Ghostbusters was Reaganite propaganda through and through- a vicious rejection of collective forms of spirituality and spiritual power through the use of small scale nuclear reactor technology - "atomizing" and removing any actual connection the spirits night have had to the places, living people and things that they haunted. In Reagan's America, the exorcist, the witch-doctor, the spiritualist has no power because there is no society, only individuals.
:wojak-nooo: You don't like the physical manifestation of social relations haunting you?
:so-true: Never fear, the hyper-individualized PMC social-reality remover squad will save the day!
Notice how in the sequel the judge presiding over the Ghostbuster's case is confronted with the manifestation of his own moral culpability of sentencing two brothers to death and absolves the Ghostbusters of their crimes in order to make it go away?
Walter Peck's shutdown of the neoliberal "containment" was anti-Reaganite praxis.
The shutdown could've been avoided if Venkman hadn't been a prick to him and complied with the EPA when he first showed up
Eh probably not governments tend to be touchy about people running unlicensed nuclear programs in major cities
They could've probably showed the authorities Slimer or any of the other paranormal entities they caught
Yeah the NRC is, but not the EPA. That's not their job and going in and fiddling with dangerous shit yourself is irresponsible. The real villain is the lack of inter-departmental communication, as always
I don't know I could see an unlicensed nuclear reactor being an environmental hazard and the waste disposal would probably fall under EPA juristiction
It is an environmental hazard, but that is not EPA jurisdiction to dispose of. The NRC exists specifically for things like this, in fact its predecessor the AEC was split into two departments, the ERDA for research and the like, and the NRC for safety concerns. With expressed protections for whistleblowers working on nuclear projects they have concerns over. Even if it was EPA territory, he brought a cop and a worker and just shut it down, which is not disposal by any stretch of the imagination
:jesse-wtf:
all of that makes a lot of sense but the theme song still slaps
We should definitely allow private businesses to run unlicensed nuclear reactors in downtown metropolises, folks.
What if the small business owners were likeable schlubs and or cool? Didn't think about that, did ya
Underdogs of society even.😍
We can all relate to cool guy Peter Venkman using his university position to sleep with students
Charisma neutralizes ethics. It's in the handbook.
Buddy do I have some good news for you about the future of our country
:xi-plz:
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It took me far too long to realise this was his character from Ghostbusters and not the sleazy journo from Die Hard.
Think he's joking?
He's joking in the sense that he's using a tongue-in-cheek pop culture reference to make his point, like Colbert calling Putin "Voldemort," but he's been genuinely arguing that it's lib to care about the EPA having it's regulatory power taken away.
Yeah, sounds like the kind of contrarian take he'd have, even though I'm still kind of surprised by it.
Shouldn't be surprising frankly. All these podcasters are gaping assholes who will throw together a word salad of Marxist terms to explain why their knee-jerk reaction to any conflict is "libs bad."
I think it’s simpler and dumber than that. They’re experiencing the same ratchet effect the Republican Party is experiencing with their base. Being a lunatic/having spicy takes is what put them on the map but to maintain that position they have to keep upping the ante or someone else will so they become hatred/idiocy mills where they’re just throwing shit at the wall because it’s all they know how to do and - to be fair - it’s been working for them so far
Nah, this is pretty consistent with his general worldview. We were never going to be able to rely on the EPA to deal with the climate crisis. That shouldn't be controversial. What he's saying then is that rather than mourning the gutting of the agency or clamoring for its teeth to be reinstalled, we need to do what we've always needed to do and use workers' self-organization to develop ourselves into a real political force that can accomplish things.
he really is anti-EPA, though.
The lead up to that punchline was pretty explicit. He is saying that while, in a vacuum, the removal of the EPA is bad. We already needed major organization and class power to save the planet, and the EPA was never going to cut it on its own. So any "leftist" focusing on maintaining or bringing back the EPA is equivalent to libs saying VOTE!
It's amazing how knee-jerk opposition to "vote blue no matter who" Dems has developed into idealist crap about not investing in bettering our conditions if it isn't an explicitly revolutionary program. Might as well just ditch supporting unions while we are at it.
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Everybody's a YIMBY when you bring up pollution.
Sean was right about Castillo so I think he's right on this as well
He's also right about rebar.
Except Peck doesn't exactly seem to be ultraistic. It very likely was a threat to the environment, but the matter falls under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, _not the EPA. And getting one guy in a hardhat to shut down sensitive equipment like that takes it from overstepping his bounds to wanton endangerment.
If anyone wants to see a bunch of dorks get way to into the matter here is a thread from SF Debris forum that it very neat. Peck certainly is part of that juvenile "snobs vs slobs" thing all the SNL cast who made Ghostbusters used regularly. However I don't think it was as indicative of anti-environmentalism as people think. Him being EPA was more incidental to the overall "government oversight sucks and hurts small business" attitude of the film which IS reactionary. doesn't Peck also tell the officer to shoot them if they get in the way?
Cute earth-day skit Ramos did back in the day, just to counterbalance Ghostbuster's treatment of the EPA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzivWmGsGbc
