The new Ghostbusters film was released last week, featuring for the first time, an all-women cast, replacing the all-men cast from the 1980s. Currently occupying the second position at the US box-office, the film has received some flak after its release; the flak focuses on how an all-women cast wouldn’t work for a cult film like Ghostbusters. Leslie Jones, the only African-American female cast member, has had it worse. Having been pelted with racial slurs since the film’s release, in addition to a fake account spreading racist tweets, Jones announced that she was quitting Twitter for all the negativity around her.
I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today…wrong
— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016
This made the director of the film, Paul Feig, speak up against the personal attacks against his cast member. Soon enough, showing his support for Jones, Feig started a hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ that started trending on Monday night.
Leslie Jones is one of the greatest people I know. Any personal attacks against her are attacks against us all. #LoveForLeslieJ @Lesdoggg
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) July 18, 2016
Annoyed with all the attacks, Leslie Jones retweeted every racist comment about her in a bid to shame the attacker. This prompted Feig and other users to retweet the same, with even Jones contacting Twitter officials to take down the accounts of attackers. Some of the tweets she received were people calling her “ugly” and likening her to a gorilla.
Ok I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses,even got a pic with semen on my face. I’m tryin to figure out what human means. I’m out
— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 18, 2016
The attack on Jones is strongly reminiscent to the attacks hurled at the makers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. With the addition of an African-American and a hispanic actor playing important roles in the film, a hashtag started trending before the film’s release insisting that the film was supposed to have only white actors. The Vox called it “racism, plain and simple“, curating tweets with the hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII. Some of them were:
#BoycottStarWarsVII because it’s nothing more than a social justice propaganda piece that alienates it’s core audience of young white males.
— Dissident American (@dissidentusa) October 19, 2015
#BoycottStarWarsVII If white people aren’t wanted in Star Wars, then our money must not be either.
— Dissident American (@dissidentusa) October 19, 2015
#BoycottStarWarsVII because white children deserve wholesome movies, not more PC anti-white diversity crap.
— End Cultural Marxism (@genophilia) October 19, 2015
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Meanwhile, the Ghostbusters film, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones — all former cast members of sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live — was endorsed to be a non-objectified, woman-centric version of the horror-comedy film. The film opened to mixed reviews and is currently placed second at the box-office after The Secret Life of Pets.
Photo credit: The Hollywood Reporter
