Subtitle: Is it wrong that I found the suggestion that a hep white kid did invent Chuck Berry instead of the other way around way more disturbing than all the near-incest?
You know, I was going to slide that in somewhere in the middle, but I am way too pre-occupied with it. I'm not sure I wouldn't have still been uncomfortable if he'd played Hound Dog or Shake Rattle and Roll. The idea that all that came out of Elvis rather than Chuck Berry would have seemed an insult too.
Not that I'm denigrating Presley or his effects, but let's face it, NASA agrees with me. Elvis's Ed Sullivan appearance might have been what introduced this world to Rock'n'Roll, but Johnny B Goode is what got sent up in the Voyager spacecraft. Just in case aliens heard President Carter's message, some Stravinsky and whale songs and went "Yes, but do they know how to party?" that question would damn well be answered.
So you know, it's almost a fitting tribute that he goes through all the best theatrics of rock and roll starting square from the Chuck Berry walk into the Jimi behind the head guitar solo, into The Who windmill into some Angus Young moves. Almost, that is, until it loops back around to Chuck Berry having actually stolen rock and roll from Marty McFly. Now once again, some hep young white kid listening to black music is responsible for rock and roll instead of the musicians who inspired him.
Don't get me started on civil rights movement being set into motion by some white kid's blithe suggestion to a black guy at a lunchroom that he should be mayor or something. Seriously, this was the 80s, couldn't anyone have vetted these things?
And yet. And yet. God I still fucking love this movie. I love that in the 80s they wore weirdness on their sleeve. Without being ironical about it. Without throwing up homages every ten or twenty seconds or whispering to the audience 'yes, we know we're being silly, so you can too, and not feel stupid for liking this.'
Crispin Glover as a romantic lead of sorts? What the hell were they thinking? Hindsight is 20-20 and all, but it seems all but impossible now to watch his performance and not see him as a man with barely a passing acquaintance with sanity. Which makes it all the more entertaining that we're all rooting for him the way we'd root for a Freddie Prinze Jr. back in my day.
It contains a completely earnest letter that starts off "Dear Dr. Brown, On the night I travel back in time at 1:30 AM, you will be shot by terrorists." Simple, straight to the point yet totally absurd.
It renews my love of the idea of telling people preposterous things while still acting deathly serious about it. Seriously, how fun would it be to tell every stranger you meet at a bar "I'm from the future."
Because the 80s were weird and they loved it. What scientific sense is there for a car to travel back in time when it goes 88 mph because it has a flux capacitor? I dunno, why is Jon Cusack being chased by a maniacal paperboy who just wants his two dollars? Ummm, because it's awesome that way?
Back to the original line of inquiry. Do I love this movie? I mean I didn't pay to go see it on the big screen to intellectualize it. I went to shriek with joy with a theater full of fans when Doc Brown tells Marty that when that baby hits 88 mph, you're gonna see some serious shit. (Sidebar, my friend pointed out that Doc Brown probably smoked more reefer than the rest of Hill Valley combined. I'm inclined to agree.) I went to burst into spontaneous applause when Biff hits that manure truck. I went to squirm and go Yeessshhh when Marty's mom tries to make out with him. I'm a cheeseball, dammit!
Which is why I'm all-fired disturbed about the fact that it just might be total Reaganist propaganda. After all it's about cinematizing history, basically, which is kind of what Reagan represented. Doc said it himself "Of course your president has to be an actor, he appears on television all the time" According to Wikipedia at least, Zemeckis is a Democrat, maybe that points to spoof?
Let me sum up the plot of Back to the Future in a trite overintellectual way, shall I? Your life in the present sucks because of mistakes your parents made and have gotten in the habit of continuing to make. So you go back in time and make them heroes based on what you know of the world now, and what you've seen in movies. This nearly destroys you, but in the end, because it's Hollywood, it succeeds, and your present is made better because you transformed the past into a cinematic ideal.
I mean, christ, look at their choice of eras, could it be more American? The good ol 50s, start of the American century. The future where technological advances dominate absolutely everything. And of course the Wild Wild West.
The founding of the country, fraught with ideas argued in newspaper editorials and not half the unity we're taught to believe? Of course not. The civil war? Cough...Hello? Slavery? Uncomfortable...cough. Pre-history? Giant mammoths or fierce dinosaurs? Dunno, did they speak English? Plus it's hard to have a skateboard chase if there's no pavement. Okay, so if my theory had solid legs, they could have chosen WWII, but still!
Nope, it's the beginning of the American century, the culmination of American genius and the frontier that gave us that can-do spirit in the first place. When things were simple. You looked to what was yours. You looked out for your fellow man. And your six-shooter was the law. Oh yes, I did read Gunfighter Nation in college.
And yet. And yet. I feel like with how fraught with peril each of these movies is once they start embarking on this cherry-picking of history, that maybe, just maybe, it's a warning and not just full-on "It's Morning in America" style Reaganite euphoria. But then again, maybe the movies are so good because it's Hollywood movies like they used to be.
To use an analogy that's been applied to nearly everything at this point, it's like Wile E. Coyote. Did old school adventure suspense Hollywood movies never have a plothole if you paid attention to every damn detail? Of course not. But because there was adventure, charm, excitement and characters you enjoyed spending time with (Cary Grant, I'm looking at you), you raced off that cliff. And it kept you going, not looking down, so you never noticed you were on nothing but thin air and momentum. Sure if you'll look down, you'll plummet to your doom, but that kind of pessimism sounds like a personal problem.
I'd rather have fun than be right.
And how can I not?
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