Bustin' Ghosts
The internet is out in the apartment so it was only fitting to break out a comedy from the days before the internet by watching Ghostbusters (1984)
It really lives in another world. The 1980’s don’t feel like that long ago, and it’s not uncommon to hear people refer to the ‘80’s or ‘90’s as “not that long ago.” They really are a long time ago, it’s just hard to think of the world as having passed much time since 2000. It’s been 16 years since then which is a lifetime of a person who has grown up enough to have their own strong opinions and feel grown up enough to not want to be treated like a child. Hell, they’re old enough to drive… even if at 16 or 17 I was driving but not being as safe at it as I am now. I shudder to think back to how I would drive back then, or even how friends would drive… I do recall one friend driving me home and getting all four wheels off the ground after hitting a bump at high speed.
I was only a year old when Ghostbusters came out, and I didn’t see the sequel in the theater either, but my best friend Steve had plastic proton pack toys that we would play with at his house and watch the animated series related to movie. While watching the movie I remembered a lot more of playing with the toys than the time period when the movie came out. I only recall seeing one picture of me wearing clothes that were especially ‘80’s looking with bright ugly colors. My parents weren’t ones to keep up with fashions or to buy new clothes for me that went with the fads in the world. We lived in the woods and it certainly felt secluded.
I grew up relatively close to New York City but I don’t think I ever went until maybe the mid-90’s.
The time period of the Ghostbusters New York seems like it was a real time, minus the boogums and spooksters in the magical story line. There’s a lot of smoking and dirty streets and everything looks like it smells terrible. I do bet that if people came to present day America from any other point in time in the world the smell of the world and the taste of the food would be drastically cleaner and delicious, respectively.
What I remember of that time in New York is what I got from watching the news when there was a subway shooter that made the news, or that the Mets had bright blue and orange uniforms and shaggy haircuts. I knew New York as a lawless place and could picture it under the blue skyline on the Mets logo from one of the many baseball posters I had in my room.
I never understood nostalgia for the 1980’s, maybe it’s because I watched a lot of the news when I was little. Dan Rather was my pop culture TV friend I’d watch every day. Reagan was involved in Iran Contra, the stock market crashed, music had a hollow tinny artificial production sound, and fashion made everyone look ill-fitting and uncomfortable. It wasn’t a great time, but I had a great time, and I’m nostalgic for my childhood, but not for the time.
I think the new Ghostbusters movie is in good creative and talented hands. I think the world that was established in the original movie is very rich to play with and it could be expanded in a lot of fun ways. The opening could have been drawn out a little more to be more of horror scene, it’s so close to something that would have kept me from sleeping when I was little, then it jumps into the fun theme song. The movie can also benefit from updated music, however it might be fun if they don’t update the technology for the special effects. They’re fun in the way that they don’t look real, but they don’t look crappy. It’s a story about unreal things happening in the real world so it might be fun for that to be played up. I’m sure the movie will do very well in the box office and I think it’ll be a little more dense with jokes as well, based on the director and actors.
