Remember, there are two main themes in the movie: “Going into business” and “Saving the world.” Mixing the two was the fresh approach, and the whole saving the world theme is done as a parody, which by the 80′s has already been overdone.

“I was elected to LEAD, not READ!”

I love it when skeptics show up in pop culture; if anything, there’s generally too few of them. But every so often, a skeptical character is placed in a fictional milieu in which their existence makes no sense whatsoever, and results in a dramatically unsatisfying situation. Walter Peck is a perfect example of this.

Look at the Ghostbusters world: although there’s an element of charlatanry in what he does, Venkman is clearly a man involved in legitimate work. Ghosts are clearly, demonstrably real in his world: millions of people see them in repeatable, observable ways; functional technology exists to control them; and there seem to be attacks by them or sightings of them on a near-weekly basis.

Now, in that milieu, you could still write Walter Peck as an interesting character who, while obviously a schmuck, at least is capable of operating in good faith. He could be a genuinely concerned environmentalist, or at least a dedicated bureaucrat, who legitimately cares about enforcing the law; after all, if that stuff was real, obviously some kind of regulation would arise around it. Or he could just be a petty, bullying shitheel who wants to use his rinky-dink authority to gain control of a profitable enterprise. Those would be worthwhile motivations, at least, and leave him an enjoyable villain.

But for him, in an environment where the assumption is that ghosts are clearly real, to just have this inexplicable grudge against Venkman, and accuse him of using hallucinatory chemicals to prop up a sham operation, makes no sense in the context of the fictional world. A skeptical position makes complete sense in our world, but it makes no sense whatsoever in the Ghostbusters world. Therefore, Peck is reduced to the least dramatically satisfying character imaginable, your Position #1, where he is just a detestable asshole for no particular reason.

The Idiot Skeptic shows up elsewhere: Dana Scully in The X-Files was a perfect example, where she kept saying things like “Come on, Mulder! You don’t really believe that [insert supernatural menace of the week] is responsible for this, do you?”, well after the point where the series had established that paranormal activity was real. Her dramatic role thus shifts from counterbalance to pointless contrarianism. Likewise, comics frequently have situations where the public doesn’t believe in this or that weird event (for a long time at DC, it was claimed that people in Gotham thought Batman was an urban myth, and in the Marvel universe, the public is said to not believe that Thor is the actual Norse god of thunder). You also see situations where some scientist is laughed at because his ideas are thought to be too fantastic, and he returns for a horrible revenge, etc. But this is another Idiot Skeptic situation: in a world where Spider-Man, Superman, Galactus and the Green Lantern Corps are all known to exist and accepted as perfectly normal phenomena by the general public, why on Earth would people not believe in Norse gods or Batman? What possible scientific idea could be laughed off as too absurd in a world with Dr. Doom, Brainiac, and the High Evolutionary in it?

I still love the shit out of Ghostbusters, but man, Peck is such a prime example of the Idiot Skeptic, it drives me to distraction.

And you have to consider the fact that the movie’s message was quite environmentalist. Besides the not-so-subtle commentary in the forms of Springfield Lake filled with pig poop, the giant sinkhole, and the oil drilling in Alaska, you have to consider Homer’s epiphany that he needs to save the world in order to save himself. Sounds to me like something the real EPA would say, doesn’t it?

Also, can you tell that I watched the Simpsons Movie last night? Now back to your regularly scheduled Ghostbusters.

Also, while some Big Corpo’s were portrayed as evil in the 80s, I remember watching this as a kid and being like, “yeah, stupid EPA, what’s their problem?” I think a good visual that runs side-by-side with how Hollywood (and by extension, we?) viewed things like the EPA back then is that throughout the movie, just about everyone is smoking at one point or another.

wouldn’t the warrant have been served by the FBI? I thought the US Marshals were the police force of the judicial branch, not the executive. Peck clearly says he’s getting a court order. A court order would be enforced by a court officer, i.e. a U.S. Marshall. (Lawyers, am I right?)

@joel: Gah! I can’t believe I did either! I felt this big gap as I was drafting the list, but couldn’t think of it.

(Though, FWIW, the “Republic” is actually ruled by aristocrats; the Senate seems to bow to the Jedi at most every turn.)

But I digress.

I have a feeling that the EPA was here chosen for storytelling convenience, as the most likely federal agency to use. The connection between “EPA” and the then-budding “environmentalism” (now called “green”) movement was not really established in 1984, so the audience probably had a very different set of associations with the EPA (and with environmentalism).

A few technical points… @gab — though I’m not a lawyer, I think that a regulatory agency may have different responsibilities w/r/t the fourth amendment than a law enforcement agency. @perich — wouldn’t the warrant have been served by the FBI? I thought the US Marshals were the police force of the judicial branch, not the executive.