Unconscious Sexism For The Fail

[omorka]

So, last night after the movie, had an interesting conversation with cheshirebast about which characters we identify with. I have a "Venkman" patch on my uniform, but that's because it's brown. I don't identify with movie!Peter at all, and in point of fact think he needs a good kick in the ass most of the time - but the moments when he pulls out the heroism are pretty redemptive. I find cartoon!Peter more tolerable, but I still want to kick him in the butt about half the time, and I find him hard to relate to. For the movie characters I identify in roughly equal measures with Egon and Janine, to a much lesser degree with Ray, and to a very, very small amount with Louis and Winston. (I probably identify less with Dana than I do with Peter, to be honest.)

I forgot how the conversation got there, but it came up that Cheshirebast found Ray rather annoying. I expressed surprise, although there are a couple of places where I do want to slap him a bit. Then I realized that if the character were Rachel Stantz - if she were genderswapped without changing any other aspects of the character - I would probably be a lot less tolerant of her diztiness. I don't think I'd actually dislike her, still - she's smart, and an engineer/occultist, and delivering Aykroyd's dialogue, which would still count for a lot - but I would be a lot less inclined to forgive her for the bonehead move in the library and for not being worried about Venkman being slimed. I'd also be less inclined to forgive Venkman for manipulating her all over the place. And I'd probably ship Rachel with Peter anyway.

Internalized gender-roles and sexism for the fail on my part. :-/

We also realized that Patricia Venkman would be unlikley to be presented to the audience as a sympathetic character at all, and even less so a quarter-century ago. Peter (or, more accurately, the Bill Murray Antihero Character, of whom Venkman is a specialization) is only barely tolerable as a guy; he's That Guy Who Gets Away With Crap By Being Funny And Cute. The specific crap that a girl can get away with by being funny and cute is a non-overlapping set. Enid Spengler, on the other hand, doesn't change very much, and neither does Wanda Zeddemore.

Also, if exchanging two sentences counts as a conversation, GB might have a technical pass on the Bechdel test. I think it still probably doesn't, since Peter interrupts Janine and Dana before they do more than the basic "yes, can I help you?" sorts of stuff, but they do interact and it's not about him yet. (It is, in fact, about Zuul, who I think is also female.)

Anyway, to make up for my own sex-and-gender!fail, have a totally aweseome fanvid:

Comments

[awbryan.livejournal.com]

But you're _supposed_ to want to slap Venkman. He _is_ annoying. He's cute-annoying as opposed to the just-plain-annoying of his nemesis-foil, Walter Peck. His heart ultimately is in the right place -- but he's still a jerk, and not even Dana could civilize him.

I agree that Patricia is not going to look very good. Consider the "I've quit better jobs than this" conversation as Patricia/Janine -- can we say catfight? Or Patricia/Wendy Peck...

Rachel Stantz, on the other hand, could be saved by body language and facial expressions: looking like less of a 'doughboy' than Aykroyd. (He hadn't ballooned yet the way he did later in life, but he already is starting to get chubby cheeks in the eighties there.) Without changing a line of dialogue, Rachel could be more assertive in her delivery and posture -- especially towards Peter -- and that would change the dynamic of the scenes you're worried about. Think about the business plan scene -- "I've worked in the private sector. They expect _results_" -- and you'll see something of what I mean.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

The contrast just between Elwood Blues and Ray Stantz, physically, is rather startling. It's not helped by him standing next to Belushi in the one film and Ramis in the other, to be sure, but yeah, their faces are distinctly different despite both being Aykroyd. Cartoon!Ray is actually plumper than Aykroyd was at the time, but they clearly caught the direction he was going. (I actually prefer Aykroyd plump to gangly, but that's just me.)

"I've quit better jobs than this" is actually funnier to me if it's between Patricia Venkman and Jason Melnitz than it is in the film as it stands. With them both female, though, it just sounds bitchy.

[scarfman]

I may be wrong, but I don't think I'd feel any different about Rae than I do about Ray. I agree about Pete and Rae, though, and about Pat.

[northwall.livejournal.com]

it was my understanding, based on some of egon's dialogue, that zuul was male or genderless and simply happened to incarnate as a female this time. confirm or deny?

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Dana refers to Zuul as "it" consistently until it possesses her. Egon never mentions it at all (although he refers to Gozer as male until the rooftop scene, and Vinz refers to one of Gozer's previous incarnations as male). Peter's reference (which he reads out loud) doesn't give it a gender. Zuul never refers to itself as either gender.

-HOWEVER-

Egon does refer to Vinz Clorto as male, at least when he's inhabiting Louis. Vinz doesn't correct him. Moreover, Zuul and Vinz are explicitly the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster, and given exactly what they do to summon Gozer, the Freudian implications are clearly not just a cigar this time. That implies that Zuul and Vinz are sexed, if not gendered. The terror dog puppets are also slightly different, although whether that's supposed to suggest male and female or simply so we can tell them apart isn't clear.

-ON THE THIRD HAND -

Vinz does ask Egon whether he's the Gatekeeper. Either he's just asking every being he encounters, or he doesn't know the Gatekeeper is female, or (my guess) all these subcreatures look alike to him and he can't tell their sex by smell.

Re: Long comment is long 1/2

[omorka.livejournal.com]

I found the Watchmen scene disturbing enough as it stood. The part about that particular set of gender expectations that gets to me is that if a girl isn't interested, it doesn't make her less feminine - in some eyes, it makes her more so - but she's generally expected to have sex anyway, despite not being interested. With guys, the reverse is true - not being able to get it up is a blot on his masculinity, but it excuses him from pressure to perform, despite him still having fingers and a tongue.

It isn't Peter's hitting on everything with two X chromosomes (and possibly some things with only one) that bothers me, it's his tendency to use people as means to an end rather than an end in themselves. And I think that's still seen as a more negative trait in a woman than in a man, although I think depictions of women acting that way are more common now than they used to be.

I've always been slightly sympathetic to Peck in that sequence; if I'd been in his position, I'd have wanted to inspect the place, too. But the pairing as it stands is the Overstuffed Petty Bureaucrat vs. the Bill Murray Antihero Character, which is a stock conflict pairing for a Murray movie, and we all know we're supposed to root for the small business owner versus the government bureaucrat because this is the '80s, after all.

Making it Wendy Peck vs. Peter Venkman makes Peck's position even more sympathetic, I think. (I might be wrong. I don't find the lawyer in the second movie all that sympathetic, and it's a similar match-up, but, unlike Peck, she has direct evidence that this shit is for realz, yo, it having been five years post-Gozer at that point.)

William Atherton is hot. That's all I have to say about Peck!fic.

Re: Long comment is long 2/2

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Actually, my assumption based on the (scanty) evidence presented in the films is that while Louis is completely socially inept and not a very good lawyer, he's a pretty good accountant. At the very least, he has a reasonably large client base.

I don't have a problem with Jason Melnitz putting the make on Louise Tully in the sequel, except that the intro to that scene would have to be different. (Well, that and being annoyed at Harriet Ramis for breaking up the UST between Jason and Enid, the bitch.)

. . . I have thought about this too long and am now getting genderswap plot bunnies. I'm going to go work on the ten stories I have going before I end up starting a new one.

[bearit.livejournal.com]

A little late to this discussion, but I've decided to LJ-stalk you while waiting for a meeting to start, and hey, funny you were having a discussion about what characters you relate to the most. Earlier this year I was comparing the Ghostbusters to me and my roommates, since watching the movie and cartoon our interactions are all too similar to the boys. *lol* Turns out, I'm most like Ray. (And I think I'd enjoy a female Ray. Maybe not a female Peter, but definitely a female Ray. XD)

And I wasn't fond of Peter until the RGB episode with the nice little old lady that reminded Peter of his mother. That just made me go "awwww" and now, I love the guy. Well, cartoon!Peter anyway. I love Bill Murray, but movie!Peter is, well, just like you said.

By the way, I decided to friend you. Yeah, I friended your fic journal, and now I'm friending your journal journal. *lol* I'm in that kind of mood, I guess?

[omorka.livejournal.com]

It's not stalking if you comment. :-)

I hate to say it, but cartoon!Peter is a more complex character than movie!Peter. Partly that's because the number of writers has ballooned (although movie!Peter really had three authors anyway), but I suspect partly that's also because they couldn't have him be too big a dick in a children's show. Charlie Venkman also explains a lot.

[bearit.livejournal.com]

Oh drat! I guess that means it's back to skulking in the shadows... :P

Yeah, I suppose the cartoon also had the benefit of more opportunities to flesh out the characters, where the movie was limited to that two-hour timeframe while getting in the jokes that makes it such a classic comedy and moving the plot along that made it a great watch. Not a whole lot of time to get into the characters and their motives, especially when there are four of them (5-7 if you include Janine, Louis, and/or Dana). And especially in the case of Peter, we're able to see more than his womanizer side, and his sarcastic and cynical side, even if the second movie shows that he has a lot of heart (mostly with Oscar--"You should have been mine" really spoke volumes to me about his character).