Film 253
Visual essay 1
“Roads, where we’re going, we don’t need roads” –Dr. Emmett Brown.
Growing up as a child, I had a many favorite movies, still some to this date, but when I saw that Back to the Future (Zemeckis July 3, 1985, US) was on this list, I could not resist writing about it. This is without a doubt not just my favorite sci-fi film, but also my favorite film of all time. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale tell this amazing story of a seventeen year old, Marty McFly, played byMichael J. Fox, who accidentally travels back in time 30 years (from 1985 to 1955). He makes this journey in a time-traveling Delorian, created by a nutty scientist, Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd. He then enlists the help of the younger Emmett Brown to return home. However, while in 1955, Marty inadvertently changes the past by preventing his parents’ first meeting. Before he returns to the future, he has to make sure his parents fall in love again to save his own existence. While watching this movie for this class I came to the conclusion that Back to the Future is a social commentary on the 1950s that is a more accurate portrayal than films and television series that were filmed in the 1950’s.
Time traveling has been a subject of science fiction since H. G. Well’s The Time Machine. “The temporal setting of science fiction has no obligation to history” (Sobchack 7). Like Wells’ novella, Back to the Future moves forwards and backwards in time. Also, like Wells’ Time Traveler, this movie provides a social commentary on how we perceive our world, past and future:
'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'
The picture above, represents a more moredern idea of what we conceive as a time machine rather then what H.G wells conceived. Robert Zemeckis was not a well known director when he made Back to the Future. He had only two Hollywood produced films under his belt (Used Cars and Romancing the Stone) and it seemed that the only credit that he could claim was that Spielberg was his mentor and producer of his first two films (which were flops). Zemeckis and Gale got the original idea after the release of Used Cars(Imdb). “Gale found his father's high school yearbook and discovered he was president of his graduation class. Gale thought about the president of his own graduating class, who was someone he had nothing to do with” Gale then pitched this idea to Zemeckis and he “thought up of a mother claiming she never kissed a boy at school, when in reality she was highly promiscuous”(Wiki Back to the Future)
Columbia rejected the film at first because they thought it was not sexual enough. This emphasis on sexuality is a direct contrast to the movies and television of the 1950s which portrayed married couples sleeping in separate beds. In Back to the Future, Marty’s mother, Lorraine, echoes the 1950s taboo on sexuality. According to Lorraine, she never smoked, drank or “sat in a parked car with a boy” (Back to the Future). However, Marty encounters a very different Lorraine in 1955. She is very much a sexual being as she grabs Marty’s thigh shortly after first meeting him. In the shot below, Marty’s view of his mother is turned on it’s head when he realizes his mother has denied her past.
Marty also gets a glimpse of how people in the 1950’s viewed their future. His mother’s family has just gotten a brand new television and it holds a place of honor at the dining table, a practice that was becoming popular in 1950’s suburbia. The television made it possible for people at home to see the effects of radiation; from the atomic weapons testing that took place in the 1950’s. “The atomic bomb that served most immediately to create paranoiac systems in postwar American consciousness” (Hendershot 37). When Marty hooks up his video camera to Doc Brown’s TV, Emmett asks what his future self is wearing. Marty explains that it is a radiation suit. Doc then replies, “Of course, cause of all of the fallout from the atomic wars.” This implies that people in the 1950s expected that the United States and Soviet Union would eventually
slug it out with nuclear weapons.During the 1950s, television presented the family as being run by a white male who had all the answers. Shows like Father Knows Best (1954) and Ossie & Harriet (1953) showed the family ready to take the lead from wise old dad. However, many women in the 1950s were on tranquilizers because men didn’t take them seriously, while the men who had survived World War II and the Korean War were suffering from post-traumatic stress, then called ‘battle fatigue’ or ‘shell-shocked.’ This was the real 1950s: dysfunctional families that everyone pretended didn’t exist. Marty’s trip to the past provides a humorous look at a decade in denial.
Works Cited
Well, H. G. The Time Machine. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=98531&pageno=2
"Back to the Future." 18 Feb 2009
"Robert Zemeckis." 18 Feb 2009
Sobchack, Vivian. "Images of Wonder." The Look of Science Fiction 7
hendershot, Cyndy. "The Invaded Body." 39(1998): 37
