When Harold Ramis died it was a sad day for me. He was one of the actors in some of the first films I ever watched. As I sit typing away at my work on inculturation and Anglican liturgy I have Ghostbusters on the TV to keep me company. I had forgotten all about this dialogue between Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore. It takes me all the way back to my undergraduate days studying “The Bible in Media”.
Winston Zeddemore: Hey Ray. Do you believe in God?Dr Ray Stantz: Never met him.Winston Zeddemore: Yeah, well, I do. And I love Jesus’s style, you know.Dr Ray Stantz: The entire roof cap is made out of a magnesium-tungsten alloy…Winston Zeddemore: What are you so involved with over there?Dr Ray Stantz: These are the blueprints for structural ironwork of Dana Barret’s apartment building, and they are very, very strange.Winston Zeddemore: Hey Ray. Do you remember something in the bible about the last days when the dead would rise from the grave?Dr Ray Stantz: I remember Revelations 7:12…?And I looked, and he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood.”Winston Zeddemore: “And the seas boiled and the skies fell.”Dr Ray Stantz: Judgement day.Winston Zeddemore: Judgement day.Dr Ray Stantz: Every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world.Winston Zeddemore: Myth? Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we’ve been so busy lately is ’cause the dead HAVE been rising from the grave?Dr Ray Stantz: [Pause ] How ’bout a little music?Winston Zeddemore: Yeah.