Ghostbusters is inarguably a pop culture titan, leaving behind one of the most enduring legacies of any 80s blockbuster. However, to say that nothing in the iconic first film of the expansive Ghostbusters series has aged poorly would simply be untrue. By and large, the film has held up remarkably well, still being an entertaining crowd-pleaser to this day. But there are certainly still areas in which the original Ghostbusters feels odd to watch in modern hindsight.
It’s a sad fact of reality that many comedies age poorly due to a combination of shifting values over time, dated references, and changing senses of humor in pop culture. Ghostbusters is still a very funny film by modern standards, but a few of its jokes, storylines, and references either go over the heads of current audiences or even flat-out disagree with them. It’s still very easy to appreciate the film today, but certain elements of it have undoubtedly aged like sour milk.
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Bill Murray’s Character Trying To Seduce A Student In The Opening
By Far One Of The Biggest Milestones Of Shifting Attitudes Towards Women
The 80s were a very different time when it came to the treatment of women in media. By that point in Hollywood, many stories were increasingly aware of the reductive presence of women in certain action or comedy flicks like Ghostbusters, but many more were unwilling to examine their treatment of gender dynamics through any critical lens. One of the easiest markers of change in pop culture when it comes to these values is Dr. Peter Venkman’s introductory scene.
Here, it’s shown that Venkman is a college professor who thinks nothing of hitting on the young, impressionable female students he holds a clear position of power over, something that is appropriately frowned upon by any modern institution of learning. In the 80s, characters like Venkman were seen as sleazy, but ultimately lovable scamps that the audience were still expected to root for, overlooking Venkman’s abuse of his position. Today, a character that preys on vulnerable young women he has clear institutionalized power over isn’t taken as lightly.
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How Venkman Pursues Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Throughout Ghostbusters
Murray’s Character Doesn’t Stop At No
It isn’t just his unsettling pursuit of barely-legal college students he has academic control over that makes Peter a bit skin-crawly to watch today. If abusing his position of power as a professor to hit on women wasn’t bad enough, he does the same for his clients as a Ghostbuster. Throughout the film, Venkman’s pursuit of Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barrett shows off how what might have been considered a cheeky bit of humor in the 80s just seems like plain harassment today.
Through Dana’s perspective, Venkman’s assessment of Dana’s haunted apartment is downright unsettling, and not for supernatural reasons. From his intentional Freudian slips to the way he affirms that Dana lives alone, Venkman is relentless in his obvious pursuit of Dana, using his position as one of the only ghost-catchers in town to get closer to her. He even tells her he’s madly in love with her after knowing her for all of one afternoon, being as outrageous as to ask for a kiss. Once again, an eye-rolling rascal in the 80s is a creep today.
Yet Another Bit Of Misogyny From Bill Murray
Finally, Peter Venkman proves that when he isn’t trying to get into their pants, he doesn’t respect women all that much. One of the first investigations the Ghostbusters ever took on was a haunted library, culminating in the manifestation of the Library Ghost. A terrified old librarian comes to the crew looking for answers, and to her misfortune, is given intake questions by Venkman.
Among his list of boxes to tick is her family’s history of mental illness, use of drugs, and her current menstrual state. The implication being, of course, that a menstruating woman would be hysterical enough to hallucinate a ghost where there is none. This sexist joke is Venkman’s third strike when it comes to toxic behavior towards women, even to those he isn’t trying to pursue. If Venkman was played by anyone other than Bill Murray, it might’ve been dire for the series’ longevity.
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Ray’s Ghost Sex Dream
Makes The Film’s PG Rating Hard To Believe
Perhaps one of the most unnecessary cutaway gags in cinema history is Ray’s ghostly wet dream during the montage in which the Ghostbusters begin to hit it big. In this dream sequence, a sleeping Ray is awoken by a gorgeous spectral floating woman, who then disappears, only to treat him to a ghostly bit of oral sex, unzipping his pants while invisible. Even crazier is the fact that the part in the song that plays during this sequence is the bit in which Ray Parker Jr. belts “Bustin’ makes me feel good!” in the actual OST.
This bizarre bit of beyond-the-grave intercourse makes it hard to believe that Ghostbusters was only afforded a PG rating, even if PG-13 only debuted the same year the film was released in 1984. It’s a completely unnecessary fantasy, and watching Dan Aykroyd cross his eyes in pleasure is more gross than funny. It’s hard to know what possessed director Ivan Reitman to keep the scene in the final cut, considering it was a remnant from an unused storyline featuring Ray falling in love with a ghost.
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Dana & Louis Having Sex While Possessed
Yet Another Strange Case Of Supernatural Sex
While Ray’s apparition lover only exists in his head, Ghostbusters actually does toy with supernatural beings and sex in its actual plotline. Two servants of the demon Gozer, the film’s main villain, Zuul the Gatekeeper and Vinz the Keymaster, possess both Sigourney Weaver’s Dana and Rick Moranis’ Louis. It’s heavily implied that the two need to have sex while in mortal form to officially summon their evil master.
The idea of two people having sex while not in control of their own bodies is admittedly quite disturbing for the supposedly “PG” scope of Ghostbusters. Granted, the scene isn’t played for laughs as much, and is an act that is perpetrated by the film’s villains, but Ghostbusters doesn’t exactly give this event the gravity it deserves. Even in more recent times, Wonder Woman 1984 caught controversy because of one of the characters having sex while in the possessed body of another person without their consent.
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Ghostbusters Largely Sidelines Winston
For One Of The Original Four, He Doesn’t Get Much To Do
Everyone knows that the Ghostbusters are inherently a quartet, with each of the team contributing their own unique skills and personality to the messy business of catching ghosts. However, if there’s one character out of all of them who is truly sidelined by the first film, it’s none other than Winston Zeddemore, played by Ernie Hudson. Unlike the other three, Winston isn’t there from the beginning, and sort of just shows up when the Ghostbusters are hiring without much of a backstory.
It’s somewhat telling that the Ghostbuster that gets the least spotlight in the film is the only Black one. Ghostbusters II gives Winston more to do, but in the first film, the plot would be essentially unchanged if he wasn’t there at all. Ernie Hudson is still a great part of the quartet, and Winston certainly has his moments, but his reduced role compared to Ray, Venkman, and Egon is very disappointing on retrospective viewing.
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Ghostbusters’ Special Effects
Dated, Even For Their Time
It might seem almost unfair to negatively mention the special effects of a movie that’s almost four decades old. For being made in 1984, it is completely unreasonable to decry Ghostbusters‘ special effects, a combination of crude digital work, puppetry, and other practical effects. However, even for the time period, Ghostbusters loses out in terms of cinematic spectacle, making the criticism a fair one in modern viewing.
The effects of fellow ghost movie Poltergeist that came out a mere two years prior puts Ghostbusters to shame at times with its own spectral creations. Contemporaneous films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Terminator, and even A Nightmare on Elm Street similarly outdo the comedy classic with their own science fiction or supernatural creations. As fun as Ghostbusters is, it’s no stunning tech demo for special effects.
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The Anti-Environmental Message
Walter Peck Seems Like An Odd Stand-In
One thing that’s easy to miss on a first viewing of Ghostbusters is the oddly conservative messaging of the final plot. A minor mundane antagonist is introduced with Walter Peck, an agent of the Environment Protection Agency that comes down on the Ghostbusters for their unregulated power use and dangerous cutting-edge gadgetry. Peck ultimately demands the Ghostbusters turn off their containment unit, causing mayhem as ghosts are released to wreak havoc across New York City.
Obviously, Peck is in the wrong, but the strangely specific message of government overreach he represents is odd in modern hindsight. Considering the devastation many big companies have wrought on the environment since 1984, it feels strange to watch a film in which one of the bad guys is someone who simply has the public’s best interests at heart. Even in the context of the film, Peck is kind of correct in that the Ghostbusters‘ unregulated capture of ghosts creates a bigger problem than the city would have otherwise had.