Phallic Phantasms

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2018)

While the three pseudo-scientists of "Ghostbusters" occupy themselves professionally with the paranormal, their sexual desires likewise are abnormally characterized by paraphilic tendencies. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) takes joy in the sadistic torment of other men, which ordinarily is limited to mere sardonic remarks and poking fun at supposedly less masculine men for their nasal congestion, short height, or what have you, but at its most violent also manifests in his electric-shocking of a male test subject in an experiment of which the validity Venkman jeopardizes in the pursuit of his perverse pleasures. Perhaps, ashamed of his own desires, he also makes excessive displays of his supposed heterosexuality, including flirting with the female test subject and later aggressively, if clownishly, making passes at Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver).
Meanwhile, Ray's (Dan Aykroyd) paraphilia extends to a complete displacement of other people as the source of sexual attraction; instead, his spectrophilia appears as a dream where a female ghost signifies further sexual displacement by disappearing before performing fellatio on him. Later, his fantasizing of another non-human humanoid object is made real in the form of the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a figure from his childhood, which is the time when all of those Freudian quacks like to locate the origins of sexual feelings. And, of course, there's the obviously-symbolic pole he's so enthusiastic about in their repurposing of an old fire station. Egon, on the other hand, seems to be entirely consumed in his pseudo-scientific pursuits, even seeming to not react in the least to the advances of the Ghostbusters' receptionist Janine (Annie Potts). Rather than being asexual, his interests are displaced in the phallic guns or wands of the Ghostbusters' "proton packs," which they employ to ejaculate energy streams, trapping gooey ectoplasmic matter into a shared box. Perhaps, like Peter, Egon also fears his homoerotic tendencies, though, and insists that the men avoid crossing streams.
But, of course, crossing their streams is what the entire male-bonding narrative is building up to. Being the 1980s, this includes the homophobic government, in the form of the "dick-less" EPA man, butting in, protesting the Ghostbusters' pollution of ejaculating streams and captured slime and even the propagandic effect their activities have upon society. This backfires, however, unleashing the latent desires the Ghostbusters themselves feared and contained in the "closet"--the unleashing of them taking the form of flamboyant streams of light and sparkling stars in a rainbow of colors spreading throughout the city. The Catholic mayor's kissing of the Archbishop's ring and turning to him for approval/guidance also plays into the unleashing of the Ghostbusters' phallic powers, but I'm not going to look into that plot point any deeper than that. Now, freed from the closet, so to speak, and after a stint in jail, the Ghostbusters' antagonist takes the form of Old-Testament Biblical proportions in the form of a heterosexually-coded coupling of ghosts: the "Keymaster" (read "male") and the "Gatekeeper" (read "female"). And reigning supreme is the god Gozer, who takes the shape of the Ghostbusters' gendered "other," a woman. The men's triumph is in defeating this ghastly heterosexual and female gendered possession of their city.
After the men cross streams, resulting in the explosion of white goop from Ray's latent childhood desires pouring over them, the three doctors quickly resort to their prior postures of homoerotic denial: Peter to the rescue of the damsel-in-distress Dana, and Egon and Ray to the safer confines of the short and daft male subject Louis (Rick Moranis), for whom Egon quickly remarks on his desire to perform pseudo-scientific tests upon. The fourth Ghostbuster, Winston (Ernie Hudson), however, the only normal man among them and who, presumably, has a healthy sexual attitude, proclaims with pride, while covered in goo, "I love this town!"
This makes me rethink what may be underlying the outcry over the casting of women in the 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot, of what is one of the most, let's say, male-centric of classic comedies. Or... "Ghostbusters" is just a silly comedy with the best zingers coming from Bill Murray, a catchy soundtrack and a production design and dated visual effects that remain charming.