Are all the ghosts in “Ghostbusters” evil? How does the NYPD feel about the ghost busting
going on in their city? Does Ray have a ghost fetish? “Ghostbusters” looks a lot different
as an adult than it did as a kid.
When you watch "Ghostbusters" as a kid, there's a good chance you get the sense that Dr. Peter
Venkman is the guy the movie would like you to aspire to be.
"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."
After all, he still gets to be a successful business founder like his buddies Ray and
Egon, but he also gets to crack jokes all the time, and he's the one who gets the girl
by the end of the movie. Venkman is very clearly put in position to be the Cool Ghostbuster,
but when you watch the film as an adult, particularly in the 21st century, it also becomes clear
that he's kind of a creep.
When we first meet Peter Venkman, he's conducting an experiment on a pair of volunteer college
students, one of whom is an attractive young woman. He delights in torturing the other,
male subject of the experiment, while lavishing the woman with praise, and even flat-out lying
to her, in an effort to possibly hook up with her later. When he meets Dana, it's clear
that she sees through him a bit more, but he's still not the most sincere guy in the
world with her. Of all the Ghostbusters, Venkman is the one most likely to lie his way into
bed with a woman, and it's not always easy to overlook.
Much of the main plot of "Ghostbusters" involves the team finding financial success as alternative
exterminators. They have a station, they have equipment, they have a rapid response vehicle,
and they go out in jumpsuits and trap ghosts, much like a pest control expert would set
up traps to get rats out of your attic.
"You know it's just occurred to me we really haven't had a completely successful test of
this equipment."
"I blame myself."
"So do I."
Before that, though, the Ghostbusters were scientists who made a major breakthrough in
their field: They confirmed not just that ghosts were real, but that they could be contained.
We see montages of the Ghostbusters' success as it echoes around the world and makes them
into celebrities, but what the movie never shows us is the rest of the scientific community
responding to their breakthrough in an active way. Are they sharing their tech with other
scientists? Are other labs trying to develop their own ghost equipment? Since they're making
so much money, you might think they'd franchise, but we never see that come to fruition either.
For such massive overnight successes, you'd think they'd have a little more attention
from other scientists.
One of the most infamous scenes in "Ghostbusters" is a brief moment when Ray Stantz has a dream.
In the dream, he's lying in an ornate bed with a beautiful ghostly presence hovering
over him. Then his pants unzip and Ray's eyes cross, implying that the ghost is, uh, servicing
his proton pack.
“You’re not sleeping with it are you Ray?”
“Oh you.”
What's interesting about this dream, and the fact that the film bothered to show it to
us, is that apart from this moment "Ghostbusters" never really attempts to highlight any good-natured
or helpful ghosts. At best, most of the ghosts in the film are cast as pests, at worst they're
outright evil spirits. Yet here Ray is imagining his dream woman as a gorgeous ghostly being
who wants to give him pleasure. With this in mind, and his enthusiasm for his work,
we're forced to ask: Is Ray's particular kink...ghosts?
"That’s great, actual physical contact! Can you move?"
"Ray, Ray, come in please."
“I feel so funky.”
Perhaps the most memorable visual in all of "Ghostbusters" comes near the end of the film,
when Gozer demands that the team choose the form of the destroyer that's coming to ravage
the city. They try to empty their minds, but Ray can't help a thought from popping into
his head. And that's when a massive marshmallow mascot shows up to stomp through New York
City.
"It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man."
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man doesn't have time to do a whole lot of damage before the
Ghostbusters manage to essentially roast him, but he does crash through a good portion of
Manhattan and the resulting marshmallow goo covers quite a bit of Fifth Avenue by the
time it's all over. The whole city, and by extension the whole country, saw what happened.
So... what do the owners of Stay Puft do in response to this? Do they put out a statement
clarifying that they had no involvement in their mascot's hijinks? When you're an adult
who's very used to brands making various plays for attention, it becomes a question worth
asking.
"Ghostbusters" doesn't spend all that much time breaking down how the system of ghost
capture and control actually works, but we do get a glimpse into what happens to the
spirits after the boys bust them. As Ray explains to Winston, they put the trapped ghosts into
their specially designed storage facility, which is basically some kind of electronic
grid that stores the ghosts in a secure way.
What the film doesn't ever explore is what, if anything, the ghosts actually think or
feel about their new home. The ghosts we see over the course of the film at least some
of the time appear to be semi-sentient creatures, and many of them appear to be mischievous
but not outright evil. Is it, for lack of a better word, humane to keep them all trapped
in there? Can they feel it?
Some of the ghosts in "Ghostbusters" seem like genuinely terrifying beings that no one
would want to be around, while others seem a bit more quirky, and less prone to actually
inflicting harm on anyone.
Still, to the Ghostbusters, they all seem to just be another form of pest, like roaches
or silverfish. Their job isn't to reason with the ghosts, or to judge them, or even to separate
the bad ones from the relatively good. They just seem to be trapping them and storing
them in their special grid. From a kid's point of view, this probably makes sense, but watching
the film as an adult you may get the overwhelming sense that this probably isn't fair to some
of those ghosts, the ones that were just doing a little quiet haunting and basically minding
their own business. Is there any kind of screening system that the Ghostbusters employ, or are
they just locking all those ghosts up together? Perhaps one day Egon Spengler went on to teach
a class on the Ethics of Busting.
There's not a lot of time in "Ghostbusters" to really get into the logistics of what the
team does, or the broader impact it has on New York City, and the film doesn't really
need to shed more light on it. It's not what the film is for, and when you're a kid you
don't necessarily think about it.
When you watch the film as an adult, though, there's a good chance your brain will start
to turn to the various economic, social, and logistical challenges presented by what is
basically a brand new service. The Ghostbusters are in many ways set up like exterminators,
but most exterminators don't have a car equipped with lights and sirens that allows them to
speed through the streets with impunity. How do the NYPD and the FDNY feel about these
guys? Do they ever get a heads-up when they're out on the job? Do they ever work together?
If not, it feels like maybe the Ghostbusters should have given them a little more warning.
The major supernatural antagonist in "Ghostbusters" is Gozer, a powerful entity that seeks to
re-enter the earthly plane via Dana's apartment building, which basically acts as a tuning
fork for psychic energy and will open a portal for the creature. Before that can happen,
though, Gozer has to possess two people to become its "Keymaster" and "Gatekeeper." It
finds these people in neighbors Dana Barrett and Louis Tully, and ultimately manages to
possess them both with its servants Zuul and Vinz Clortho, respectively.
When the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster finally meet in Dana's ruined apartment, they share
a passionate kiss and then walk up a supernatural staircase to the roof of the building. The
next time we see them, the adults in the room might notice that it certainly appears from
Louis' expression and posture that the two just had a rather hasty erotic encounter.
It's not clear from the end of the film how much either person remembers, or might later
remember, about their encounter. So, if they did get intimate, are these awkward neighbors
going to uncover some really weird memories later?
While Gozer is the main antagonist of the film, "Ghostbusters" also has another major
bad guy in the form of Environmental Protection Agency inspector Walter Peck. The idea that
a government agency wants to have a look at what these guys have cooking at their brand-new,
possibly dangerous business isn't anything strange. But when Peck actually tries to do
his job, it becomes clear that he's very, very bad at it. And we're talking bad on the
most basic level.
First, Peck asks to see the Ghostbusters ghost storage facility. Venkman won't let him, so
he goes and gets a court order, which for a guy in his job actually makes a lot of sense.
Then he uses that court order to... turn the Ghostbusters' grid off without any scientific
investigation? Think of the things he could learn, the regulations he could write, and
instead he's just keen on shutting them down with barely a look. Then he goes to the mayor
and calls it all a hoax despite the grid blowing up.
Many critics have viewed Peck as the film's response to government regulation as an impediment
to small business owners, which would certainly explain Peck's cartoonish incompetence. He
could be at least a little more thorough.
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