TY - JOUR AU - Saunders, Robert A PY - 2022/12/27 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Ghostbusting in the Late Anthropocene: The 1980s, (Un)Conscious Climate Culture, and Our Holocene Afterlives JF - Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter JA - AcademicQuarter VL - IS - 25 SE - DO - 10.54337/academicquarter.vi25.7636 UR - https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/article/view/7636 SP - 64-78 AB - <p class="p1">This paper examines the latent ecocriticism of the horror-comedy <span class="s1"><em>Ghostbusters: Afterlife</em> (2021) against its original source material in the context of climate catastrophe culture. As a sequel to the <em>Ghostbusters</em> </span>films (1984, 1989), <em>Afterlife</em> shifts the setting: (geo)physically, from <span class="s1">metropolitan New York City to a ‘dirt farm’ in Summerville, Okla</span><span class="s2">homa, and generationally, from the original middle-aged, male </span><span class="s1">ghost-catchers to the teenaged grandchildren of the brightest among </span>them. While the original antagonist – the (fictive) Sumerian god <span class="s1">Gozer – returns once more to end the world, the Anthropo(s)cenic landscapes of <em>Afterlife</em> establish the film as a geopolitical intervention in the debate on the already-in-progress environmental apocalypse. In its (partial) rejection of the values of its 1980s-era source </span>material, which is critically assessed herein, I argue that <em>Afterlife</em> <span class="s1">speaks to humanity’s emergence as a geological agent defined by geopolitical cultures rooted in human exploitation, hydrocarbon extraction, agro-industrialisation, and nuclearism. Indeed, the decade of Reaganism haunts the film, serving as a ghostly reminder of how we arrived at our current Anthropocene predicament through white heteropatriarchal triumphalism, neoliberal excess, and ecocide.</span></p> ER -