If you took one look at the existence of the new movie Ghost Town and dismissed it on account of its familiarity, you’re ignoring the potential of one of the most valuable plot devices available to fiction. Sure, the employment of ghosts in a narrative may also be evidence of laziness, as the device is just as much a convenience as it is a useful tool for storytellers. Not everyone can be Shakespeare, and of course there is a lot of redundancy and (excuse the pun) lifelessness in the majority of movies involving ghosts.

However, ghosts can also be highly representative and/or serve a film on a deeper level than the surface story. To use another pun, ghost movies are not always so transparent. Like zombies, their plot-device sibling, ghosts have a way of signifying greater ideas, subjects and themes, and aren’t always merely about scares and talking-to-thin-air gags. In a conversation with Cinematical’s Erik Davis, Ghost Town director/co-writer David Koepp had this to say about the significance of ghost stories:

Part of the reason they’re so enduring is because, well, first off all they give hope — because if they are ghosts, then it means we don’t die when we die. But also because they work really well in a number of genres. Ya know, in a drama like Ghost, or a horror movie, suspense or comedy in our case — I just think they offer so many dramatic possibilities; to have someone that’s dead, but still around to talk about it really suggests a lot of great situations.

Okay, so that bit of promotional fluff is actually more about the literal dramatic qualities of the ghost device than the figurative and subtextual, but the quote at least jumpstarted my thinking. Initially I had thought about simply outlining how ghosts have been applied to different film genres, but then I fortunately switched my goal to seek out ten specific ghost films (from the seemingly thousands out there) that utilize the device for more meaningful purpose.

Poltergeist (1982) and Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Ghosts = Threat to Middle-Class

In his book Media Culture: Cutural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern, critical theorist Douglas Kellner points to a multitude of ideas represented by the ghosts haunting the Freeling family in Poltergeist. In fact, these ideas are discussed over 11 pages (viewable on Google Book Search), also concern the first sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, and include everything from threats of TV’s hold on children to the disintegration of the 1960s counterculture. Generally, though, Kellner sees the first two Poltergeist movies as being about threats to the middle-class and nuclear family in an era of economic insecurity. The ghosts in Poltergeist, Kellner argues, stand in for working-class and racial “others,” and they signify in their actions the break-up of the family unit and fears of losing one’s home and job. With these representations in mind, it’s not so unnecessary, perhaps, that a remake of Poltergeist is currently in the works.

The Amityville Horror (1979) 

Ghosts = Financial Insecurity

This is merely a companion to the Poltergeist films in terms of its ghosts’ representation, but seeing as it was released prior to the first Poltergeist film and it received its allegorical reading from none other than Stephen King (in an article titled “Why We Crave Horror Movies” published in Playboy, quoted in Kellner’s book), I had to include it. Here is what King had to say about the film: “The movie might as well have been subtitled ‘The Horror of the Shrinking Bank Account’…. The Amityville Horror, beneath its ghost-story exterior, is really a financial demolition derby.”

Ghostbusters (1984) 

Ghosts = Obesity or Scum of Old New York

Although it was meant as a joke, the Volkswagon ad in which a projectionist argues his idea that Ghostbusters is a serious warning about the obesity epidemic facing America isn’t completely ridiculous. The points about blobby figures, Dana’s fridge and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man are fair evidence for such an argument. But I’m slightly more interested in the “libertarian” reading of the ghosts as representations of old New York, particularly the filthy, near-bankrupt old New York of the decade preceding the film’s release, which was recently proposed by Karina on this very blog. The Ghostbusters as gentrifying force and pre-Giuliani city-sweepers is interesting, though it might have been more clearly conveyed if some ghosts were in Warriors-like gangs and/or peddling porn in Times Square and/or getting kids hooked on “slime” that can be smoked through a pipe. But I do love the idea that the ghosts are a threat to primarily wealthy New Yorkers just as in real-life it was the homeless and other scum clashing with the new money Manhattanites. Karina also sees the ghosts in the film as a sort of reminder of the New York history that goes back further than the financial and criminal problems of the ‘60s and ‘70s: “Ghostbusters plays on an entire city’s anxieties that, as renters, our spaces don’t belong to us, that there’s a history to our homes that we’ll never know, and probably shouldn’t know.”

The Sixth Sense (1999) 

Ghosts = Insignificance

I love facetious readings of movies, both because I think film scholarship is sometimes too serious and because I think such readings can often be taken more seriously than intended. I’ve already pointed to one example with the VW Ghostbusters ad (there’s a whole series of these ads, of which I find the Toy Story one to be the most hilarious and cogent). Now, I present a humorous address of the major plot hole in The Sixth Sense, part of a Cracked.com list, which asks, regarding the unlikelihood of Bruce Willis’ complete obliviousness to his ghostly existence, “What kind of lifestyle was he living before his death that would make him fail to notice that no one could see or hear him?” Implausible, sure, but it’s also representative of insecurities many of us have about our significance in the world. The Sixth Sense is therefore kind of like the antithesis to It’s a Wonderful Life by showcasing the possibility that your life is so meaningless that were you invisible or dead you would experience no difference.

Ghost (1990) 

Ghosts = Love’s Bond

The fact that, in The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis doesn’t notice his nonexistence even when in the presence of his wife says something about his character’s perception of and role in that marriage. On the other side of the coin, perhaps, is Demi Moore’s character in Ghost. A precursor and inferior film to Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, it deals more slightly with the same themes of faith and knowability as they pertain to love. This earlier film is far less cynical, though, evident in the employment of a literal ghost rather than simply an outlet for the dead (Ghost would be more similar to Birth if we, like Demi Moore’s character, only saw, heard and had to trust Whoopi Goldberg’s psychic character). There’s still a bit of initial skepticism that love’s bond is nothing more than shared secrets and memories (as if the first convincing evidence that Sam is there, the response “ditto,” couldn’t have been overheard by someone outside the relationship), but continued proof of the ghost’s existence turns the device into an allegory for the spiritual bond between lovers. And it’s apparently a strong enough bond to give Molly (Moore) the faith that she’s kissing her dead husband, even if it may look like she’s kissing a con woman (Goldberg).

Over Her Dead Body (2008)

Ghosts = Memories of Ex-Lovers

Now, imagine if in Ghost, Goldberg’s character actually wanted to pursue a relationship with Molly and was unfortunately haunted by Molly’s previous lover. That’s kind of the premise behind this movie, which proves that even lame ghost movies can at least be allegorical. Here, a psychic character (Lake Bell) falls for a veterinarian (Paul Rudd) and must win his love while being literally haunted by his jealous former fiancée (Eva Longoria). Here the ghost represents that memory of an ex-lover (whether a dumper, dumped or deceased) that can torment the mind of either party in a new relationship, making it difficult to move on to or trust a new lover. Of course, Over Her Dead Body wasn’t the first movie to deal with such a theme, and you’d be better off watching something older and better, like Blithe Spirit, but I wanted to reference some bad films on this list, too. Just be glad I didn’t go ahead and include Ghost Dad as an allegory about inheritance.

The Univited (1944)

Ghosts = Lesbians

Continuing a link to the Demi Moore-Whoopi Goldberg kiss (in which Patrick Swazye’s ghost is superimposed over Goldberg to play it safe for the audience), here is a film in which a ghost actually allegorically represents the “spectral presence of lesbianism,” to borrow a phrase from film scholar Patricia White, who writes of this film and others in her look at the correlation between Hollywood ghost movies and lesbian movies in the book Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. In addition to implying an actual lesbian relationship, which ended with the death of one of the women, the film’s ghost also seems to represent threats of maternal identification and the female Oedipus complex.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

Ghosts = Cross-Gendered Spectatorship

The ghostly theater audience members in this Tsai Ming-liang film may represent the death of the moviegoer or of cinema itself, but I also see the transvestite ghost as being representative of cross-gendered identification experienced through film spectatorship.

13 Ghosts (1960)

Ghosts = Communists

Okay, this one is a total stretch, but it works for me because (1) thanks to Joe Dante’s Matinee, I’ve always looked at William Castle films as having a Cold War context and (2) I’m shocked that there aren’t actually any Cold War-era films that more clearly employ ghosts as representatives of a Communist threat. I guess monsters, pod people, witches and aliens were sufficient allegories, but I also think it a missed opportunity to relate ghosts to Karl Marx’s phrase “spectre of Communism.” Anyway, in forcing this film into my wanting of such a Communist allegory, I have only this argument: the goggles used both in the film and (as one of Castle’s many gimmicks) outside the film to detect ghosts could be taken as a sort of fantasy for Americans wishing they had special goggles that could detect any Reds living among them. It’s almost like a counterpart to the goggles that detect capitalistic aliens in They Live, right? No? Well, I tried, and hopefully someone can make a modern ghost story that at least employs ghosts as terrorist allegory.