely, not a downward move but a lateral one to a separate ladder. It’s a new concept “for a new audience”, and therefore has every right to exist.
Sound good? Unfortunately, I’m lying to you — that wasn’t an accurate representation of either side.
Here’s the part where I tell you both sides of this kulturkrieg have the same stance: “The 2016 movie is exactly like the 1984 movie”. That’s it. The gender of the characters is incidental to the movie itself — they are the packaging which selects which audience this movie is “for”, but have no relation to the movie’s artistic merit. To critics this is a sin, because they’ve already seen this exact same movie in 1984. To supporters this is a virtue, because now the exact same movie is being marketed at them for a change. The thing they all agree on is that the genderswap has no bearing on the quality of the movie itself.
This idea that identity is insubstantial in art doesn’t easily align with revealed preference, given both camps care very much about the identities portrayed in art. But they care about identity in a consumptive sense — progressives conspicuously consume minority identities in media, while anti-progressives conspicuously do not. The two pop culture re-release strategies I described at the top of this page are actually the same strategy twice. Changing out characteristics is not supposed to have any impact on the quality of the story, for that would imply that certain kinds of people are more suited to certain stories than others, and that would imply a fundamental difference on the basis of [gender,race,nationality].
This culture war is a battle of conspicuous consumption by two groups of tabula rasa small-L liberals. They both agree that the genderswap does not inherently degrade the movie — neither group wants to be sexist, they only imply it might be used as a shield for lower quality in other areas. They both agree that the genderswap does not fundamentally change the movie to a different one — that would imply that women were forever locked out of the experience of projecting themselves into Ghostbusters, that it was a uniquely male film. They only argue about the effect the genderswap might have on the viewer, that it might artificially heighten or lower the viewer’s opinion of the film as a whole. That word “artificial” brings us back to the idea of the “enduring classic”, and objective aesthetic merit. Why, if art appreciation is a subjective experience, would any influence on a viewer’s enjoyment be “artificial”?
The enduring classic reveals itself naturally to Kierkegaard by… enduring. He does not claim he is defining this concept from first principles, merely discovering and classifying something which naturally exists in the world. Ghostbusters (1984) has endured, somewhat. Ghostbusters (2016) has not yet. In order for the latter to live up to the former, it has to be just as enduring. The surest way of that happening is for it to be the same film as 1984. At the same time, the greatest argument for why the 2016 release was a giant waste of time and money is that it is the same film as 1984. The aspirations of the 2016 movie give ammo to both sides of this fight. It is, by self-definition, both equal to, and wholly eclipsed by, the original. Or is it eclipsing the original? Or merging as one with it?
This is all a waste of time, because of course turning all the main characters into women will change the movie into a different one. There is no such thing as a pure “genderswap” — something that is such a fundamental piece of someone’s identity for every moment of their lives cannot simply be handwaved away. Ghostbusters (2016) is trying to be Ghostbusters (1984) even though it isn’t. That’s the reason it got a tepid reaction, and won’t endure to the same degree. The 2014+ kulturkrieg survives by eliding obvious conclusions like this behind, at least in this instance, a twentieth century (small-L!) liberal belief about human nature, the kind of belief that for most people is just background noise. This is how every aspect of the culture war survives — disagreements that stem from contradictions in mutually held first principles. To free yourself from the eternal flame war, let go of your axioms and be like Kierkegaard: let the nature of good art reveal itself to you. Be an existential empiricist. Take art as it comes.
