8 incredibly depressing responses to Melissa McCarthy's Ghostbusters pic

Because bustin' gender-prejudiced idiots who use Twitter as a platform for their own mindless misogyny makes me feel good.

It has been a source of contention for many a film fan, gender politician and everyday sexist ever since it was announced a year ago: an all-female Ghostbusters. Ugh, how dare someone try to explore the universal concept contained within a movie classic and put a different, refreshing spin on it?

Twitter reactions at the time showed off the entire spectrum of female discrimination still prevalent in today's society - everything from "I'm not against women, but Dan Akroyd made Peter, Ray, Winston and Egon, not Petra, May, Winnie and... er... SHEgon" to "It won't work because women just aren't as funny as men. That's a fact. That's just biology."

But it's discouraging to see that even now, after everyone has let the idea sink in, a casual celebration of this rare female-centric blockbuster will still make the social media streams cross.

Two days ago, star of the Ghostbusters reboot Melissa McCarthy posted this on Instagram:

3 cheers to @theellenshow from all the remarkable women of #ghostbusters. When we stand together we are unstoppable! #girlpower

A photo posted by Melissa McCarthy (@melissamccarthy) on Aug 25, 2015 at 7:57am PDT

A positive commemoration of a progressive move for Hollywood, I'm sure you'll agree. You can almost hear the distant sound of a tide turning. Although that might just be because you live near the ocean. Or you are holding a seashell up to your ear.

Because if you trawl through the - mostly supportive, thankfully - comments, you can still find plenty of phantom trolls sliming the feed with casual dismissal of the whole project based on nothing more than their own prejudice, such as:


Well who can argue with that? I didn't realise you had run the numbers on this one. If you have conducted such a thorough degree of resear-wait a minute, there aren't 400 hundred people in this photo. Why you...


Yes, because posing for this photo and promoting its 'feminist agenda' probably took at least a week, which could have been spent honing the already-written script and filming take after take of better performances. Priorities, ladies!


I think you have missed the point here, sir. You can't accuse a photo that has the clear purpose of only showing the women working on the film as showing a lack of "Diversity". That's like arguing that Gay Pride doesn't seem like a fair forum to celebrate heterosexuality, or that the Reptile House at London Zoo shows bias against other non-scaly animals.


B-but their time WAS spent on an original movie. Several in fact. The collective main cast of the reboot of Ghostbusters have over 180 other acting credits to their names. Now they're doing this one, which by the way - and I'm just guessing here because none of us have seen the film - won't be an exact shot-for-shot, line-by-line remake.


Dude, when you have to say "I have nothing against the concept, but" then you have at least one thing against the concept. Just to be clear.


I honestly don't even know what this is. Although, it could be read as a general tip to not "rubbed" the nerds the wrong way, which is advice that anyone in the film industry should heed.


Yes, you're right, this is EXACTLY like the Spice Girls all over again, only with several key differences that actually make this situation nothing like that one.


To be fair, this is just handy constructive criticism for Melissa McCarthy to get a camera with the ability to take photos at a higher resolution. So that's fair. This tweet doesn't belong here. That's fine. Although, let's just double-check that your glasses don't need a quick polish- no, no you're right. Melissa needs a new camera. I'm sure she's on the case.
Ugh. I feel so funky.

For the record, if you think that Ghostbusters should be a men-only zone, with a mostly male cast playing a team of ghost-busting men, then I have good news for you: we already have one of those. It's called THE ORIGINAL GHOSTBUSTERS. In fact we have two of them and the sequel isn't even as good as the first one. When a franchise starts dropping the ball when it only has two films to its name, how can anyone argue that "taking things in a new direction 30 years later" isn't a good idea?

And I know what you're thinking: All of this would have been a relevant argument to make a year ago when the all-female idea for the reboot first came to light. Why the big fuss now?

Because the issue apparently isn't going away, and all I can think about is, next year, when the film is finally released, having to read review after review that all start the exact same way - with the so-called 'controversy' of sex-swapping Ghostbusters. As if it's not enough of a non-critique to weigh up the remake against the original, everyone will be comparing the female cast to the male cast, judging in broad terms whether it was a good idea for the film to contain female characters where there once were male characters, like that makes one jot of difference as to how good the film is.

It's all so depressingly predictable. The film could have been remade with an all-penguin cast and we wouldn't have had this much outrage to negotiate.

The only question anybody should be asking is: will the film be fun? I would argue that, with this cast, which contains without a doubt some of the funniest people - not just funniest women - working today, that yes. Yes, of course it will be fun. And the same goes for the all-penguin cast. How can anyone not look forward to either?