"Bitches Ain't Gonna Hunt No Ghosts": Totemic Nostalgia, Toxic Fandom and the Ghostbusters Platonic.

Abstract

In March 2016, the trailer for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot debuted online and suffered the unfortunate accolade of being the most disliked trailer in YouTube history. Popular news media, including professional, pro-am, and amateur commentators, picked up on the resulting online kerfuffle as clear indication that there is something rotten in the state of fandom. Feig himself frequently turned to the echo chamber of social media to denounce fans as “some of the biggest arseholes I’ve ever met in my life”. Addressing fans that singled out the reboot as “ruining my childhood,” Feig poured fuel on the fire by criticising such a perspective as merely the product of “some whacked-out teenager,” overdramatic, pathological and, perhaps more pointedly, “toxic”. In so doing, Feig—and, by extension, the cast of the Ghostbusters reboot—replicated and re-activated traditional stereotypes of the fanboy—living in his mother’s basement and obsessing over trivial entertainment.