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A Treatise on Oral-Paranormal Copulation; or In Defense of the Ghost Blow-job Scene in Ghostbusters

An argument has been propagated that the scene in Ghostbusters (1984) where Dan Aykroyd receives oral sexual satisfaction from a female specter has no purpose in the film. This is false beyond a shadow of a doubt--the ghost blow-job scene has a purpose and if it necessitates it, I will rectify it.

Originally a deleted extended scene, the discarded footage was recut and shortened to fit into the riotous montage sequence that depicts the rise of popularity of the Ghostbusters set to the eponymous Ray Parker, Jr. song. In the final scenario, Ray Stantz (Aykroyd) is having a restless night of sleep that leads to a dream in which he encounters a female spirit. That spirit hovers over the awakened Stantz, then disappears. Suddenly, The belt and zipper on Stantz's pants become undone and we witness the utter shock of the Ray as this all transpires. Much is left for the audience to decide, but by the cross-eyed look that Stantz enacts, we are led to assume that the female ghost fellated his penis with her mouth until the point of ejaculation. After Ray's justified expression of shock/satisfaction, the dream cuts back to his actual situation as he falls out of bed.

This can be interpreted as a comedic non sequitur, but it's not. Over the course of the montage, we see the role of Ghostbuster take over each of the three protagonists' lives. They are interviewed on television programs, appear on the cover of national magazines, become a recited news item by Casey Kasem, etc... Adding to Ray's poor eating habits displayed earlier in the film, the anxiety of fame has disrupted his life. All Ray Stantz can process at this moment is that he is a Ghostbuster. The ghost blow-job scene is a stress dream that correlates with both his work and social life--along with Winston Zeddemore, Ray does not develop an onscreen romance. Also, understanding the phallic nature of the proton packs used to ensnare paranormal beings, the dream sequence is a Freudian reversal of the ghost-busting process. Instead of Stantz firing a proton beam at a ghost to pull it in, Stantz is now the helpless participant. The female ghost latches her mouth around Stantz's penis leaving the man vulnerable. In this instance, the woman succeeds, extinguishing the use of Stantz's biological proton gun. By taking control of his genitalia, the ghost defeats the Ghostbuster.

A theory could be postulated that Ray Stantz unconsciously wishes to have penetrative sex with a ghost, but that is too broad to identify here. What can be stated as fact is that the ghost fellatio scene HAS A PURPOSE. To say otherwise is ludicrous and an affront to the writers of this film: Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, and the late Harold Ramis.

Please, from this moment on, do not discount this sequence in the film. It is a very good scene and we are all the better from it.

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MY STAR WARS FAN THEORY: Boba Fett was a big dumb idiot.

Now that the the expanded universe is thrown out the window, there's no evidence that Boba Fett was ever good at being a bounty hunter. He probably just lived off the infamy of his dad Jango Fett, kind of like some frat guy who brags that his dad owns the big car dealership in a small town. The movies build on how menacing he is and how he's out for vengeance because his dad was murdered by a Jedi. Then, when he's finally given a chance, when his big moment arrives, he gets knocked into a big hole and dies.

Unintentionally, Boba Fett ends up being one big gag. The Sarlacc even burps after it eats him. Comedy gold.

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tiny rant about MST3k coming back:

I love Mystery Science Theater 3000. I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings as a kid to catch it on the SciFi Channel. I'm a member of the Bart Simpson generation--I was a dorky 90s kid that craved irreverence and anarchy in my humor and nothing sums that up better than watching a movie and making fun of it. It's like breaking a taboo. There's humor everywhere, even in shitty, old movies. Watching MST3k was like watching a bad movie with good friends. Now it's coming back for some reason. It never really left, we had Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic. Hell, now everyone with recording equipment does jokey commentaries for movies. But now it's back with the same name, and I think that's all that matters to some people. I think part of the appeal to MST3k is that it was a bunch of unknown Midwestern guys coming together and making jokes. The fact that they're bringing on all these nerd celebrities and big name comedy writers like Dan Harmon kind of takes away from the original's quaint charm. It distorts the show's hokey veneer of the sci-fi stuff with the satellite and the cheap-looking robots, as if all these segments are filmed in a garage somewhere. We've already seen that without the thematics (Rifftrax and the like) so going back to that seems antiquated--but now it's going to be like "hey, there's actor and comedian Patton Oswalt", which was never the vibe of the original MST3k. That it got crowdfunded is also a good example of that blind nerd "take my money" quality that I'm not a fan of. It's the same mindset that thinks Stan Lee created all of the Marvel characters or that Joss Whedon is a "nerd god" who can do no wrong. There was more to the show than those robots. Considering that Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and the rest have been pretty mum about the whole thing is pretty telling. Either there's bad blood or lack of interest, this new MST3k seems like it's just going to be the nostalgia bait version of a product we don't need anymore. Maybe it will be good. I don't know. There's just a weird desperation to the whole thing. Just because something is good doesn't mean it needs to come back.

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Attempting #comics the old fashion way.

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Here’s a poster design I submitted for an animation festival back from 2013. It was not chosen and no one liked it!

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PART 3 of some storyboards for this unused ending for Kevin Smith's Red State: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtXEtwAVgEc

At one point Dennis and I thought it would be funny to have the four horseman be 3 different incarnations of Kevin Smith (90s Kevin, Silent Bob...) and then the last one would be Jason Mewes. We decided against it for tonal reasons.

Also that last image is from an unused gag where "Bragman" would rise up onscreen when Smith goes on about Affleck being the new Batman for no reason. EW said no because they don't have a sense of humor. Do with it what you please, internet.

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PART 2 of some storyboards for this unused ending for Kevin Smith's Red State: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtXEtwAVgEc

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PART 1 of some storyboards for this unused ending for Kevin Smith's Red State: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtXEtwAVgEc

These storyboards were eventually animated by the brilliant Dennis Fries.

(Once again: Sorry, I don't have a scanner. Took these with my iPhone)

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Should've posted this a while ago. Here's most of the concept art I did for this unused ending of Red State: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtXEtwAVgEc

As you can see, at one point we thought about doing it in a John Kricfalusi or Clerks the animated series style, but we decided not to.

(Sorry, I don't have a scanner)

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Here's some rough face/caricature study of John Goodman I did for this EW Kevin Smith thing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtXEtwAVgEc

Sorry, I do not own a scanner.

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here are some sketches of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg that I drew for no discernible reason.

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Rick & Morty is very good. It’s also fascist sometimes.

First of all, this is not some sort of take-down or linkbaity garbage article that tries to tell you that the cool thing you like is actually bad and you’re a bad person for liking it. There’s enough of those to solidify both your and my self-loathing elsewhere. I actually like Rick & Morty. It’s very funny and the most audacious comedy show I’ve seen in years. It fully commits to its world, in both writing and animation, which makes it a wonderful gem on the Adult Swim lineup. The second season just ended and I can’t wait for season 3.

It’s also probably one of the most dour and nihilistic shows on television. Yes, it’s on Adult Swim, where every other series involves He-Man pooping on Skeletor or satanic dogs graphically murdering children, but I think the striking quality to Rick & Morty’s animated cruelty is just how sincere it is in its delivery. This may be a leftover from the late Community mindset, but the show actually engages with the dysfunction of the Smith family while most other familial cartoon sitcoms like Family Guy and current Simpsons just gloss over their strife for crude, humorous effect.

The Smith family, along with Rick, is in so much visible pain. The Roadrunner can trick the Coyote into running off a cliff but after the next cut you know that the Coyote is up and scheming on how he’s going to get that Roadrunner next time. With Rick & Morty, there’s actually an episode where the parents Jerry and Beth argue over why they didn’t abort their daughter Summer. This is a show that involves aliens and robots and an innumerable catalogue of nonsense characters (Mr. Poopy Butthole has a special place in my heart), but its actual human darkness has consequences. Trying to capture the true emotional conflict in this show is what makes it a roller coaster ride. You don’t always know if Rick’s snide comments about the ugliness of living are meant to elate a laugh or guffaw of shocked disdain.

The “fascist” element I gleamed comes out of the nihilist tinge each episode tends to conclude on. In the episode “Auto Erotic Assimilation”, Rick reacquaints himself with an old girlfriend Unity, who’s a sentient hive-mind that controls the actions of a whole planet of people. Through governing everyone’s minds, Unity creates a utopian paradise where there are no wars and no singular identities held by the inhabitants.  Unity exists only by enslaving others and because of this the planet lives in peace. At one point, Unity is lured into the decadent and inebriated Rick Sanchez lifestyle and loses control over the planet, leading to chaos, hatred and race riots. All is eventually restored, and the hive-mind makes the planet right again. This episode is great in depicting the confusion and turmoil of a flailing relationship in using a complex science fiction concept (which I think is the show’s charm, it’s willingness to take an absurd concept and stretch it to its thematic limits—“Total Rickall” is a brilliant example), but what gets lost in the metaphor is the resolution that people are too cruel and dumb to take care of themselves so they’re better off mind-controlled and enslaved.

A lot of the episodes in the second season take this ending route. We are viscious and dumb and the bitter anxiety of our own wanton brutality just makes us cold and unfeeling—that’s Rick’s general set-up. Rick has been around the universe and knows that we’re bad. Morty enters the picture as an innocent being exposed to the barbarous laws of the universe that Rick welcomes. Each Rick and Morty-centric episode involves Morty being exposed to something Rick knows all too well, so Morty tries to do the right thing, then learns that the right thing doesn’t work, then resorts to the violent tactics of Rick. In “Look Who’s Purging Now”, the conclusion is that a “purge”, one day a year where there are no laws and we’re allowed to murder all we want, is a good thing. Yes, it’s a metaphor, all science fiction is, but even in a colorful (much blood is spilled in this episode) adult cartoon it’s a pretty bleak message. Morty, the audience surrogate, eviscerates and murders a whole bunch of aliens by episode’s end. Rick tries to assuage Morty that the candy bar he ate made him aggressive because it contained the chemical “Purgenol”, but this is revealed to be a lie as an end-of-the-episode joke. What you can take out of this allegory is that Morty (you) is a rage-filled monster that just wants to kill and destroy. You’re a bad person.

With “The Ricks Must Be Crazy”, Rick’s flying car is powered by a pocket universe and when that pocket universe builds another pocket universe to power its world, Rick (the cruel god) does everything in his power to stop them, destroying entire universes just to do so. In “Mortynight Run”, Morty does everything he can to help a seemingly innocent alien convict escape the intergalactic police while Rick thinks they should just kill the alien—eventually, Morty gives in and does murder the alien. And when all this is happening, the show jumps back to an A or B plot that involves the Smith family members getting into a fight that seems alarmingly too real, even distractingly so. Depending on your emotional stance, The Smith parents talking about how they almost aborted their daughter is more alarming than seeing Rick casually murdering someone.

Then again, this is a comedy show. To believe that Roiland, Harmon and the rest of the writers actually think this is a bit much. Me even feigning to take this all seriously speaks more for my current emotional state than those of the creators. I think the cord with me was struck just by how sincere it is compared to other adult cartoon fare. The clash of subversive nihilism and emotional sincerity really does a number on your brain if you think too much about it. Done well, you have the brilliant “Total Rickall”; done poorly and you have that infamous Ctrl+Alt+Delete comic page that tried to shove a miscarriage plot into a webcomic about how wacky video games are. Once again, I like the show, but I feel like the first season episode “Rixty Minutes” kind of fell into the category of the latter, being both an hilariously absurd episode that also involved two depressed parents self-medicating on boxed wine and lamenting the spiraling destruction of their family.

The general narrative that the show tries to unite is that we are gross monsters and the only way to survive is to be the grossest monster. We deserve a fascist omnipresent alien to enslave us or we need to murder people sometimes. But the other soother interpretation is to take the show’s resolutions as a joke. If you surmise that “people are terrible” as a closing moral of the episode, then it’s a joke. Like any realm of humor that dips into a punchline about “9/11” or “Hitler had some good ideas”, you have to take it as the subversive ultimatum. The collision of sincerity and subversiveness definitely perks up the viewer and can leave one contemplative (at least for me) and that’s why this show’s a treat when it doesn’t go overboard.

Maybe that’s why this show puts me off sometimes. It’s engaging.

Now I’m ending with this glorious and wonderful clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLB4dU3Yc6M

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some Furiosa doodles #madmaxfuryroad

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One time I drew the obscure #spiderman villain Scream in seductive and alluring poses. #comics #art

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sometimes I #draw things.

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i did storyboards and character designs on this, plus I animated one of the chest explosions. 

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here's a rough doodle of the Doom Patrol. enjoy.