Saturday, April 18, 2009

Dougie Understands Ghostbusting!

The Daily Diggers just posted a blog about Doug E. Fresh's dope 12", "Spirit" (an underrated, little record I made a video about last summer). [That's a lot of crosslinks in one sentence, but at least hit up the one linking to the Diggers' article!] In it, they praise the single but allege that the song "only loosely referenc[es] any kind of ghostbusting activity." Man, you guys may know a lot about records, but when it comes to films' mediocre sequels, you're out of your depth!

Flat out, you guys need to watch Ghostbusters 2 again. After a careful comparison of the events in the film and the song's lyrics, I believe you'll see that all three of his verses are quite specifically and consistently talking about the plot of the film:

Verse 1) The very opening lines set up the premise of the film: "There's a force that's dwellin' beneath the city, tellin' you what you need and need not do. And it's motion stirs up commotion, feedin' off the people's inner emotions." Remember the movie? Paranormal activity is at an all-time high. Why? Well, we find out it's because there's an evil slime running through the city's sewers that feeds off of the citizens' negative emotions. So of course, with "a problem like that, you call the Ghostbusters." Because the "people who just might look so happy but feel so uptight... can't handle the problem that they created. It's from the depths of their spirit!"

Verse 2) Now in this city where "an evil presence makes it unpleasant for every resident," we find Sigourney Weaver's character: "and Dana's the lady." If you don't remember what happens to her in the flick, that's ok, it's all in the song: this evil "takes the mother's newborn baby" to Vigo, the film's villain - or as Doug E describes him, "an evil magician on a mission." He's currently in a weakened state, trapped inside a painting, but "no condition, will stop him on the transition of makin' it in time, with the help of the slime." He plans to be reborn in the baby's body ("the transition") so he can take over the world; but Sigourney Weaver knows who to reach out to! "Who stand for all? Who you gon' call for the brawl? GHOSTBUSTERS!"

Verse 3) Ok, this one is more tenuous/ abstract, but stay with me here. Remember how the movie ended? Things were getting really hopeless throughout the city as the slime thrived off of the peoples' increasingly negative emotions. In fact, you could say as Dougie does, that there were "a lot of dimensions, and misconceptions, certain things done for the wrong intentions." The evil was too strong for the Ghostbusters to even get near, so they needed to raise the New Yorkers' collective spirit with positivity. Remember, they animated The Statue of Liberty and played "Higher and Higher" by Jackie Wilson?

Now granted, the lyrics to this verse don't really detail the plot of the this part of film... instead, I posit that Doug understands the core, underlying theme of the finale and is expressing that in his own style. In the third act of the film, Dan Ackroyd's character says, "I just can't believe things have gotten so bad in this city that there's no way back. I mean, sure, it's messy, it's crowded, it's polluted, and there are people who would just as soon step on your face as look at you. But come on! There's gotta be a few sparks of sweet humanity left in this burned-out bird. We just gotta find a way to mobilize it!" And Doug's pleas to "plant a foundation of newborn leaders, law book readers, career coordinators and poverty beaters," is a plan to do just that!

So Doug's positive message = the positivity generated in the people of the city. And this theory holds because, in the movie, that positivity proves too strong for the evil slime, which melts away, allowing the Ghostbusters to enter the museum and save the baby. Or, as Doug explains, the evil spirits "hear it and fear it. Know it's the truth so they scared to come near it." And as the film ends with the people of New York cheering the Ghostbusters, Dougie ends with, "and you cheer it as I share it, 'cause it's my spirit."

So, yeah. I daresay the song is all about the ghostbusting activity. In fact, the only way the lyrics don't come across as nothing but an insane jumble of incoherent nonsense is if you've seen the movie and recognize what he's describing.

1 comment:

  1. That is crazy because I have never heard that song but now I want to hunt it down so I can hear the "Ghostbusting" references. Werner does it again.

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