The crisis in science

Although the fetishists are loath to admit it, the scientists themselves are well aware that something is rotten in the profession of scientistry:

Spectacular failures to replicate key scientific findings have been documented of late, particularly in biology, psychology and medicine.

A report on the issue, published in Nature this May, found that about 90 percent of some 1,576 researchers surveyed now believe there is a reproducibility crisis in science.

While this rightly tarnishes the public belief in science, it also has serious consequences for governments and philanthropic agencies that fund research, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. It means they could be wasting billions of dollars on research each year.

One contributing factor is easily identified. It is the high rate of so-called false discoveries in the literature. They are false-positive findings and lead to the erroneous perception that a definitive scientific discovery has been made.

This high rate occurs because the studies that are published often have low statistical power to identify a genuine discovery when it is there, and the effects being sought are often small.

Further, dubious scientific practices boost the chance of finding a statistically significant result, usually at a probability of less than one in 20. In fact, our probability threshold for acceptance of a discovery should be more stringent, just as it is for discoveries of new particles in physics.

The English mathematician and the father of computing Charles Babbage noted the problem in his 1830 book Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. He formally split these practices into “hoaxing, forging, trimming and cooking.”

As with all institutions in this latter day, social justice convergence is having its deleterious effects in science. This is why a strict division between scientistry and scientody is absolutely vital; science-SJWs profit from the nebulous nature of the term “science” and use it to cloak their convergent activities.

Criminality and the culture of victimhood

Brings the Lightning author and former prison chaplain Peter Grant draws a connection between the various dyscivilizational organizations active in America today and the criminal mindset:

Each of the organizations we’ve discussed above is trying to exploit the concept and culture of victimhood.  They claim to identify (and identify with) various classes of victims, and seek to mobilize them (and their sympathizers) to agitate against the system that has allegedly made them victims.  If there were no culture of victimhood – if, instead, the focus was on individual responsibility – these organizations would collapse.  Only by denying individual responsibility, focusing instead on groups and the social contract that has until now governed their interaction, can they establish their own reason for being.

This is startlingly reminiscent of the criminal mindset.  I wrote about this in my memoir of prison chaplaincy.  In it, I pointed out a number of characteristics of the criminal’s outlook on life, including the following:

    3.  Refusal to accept responsibility. The criminal avoids or evades any acceptance or admission of guilt or responsibility. Even when he displays contrition about his actions, it’s usually an outward show. In reality his only genuine regret is that he was discovered. He’ll blame anything and everything, anyone and everyone except himself for the negative consequences of his crimes. Of course, this means that he’ll eagerly agree with those blaming factors in his background for his crimes — it allows him to slide out of accepting any personal responsibility for his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault.

    . . .

    6.  A need for excitement. The criminal ‘gets a kick’ out of what he does. Even getting caught has its own thrill. Dealing with the arresting officers (perhaps including an exciting car chase that gets him on TV), establishing his place in the hierarchy in the jail, dealing with the courts, trying to ‘beat the rap’: all have their own emotional intensity. The same applies to life in prison. A really hardened convict may spend more time in the Hole than in general population, aggravate and infuriate staff, annoy other inmates… but he doesn’t care. He’s getting a kick out of his ‘power’ to make others react to him.

    . . .

    10.  A refusal to accept reality. Reality is defined by the criminal on his terms, not by the victim of his crime or by society. A criminal convicted of check fraud will adamantly deny that he’s a thief — he ‘never took anything’. One who stole from a bank didn’t steal from an individual, only an institution, and that’s not theft by his lights. A rapist didn’t do any harm to his victim — ‘she enjoyed it’. A child abuser wasn’t abusing the child at all: he was ‘showing his love’ for his victim. An armed robber who killed his victim when he resisted wasn’t guilty of murder. If his victim had complied with his demands he wouldn’t have died. He ‘asked for it’ by resisting, therefore his death wasn’t the robber’s fault. Most criminals will argue that they weren’t convicted because of what they did, but rather because ‘the system’ or ‘the judge’ or ‘the prosecutor’ was against them. It was personal bias that put them behind bars, not the weight of evidence. I could go on forever in this vein, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Do you see any common ground between these characteristics, and the attitude and conduct of so many progressive pressure groups such as Black Lives Matter, Moveon.org, Common Dreams, Color of Change, and so many others?  I certainly do.  Almost uniformly these groups deny (or don’t even mention) the need for individuals to accept personal responsibility for their lives and actions.  They’ll blame anything and anyone else.  It’s “the system”.  It’s “the police”.  It’s “racism”.  It’s never the individual’s fault, never the fault of the group complaining about oppression.  It’s always someone else.

They also appear to demonstrate a real need for excitement, to make “the Man” respond to what they’re doing.  They’re social gadflies.  They never achieve anything themselves – at least, I’ve never seen anything they’ve managed to build.  They merely cause trouble for those they oppose.  They tear down what others have built, but offer nothing concrete with which to replace it.

Finally, they certainly appear to refuse to accept reality.

These organizations are evil, but they continue to grow in power and influence because no one in the West these days is willing to actually fight evil. Fist-shaking and the occasional denouncement is about as far as it goes. But as the Bible says, there is a time for peace and a time for war. We have already entered the latter, although at this point, any Man of the West who dares to take action will receive considerably more criticism from his own side than praise and support.

The West is not yet desperate enough. Neither the Men nor the Women of the West are truly cognizant yet of the existential threat to them. They don’t fully believe the situation is what it is, and are still hoping that the system will, somehow, magically start working again.

But it won’t. As Dr. Pournelle has repeatedly written, there will be war.

The hero of Nice lives

I’m glad to learn that the courageous motorcyclist who attacked the truck in Nice survived; I didn’t realize that he was actually helped stop the truck in the end. It had been assumed that he’d been killed due to the scooter under the truck, but it turns out that the scooter was thrown there intentionally.

A hero motorcyclist has told of his frantic bid to stop ISIS truck terrorist Mohamed Bouhlel by trying to jump from his bike and onto the lorry as it ploughed at high speed into crowds in Nice. In an act of astonishing bravery, Alexander Migues sped his bike alongside the 19-tonne truck as Bouhlel ran over 84 people watching fireworks on Bastille Day.

Speaking for the time, he revealed how he leapt onto the moving death machine and clung on as he tried to wrestle the driver’s-side door open several times as the truck sped along the promenade.

‘I saw the truck rise (over the median strip) and run over a lady, he told Nice Martin. ‘He was on the sidewalk and then he returned to the road and he tried to run me over too. It was instinctive, I cannot even explain how I managed to go chasing a truck. When I saw that he was really determined, I tried something,’ Migues said

Despite his bravery, Migues was forced to abandon his attempt when the terrorist pulled a gun on him. The Frenchman has been credited with saving lives by slowing the truck enough to give another motorcyclist time to throw his scooter under the wheels of the lorry.

‘He arrived in a scooter and threw it under the wheels of the truck to stop. I let go of the door and when the scooter tapped the truck I heard the noise of bullets,’ Migues said.

He said he wished he could have hung onto the truck longer and slowed it more so that victims would have had more time to flee its deadly path. But he can take comfort that the time when the scooter went under the truck to when the police engaged in a firefight there were no more killed.

In one of the non-fiction articles that will either appear in RTRH 2 or TWBW 11, the special forces author recommends that the best way to survive an urban attack is to adopt an attacker’s mentality, to move, and to act without hesitation. Alexander Migues is an exceptional example of a man who did just that.

And if Migues hadn’t forced Mohamed Bouhlel to deal with his attempts to get into the cab, Bouhlel would not have slowed down enough for the scooter to stop the truck.

RNC: Iowa and Colorado leave in huff

I’m not even going to pretend to be following this, but apparently Ted Cruz’s gang is still butthurt or something.

Iowa and Colorado delegations have left RNC convention. Will not return

Of course, the Colorado “delegation” is the one that wasn’t elected, so it’s a little ironic they’re upset about Trump’s team running a rules game on them. Strategic geniuses, those guys.

This is an open thread to discuss the Republican National Convention.

Refugee axe attack in Germany

The Germans are going to welcome the Nazis with open arms again. And most of Europe isn’t going to blame them.

A 17-year-old Afghan refugee has been shot dead by police after attacking up to 15 people with an axe on a train in Germany. The teenager, who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the onslaught, was gunned down by armed police after fleeing from the scene near the city of Wurzburg in southern Germany.

As many as 15 people were injured while three of them are fighting for their lives after being attacked with ‘cutting and stabbing weapons’. Authorities say the attacker was an unaccompanied Afghan – but the motives for his attack are still unclear.

As I warned them, they should have sunk the damn boats. Apparently the actual number of wounded is 21, not 15.

Here is the thing. If you don’t like Nazis, then don’t encourage an immigrant invasion, or diversity, or globalism. Because every action leads to a reaction and that is exactly what you’re going to get.

Authorities have said the attacker entered Germany as an unaccompanied child refugee.
Bavarian media say the attacker had lived with a German foster family for two weeks. He had previously lived in a refugee camp.

Europe should not only refuse to accept any refugees, children or adult, it should send all of them back to their native lands. What happens to them there is not going to be as bad as what is going to happen to them in Germany and France, two nations not historically known for their gentle treatment of invaders.

Cantoring Paul Ryan

The most dishonest politician in America faces being upset in his home district:

Following a new primary election poll showing that House Speaker Paul Ryan has plummeted to well below 50 percent in his home district, Ryan is out with new mailers assuring Wisconsin voters of his desire to secure the border, and urging them to support him in his contentious August 9th primary election.

The new mailers touting Ryan’s support for border security is interesting given that just last year, Ryan championed a spending bill that fully funded President Obama’s open borders agenda– including funding sanctuary cities, executive amnesty, and the release of criminal aliens. The mailers also come amid new reports indicating that, one month after his election, Ryan plans to bring up “criminal sentencing” measures that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison onto the streets.

“Keeping America safe is a big job. And it’s the most important one there is,” the Ryan mailer reads. “Protect our Homeland— that means securing the border, confronting Islamic Terrorism, and tackling new threats by stopping them from reaching our shores… Paul Ryan for U.S. Congress… Vote Tuesday, August 9th”

However, new reports indicate that immediately following his primary election, Speaker Ryan plans to bring up legislation that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison and into American communities.

As Roll Call reports, “The House will take up legislation to overhaul the criminal justice system in September, Speaker Paul D. Ryan said.”

I’ll be very disappointed in the people of Wisconsin if they fall for this cuckservative charlatan’s faux change-of-direction on immigration. Paul Ryan is the most dishonest politician in America since Bill Clinton hung up his quivering lower lip.

This would be the Lambda review

Milo’s review of Grrlbusters stands in stark contrast to McRapey’s.

I’d have loved nothing more than to give Ghostbusters a glowing review. Seriously! Can you imagine a better troll? Extolling the virtues of a film that my loyal readership has been warring with social justice warriors over for months?

But I can’t. You see, I strive to be honest with my audience. I went into Ghostbusters with a clear and impartial mindset, like some tall, slim, and devastatingly handsome statue of justice. (But no blindfold. It would be a crime to cover up these eyes.)

Ugh, I don’t know what to tell you. Ghostbusters is terrible. It’s more obvious than the reading on an EKG-meter in Zuul’s bedroom. The only frame of reference in which this movie functions is as a meta-movie, in which the Ghostbusters franchise is treated like a vampire in a Hammer Horror from the 60s. The beloved franchise from our childhood with a stake driven through its heart, head chopped off, body burned and buried at a crossroads.

 The overarching problem with Ghostbusters is that the script is a greater abomination to God than any of the demons and ghosts in the franchise. I’m sure they could have done a worse job, but they’d have to study Tobin’s Spirit Guide to summon a script from an even deeper circle of Hell.

Mostly, it’s a lack of intelligence. In the original movie, the bad guys weren’t actually the ghosts — everybody loves Slimer and the Marshmallow Man. No, the bad guys were the clueless bureaucrats in the government, who set off a supernatural crisis through bumbling and red tape.

In this film, by contrast, the enemy is all men, while the government ends up playing dad. Every man in the movie is a combination of malevolent and moronic. The chick ‘busters shame the mayor so much they end up getting government funding at the end. Like all feminists, they can only survive by sucking on the teat of Big Government.

I’ll skip over the vacuous and incoherent plot. You won’t understand it watching the movie and you won’t understand it reading my summary so who cares. This, unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before, seems to have been conceived entirely out of spite, with the result that its plot is largely irrelevant.

Read the whole thing there. I leave it to you to determine whose review is more trustworthy.

The only reason that anyone cares about this movie is because it is a symbol; it is a battleground in the cultural war. As Milo correctly noted, the movie is a standard bearer for the cultural Left. The mere fact that the battle is being waged, and that the movie is being widely panned and ignored, is a very good sign for we Western Civilizationalists, because it means the SJWs and feminists are finally meeting overt opposition.

There Will Be War Volume VI

Volume VI is now out! Seven down, two to go.

THERE WILL BE WAR is a landmark science fiction anthology series that combines top-notch military science fiction with factual essays by various generals and military experts on everything from High Frontier and the Strategic Defense Initiative to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It featured some of the greatest military science fiction ever published, such Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” in Volume I, Joel Rosenberg’s “Cincinnatus” in Volume II, and Arthur C. Clarke’s “Hide and Seek” in Volume III . Many science fiction greats were featured in the original nine-volume series, which ran from 1982 to 1990, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, and Ben Bova.

THERE WILL BE WAR Volume VI is edited by Jerry Pournelle and features 25 stories, articles, and poems. Of particular note are “Battleground” by Gregory and James Benford, “The Eyes of Argos” by Harry Turtledove, “The Highest Treason” by Randall Garrett, “Crown of Thorns” by Edward P. Hughes, and “See Now, a Pilgrim” by Gordon Dickson. My personal favorite in this volume is “Nonlethal” by DC Poyer.

New Release subscribers, be sure to check your emails, as the bonus book is an especially good one this time around. Also, I’d like to encourage fans of the series to leave reviews for the benefit of those who are not familiar with it; some of the previous volumes are pretty scanty in this regard.

Mailvox: dealing with failure

CA writes about the challenge of responding to repeated failure:

I find your blogs very informative. Your books, TIA and Cuckservatives, were very enjoyable reads.

Some of your postings about failure are interesting but I am not sure that it is always possible to adopt a logical position and carry one’s emotions along.

I failed in three jobs in succession (one of which I was sacked from) in 2011-12. The night of my sacking, I immediately started looking for new work (I’d lacked this resolve after the second job ended badly). I had to claw my way back through unpaid internships. I would like to feel that this was character building. In reality, I’m stuck trying to impose a logical position (What could I have done better?, What did I learn?) onto an emotional one (this is so unfair, why did these things happen to me?)

I’m haunted by the fact that I have failed more than those around me. It is really painful.

Failure can be painful, but it doesn’t have to be. I not only have multiple failures, but I experience failure so regularly that most of you have no idea that they have even happened.

Within the last year alone, one of the three startups I supported went under, one nearly went under, and the third has had to radically change its business model because events haven’t gone according to plan.

Now, for some people, that amount of failure in quick succession would be very painful emotionally. And I’m not going to pretend that I was completely unperturbed, especially because as recently as one year ago, the failed business was doing very well and was even in the process of growing. But the reason I’m not upset about these things is that they were only three of the projects in which I was involved, and since I was not responsible for any of them there was next-to-nothing I could do about it.

I truly don’t even think about them much. Things are what they are, and trying to fix those projects would only harm the other ones that are going rather better. Never reinforce failure.

But rather than trying to impose logic on his emotions, which is always bound to fail sooner or later, I think the correct thing for CA to do is this:

  1. Accept the emotions. Go ahead and be upset. Go for drinks with one of your friends, bitch about the situation, and get it out of your system. Then stop thinking about it, stop dwelling on it, and above all, STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. Nobody cares, not really. It didn’t happen to them, after all, and they don’t want to think about it happening to them.
  2. Don’t waste time trying to analyze and learn from the situation now. It’s too close in time. It’s too raw. The time to analyze it is when you’re already starting to get back on your feet.
  3. Stop comparing yourself to others. Their situations are different. Their talents and abilities are different. Their connections are different. Their roll of the dice is different. This doesn’t denigrate their success, it merely puts it in perspective.

Never be haunted by the success of others. Instead, try to learn from them, try to be useful to them, and try to become the sort of connection for them that can be useful to both of you. You can learn from anyone; if I can usefully learn from someone I despise as much as John Scalzi, (and I have) then you can certainly learn from those for whom you merely feel envy.

Don’t be afraid of failure or weighed down by it. Develop cornerback’s memory. Just because you got burned once doesn’t mean you’re going to get burned the next time. It’s a new play. It’s a new game. And constantly replaying the previous one in your head is only going to reduce your chances of success next time.

I don’t care if you’ve been knocked down once, three times, or two hundred times. The answer is always the same. Get back up and get back in the fight.

UPDATE: Someone pointed out in the comments that having only one income stream makes risk-taking all but impossible and failure all the more devastating. That’s correct. And that is why you should always devote at least 10 percent of your productive time to secondary and tertiary potential income streams.

Gamma reviews

This is not a Gamma review:

Gamma Reviews: Advanced Review Copies

Advanced Review Copies, or ARCs, are the books that the publishers print out early with ordering information including print run size & co-op information instead of a back cover blurb. These are given out to bookstore buyers, professional reviewers, (and, in the case of Baen, lucky people at the Baen Roadshow.)

Now THIS is a Gamma review:

What I thought of the new Ghostbusters: I liked it, and would happily rewatch it. It’s definitely the second-best Ghostbusters movie, and much closer to the original in terms of enjoyment than the willfully forgotten Ghostbusters 2. There are legitimate criticisms to make of it: the plot is rote to the point of being slapdash, the action scenes are merely adequate, and Paul Feig is no Ivan Reitman, in terms of creating comedic ambiance. But the film got the two big things right: It has a crackerjack cast that’s great individually and together, and it has all the one-liners you can eat. And now that the origin story of these particular Ghostbusters is out of the way, I’m ready for the sequel.

But what about the Ghostbusters being all women?!??!?? Yes they were, and it was good. If you can’t enjoy Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones snarking it up while zapping ghosts with proton streams, one, the problem is you, not them, and two, no really, what the fuck is wrong with you. The actors and the characters had chemistry with one another and I would have happily watched these Ghostbusters eat lunch, just to listen to them zap on one another. And in particular I want to be McKinnon’s Holtzmann when I grow up; Holtzmann is brilliant and spectrum-y and yet pretty much social anxiety-free and I honestly can’t see any sort of super-nerd not wanting to cosplay the shit out of her forever and ever, amen.

BUT THEY’VE RUINED MY CHILDHOOD BY BEING WOMEN, wails a certain, entitled subset of male nerd on the Internet. Well, good, you pathetic little shitballs. If your entire childhood can be irrevocably destroyed by four women with proton packs, your childhood clearly sucked and it needs to go up in hearty, crackling flames. Now you are free, boys, free! Enjoy the now. Honestly, I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that one of the weakest parts of this film is its villain, who (very minor spoiler) is literally a basement-dwelling man-boy just itchin’ to make the world pay for not making him its king, as he is so clearly meant to be. These feculent lads are annoying enough in the real world. It’s difficult to make them any more interesting on screen.

But this is just the latest chapter of man-boys whining about women in science fiction culture: Oh noes! Mad Max has womens in it! Yes, and Fury Road was stunning, arguably the best film of its franchise and of 2015, and was improbably but fittingly nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Oh noes! Star Wars has womens in it! Yes, and The Force Awakens was pretty damn good, the best Star Wars film since Empire, was the highest grossing film of 2015 and of all time in the domestic box office (not accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, it’s #11. #1 counting inflation? That super-manly epic, Gone With the Wind).

And now, Oh noes! Ghostbusters has womens in it! Yes, and it’s been well-reviewed and at $46 million, is the highest grossing opening for its director or any of its stars and perfectly in line with studio estimates for the weekend. Notably, all the surviving principals of the original film make cameos, suggesting they are fine with passing the torch (Harold Ramis is honored in the film too, which is a lovely touch), and Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd are producers of the film. If your childhood has been ruined, boys, then your alleged heroes happily did some of the kicking.

I’m an 80s kid; my youth is not forever stained by a Ghostbusters remake, any more than it was stained by remakes of Robocop or Point Break or Poltergeist or Endless Love or The Karate Kid or Clash of the Titans or Footloose or Total Recall and on and on. I think most of these remakes were unnecessary, and I don’t think most of them were particularly good, or as good as their originals, and I question why film companies bother, aside from the “all the originals were made before the global movie market matured and there’s money on the table that can be exploited with these existing brands,” which is, of course, its own excuse.

But after a certain and hopefully relatively early point in your life, you realize remakes are just a thing the film industry does — the first Frankenstein film listed on imdb was made in 1910, and the most recent, 2015, and Universal (maker of the classic 1931 version) is planning yet another reboot in 2018 or 2019 — and maybe you get over yourself and your opinion that your childhood is culturally inviolate, especially from the entities that actually, you know, own the properties you’ve invested so much of your psyche into. It’s fine to roll your eyes when someone announces yet another remake, tweet “UGH WHYYYYYY” and then go about your life. But it causes you genuine emotional upheaval, maybe a reconfigure of your life is not out of the question.

(Not, mind you, that I think these shitboys are genuinely that invested in Ghostbusters, per se; they’re invested in manprivilege and, as noted above, would have wailed their anguished testeria onto Reddit and 4chan regardless of which cultural property had women “suddenly” show up in it. This is particularly ironic with anything regarding science fiction, which arguably got its successful start in Western culture through the graces of Mary Shelley. Women have always been in it, dudes. Deal.)

The happy news in this case is that, whether or not this Ghostbusters reboot was necessary, it’s pretty good, and fun to watch. That’s the best argument for it. I’m looking forward to more.

So brave. But having finished demolishing his own reputation as a movie reviewer in the interest of virtue-signaling his feminist superiority to “manboys” and “shitboys”, whatever they are, McRapey also had to be the first to comment on his own post on his shrinking little blog.

John Scalzi says:
JULY 17, 2016 AT 12:15 PM
To get ahead of any potential “but there are women saying their childhood was ruined too!” nonsense: Maybe there were? But if there were, and they weren’t gamergate-like sockpuppet accounts, a) I didn’t see much of them, b) they were swamped by the wailing boys, c) the advice to them is the same as to the whining dudes: Remakes happen, maybe get over it.

To get ahead of “it’s sexist to bag on the men here,” argument, leaving the whole larger argument about power stuctures and sexism and all the stuff you recognize play into sexism when you think about sexism on a level higher than “this is a playing card I can slap down in this game called Rhetoric,” you can imagine me in that Wonka meme pose, saying “Tell me again as a man how I can’t criticize men, that’s adorable.”

Finally, to get ahead of any “beta cuck” stupidity, I’m not the one who just spent half a year wailing about the ruin of my childhood, boys. I do find there’s an correlation between the sort of dude who questions my masculinity and the sort of dude who whines excessively about how mean the world is to him, waaaaaaaaaaaah. And this is me in the Wonka pose again.

All of which is to say, Mallet is out for general whiny male bullshit. Behave, children.

Spacebunny cracks me up. Her entire response: “Isn’t he married? Why is he trying so hard?” Sadly, despite his brave and heroic efforts, Scalzi got it wrong in the end. You see, the official feminist line is that Grrlbusters is not only better than the original, but seeing it is important.

The nerdy guy doesn’t get the girl. That was a standard trope in the 80s, and the Ghostbusters of 1984 was no exception. The lack of consent factor that makes all of the Zhoul-possessed Sigourney Weaver scenes difficult to watch is not an issue here, because there is no romance in the new Ghostbusters, creepily possessed or otherwise. Yes, Erin (Kristin Wiig) awkwardly hits on Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) but it’s generally met with disapproval from her fellow Ghostbusters (if not laughter) and Kevin seeming to be oblivious to it. And even better than the nerdy guy being the hero is the fact that the nerdy guy is the villain and the nerdy girls save the world. Boom.

An appreciation for their receptionist by the Ghostbusters. I loved Janine as a kid. As a child, I thought that Janine pining quietly for Egon was romantic. Now it pisses me off. That and the fact that nobody paid any attention to her, generally speaking, because she was competent and therefore invisible. As doofy and dumb as Kevin is, and even though Erin hits on him, the team still values him and learns to work with him because they genuinely care about him. That’s not subtext. That’s actual text.

Using the “ghost” as an allegorical commentary. One of the themes in this movie is the importance of being believed. Yes, in this movie, it’s about being believed about ghosts. Erin talks about how she saw a ghost when she was 8, every night for a year. Her parents didn’t believe her, and she went into therapy. Abby (Melissa McCarthy) was the only one who believed her, which was one of the reasons they became friends. It’s not that much of a stretch to think about all the things that women are also often not believed about, as children or as adults. And that part of the movie, thankfully, and pointedly, doesn’t devolve into comedy. It lets the moment of remembered trauma be serious.

Real friendship between the Ghostbusters. The other moment of seriousness that is allowed to be serious is at the very end, when Jillian (Kate McKinnon) stands up to give the gals a toast. Up to this point, the majority of Kate McKinnon’s screentime has been devoted to sight gags and making straight girls question their sexuality, both of which she excels at.

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that sequel, Johnny. I expect it will be out around the same time that Paramount releases the Old Man’s War movie.  But at least we’ll have that television show based on Redshirts to look forward to.