There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time: that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are, “Hi, I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

—Ronald Reagan, July 28, 1988

In what decade but the 1980s could an EPA inspector be a movie villain?

The Reagan Revolution of the 80s turned pop culture into a battlefield between Capitalism and Communism. Despite the fact that neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. practiced a pure version of either – hundreds of thousands were on Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., and Levi’s had already made it past the Berlin Wall – everyone knew which they preferred. America glorified Freedom (see Rocky IV, Rambo II, Iron Eagle, Red Dawn, etc); Russia glorified The State.

Compare this with movies like Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, barely two decades later. When the EPA accuses a corporation of environmental wrongdoing, we the audience immediately suspect the corporation. The cultural stage has changed.

Keep this in mind for Walter Peck’s first appearance in Ghostbusters.