Back To The Future: Staying The Same

First of all, if you've never seen the Back to the Future trilogy, stop whatever you are doing right now and have a marathon. I know that most of you will that I'm crazy for thinking there are people out there who've never seen these movies, but I assure you they exist. Anyway, I am including these movies in my series on nostalgia and the good ol' days not being as good as we may remember them because these movies show that things effectively stay the same across generations. Sure, technology will improve, but the problems we have now are the same problems we had 30 years ago, and will continue to be the problems we will have 30 years from now.

For the (hopefully) few of you who have not seen the trilogy, here is a brief synopsis: Marty McFly is a typical teenager from 1985. He wants to be a rock star, but his music isn't really that good. His life isn't awful, but it could certainly be better; his family lives in a run down subdivision, and none of his relatives ever really amounted to anything. His father is a timid loser who is still bullied around at work by the same guy who tormented him in high school. His mother is a heavy alcoholic who seems to have had the life sucked out of her, and his siblings are barely scraping by. Marty seems to have only two friends: his girlfriend Jennifer, who is very supportive of his dreams, even when Marty is at his wit's end, and Doc Brown, an eccentric inventor who lets Marty use his enormous stereo system to practice his music. Doc's latest invention is a plutonium-powered time traveling DeLorean.

Due to a series of unfortunate events (heh), Marty accidentally ends up driving the car back to 1955, where he encounters his teenage parents. He interferes with their first meeting, and subjects himself to his (now very attractive and sweet) mother's affections. Marty has to put things right before he returns to the future, otherwise he will cease to exist. After returning to 1985, Doc returns with the car and takes Marty to 2015 in an effort to prevent a family tragedy. While in the future, an geriatric Biff Tannen (Marty's dad's tormentor) steals the car and gives himself the means to become rich and powerful in 1985. This results in Marty and Doc's hometown becoming a hellish reflection of itself, and in an effort to repair the damage, Doc is accidentally sent back to 1885. Marty repairs the damage to the timeline and then embarks on a final journey into the old west to rescue his friend from Biff's outlaw ancestor.

At first glance, it may look like the films are a kind of anti-Pleasantville, especially the first one. During Marty's first trip in 1955, he comments on how the everything looks brand new, and everything looks cleaner. The school's lawn is litter-free (based on what I've seen on Mad Men, I think the producers got this aspect wrong) and the graffiti-covered gates to Marty's subdivision truly are brand new and pristine. However, things aren't as perfect as they seem. In 1985, Marty's mother, Lorraine, comments on how issues of sexuality were much simpler and cleaner back when she was a teen. She chastises her daughter for "chasing boys" and disapproves of Marty and Jennifer going camping together. However, she turns out to be a horny teen who tells Marty off for admonishing her for drinking and smoking. In Part II, we learn that there is a bad part of town in 1955, just like in 1985. Bullying is a problem in both eras there are assholes in both eras, as well as genuinely good people.

Even more intersesting is how the future is portrayed. Dystopian visions of the future are the prevailing vision today (Children of Men, WALL-E, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Firefly/Serenity to a degree), and don't get me wrong, I love these takes on the future, but if I were to wager a guess, I would say that Back to the Future comes closest to how things will be in 2015. I certainly don't think we'll have hoverboards and flying cars (Robert Zemeckis admitted that they did want to shy away from the dystopian view and used some retro-futurism to design 2015, which is somewhat ironic because in the same movie 2015 was featured, 1985A was depicted as a dystopia), but there are some techonologies featured in the movie that aren't so far-fetched (thumbprint IDs to open doors and pay bills, video phones, picture windows). But the true reason I see this as how the future will be is that things are exactly the same as they are in the present and past. In 2015, the McFlys are living in a run-down subdivision, just like in 1985. However, that same subdivision was supposed to be an up-and-coming gold mine in 1985, just like the place they were living in in 1985 was supposed to be in 1955.

As for the adventure in 1885, the trilogy once again shows that while some things may have been better about the past, we tend not to focus on the bad things that were definitely present. Doc remarks that the air seemed cleaner back then (there weren't any cars to pollute the air), and there was a bigger sense of community, because travel was so hard and there weren't places like supermarkets (it is likely that you'd spend your entire life in one city and would get to know the butcher and the mayor and the blacksmith). Then again, this sense of community probably terrified someone like Marty, who would be used to one-stop shopping and relative anonymity. Furthermore, while people decry the crime rate in the present, Marty and Doc still had to put up with the Tannen family, and in 1885, Tannen was a murderous outlaw who could actually kill someone, instead of just beating them up and calling them a butthead.

And so ends my series on nostalgia. Sorry for the long delay between posts, and I want to apologize in advance for any upcoming delays (which are inevitable). The good thing is, I know what I want to do next, so at least I won't need to take time to think about it.

Up next: My life in high school...