How “Back To The Future” endorses Reagan’s vision of the apocalypse
With the passing of the 40th President of the United States on June 5th 2004, perhaps the time has come to re-evaluate Ronald Reagan’s most important contribution to 20th century culture. This is not the ending of the cold war, or the economic disaster that was Reagonomics, but rather his influence over the popular “Back to the Future” films released by Universal. While ostensibly starring the diminutive Michael J Fox and goggle-eyed Christopher Lloyd it is in fact Ronald Reagan who exerts the strongest influence over the narrative and ideological structure of the films, instilling them with a brand of evangelical conservatism that is intrinsic to the trilogy and America during the 1980s.
For those unfamiliar with the Back to The Future films, they are light comedies dealing with the subject of time travel. Young Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955, where he unwittingly endangers his own existence by interfering in his parents courting rituals. Trying desperately to reunite them, Marty is placed in a race against time to make sure that they fall in love before he has to return “Back to the Future”. While his mission is hampered by the tyrannical town bully Biff Tannen, Marty is assisted (both in 1985 and 1955) by Dr Emmet Brown, a scientist who has dedicated his life to pursuing a vision he received after bashing his head on the toilet bowl – the nonsensically name Flux Capacitor, a set of groovy fairy lights built into a Delorean motor car which according to the films’ bastardised science is what makes time travel possible.
As the films central concern is time, it is interesting to make some notes about the significant dates, digits and integers that are central to the plot and the ideological construct upon which the narrative is formed. While venturing into the realms of numerology can be dangerous (after all, the power of numbers in our every day lives means that it is all too easy to see connections that are not there) it is worth exploring on at least a surface level so that we might better understand the hidden codes contained within. This is not some random flight of fancy,
as the importance of numerology on the Reagan Whitehouse was paramount. Following the attempted assassination of Ronald by John Hinckley in 1981, his wife Nancy was approached by one Joan Quigley, an astrologer who said that her divine insight could have prevented the attempt on the president’s life. Put on to the Whitehouse payroll, Quigley began instructing Nancy as to the dates and times which would be cosmically beneficial for the president. These recommended dates and times were then included Reagan’s itinerary, such as the announcement of the press of Anthony Kennedy’s appointment to the Supreme Court which Quigley insisted must be made at precisely 11:32:25 AM on November 30th 1988. The cue was given by a man with a stopwatch, ensuring that Reagan made the announcement at exactly the right second. This was not the first time that the Reagans had administered the services of a psychic, as the couple had regularly consulted with Jeanne Dixon in the 1950s for psychic guidance as to whether Ronald might one day be president.
With such strong elements of numerology present in both the films and the Reagan presidency, it is interesting to draw some parallels between the prominent times in the movies and the paranoid conspiracy theorist’s essential text – the Book of Revelation from the New Testament. The connections are strong between the films and this book of the bible so beloved by end-of-the-world doom mongers such as Ronald Reagan himself. While there are not as many outright links as one might hope for, there are intriguing possibilities which lend weight to the Back to The Future films being a warning of the mythical “end times” prayed for by Reagan and others in his administration. For example, the opening scene of the first film shows Marty plugging in his electric guitar to a huge amplifier apparatus labelled “CRM-114” – a reference to the faulty radio decoder that triggers nuclear war in Kubrick’s cold war satire Doctor Strangelove and an indicator to audiences that we are about to be subject to a barrage of apocalyptic references. If we check Revelations chapter 1, verse 14 we get a description of a figure that could very well be Doc Brown himself:
“And his head and hairs [were] white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire”
Even though Doc himself is not present in this scene except as a voice on the end of the telephone, the film-makers are already warning us that Doc, representing the forces of science and relativism, is an insane prophet who will bring about chaos and the potential destruction of the world. While the films condemn Doc as a force of evil, they do not underestimate his power. At the beginning of the first time travel experiment at Twin Pines Mall, Doc states the date and time for Marty’s video camera as 1:18 AM, October 26th 1985. While October 26th 1985 is a date of little significance in American politics (save for the fact that a young Al Gore tabled a motion nominating it as “Mule Appreciation Day”), the time is of key significance. As if already knowing that Doc will cheat death by wearing a bullet-proof vest that will stop terrorist bullets, the filmmakers have inserted a wry biblical joke at this precise choice of time. Checking Revelation 1:18 shows that Doc is fully aware of the forthcoming attack and from this point in time believes himself to be immortal.
“I [am] he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death”
Perhaps these keys might bear the logo of the Delorean Motor Company, for it is the hubris of Doctor Emmet Brown that drives the trilogy. His desire for immortality – unwittingly assisted by Marty – is fundamental to the narrative, with Doc cheating death not once but twice (the first instance being the terrorist shooting, the second being shot in the back by Buford Tannen in 1885, leading Marty back in time to prevent the incident occurring in Back to the Future III). Time and time again we see that Doc, for all his caterwauling in parts 2 and 3 about time-travel being “dangerous” and “painful”, thinks nothing of meddling with the natural order of things. Despite being fully educated in the potential dangers of interfering with the space-time continuum, he continues to skip through the ages, pouring petrol on the smouldering sparks of hellfire that could well engulf the world. The cavalier attitude to causality can be best expressed by the exchange between Marty and Doc after his re-appearance in 1985:
MARTY: What about all that stuff you told me about screwing up future events? The space-time continuum?
DOC: I figured ‘what the hell’.Note his wry assertion during the Twin Pines Experiment when he states: “When this baby hits eighty-eight [miles per hour] you’re going to see some serious shit.” The gleam in his eye is almost demonic – that of a madman about to set forth on the destruction of the universe, as foretold in Revelation 8:8.
“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood”
The themes of Armageddon are certainly present, but the link to Back to The Future may seem unclear. Hill Valley is a land-locked community, with no mention of sea or coastline. But the importance of the bloody sea becomes apparent when one remembers the multiple references during the 1955 sequences to Marty’s 1980s body-warmer as a ‘life-preserver’. Indeed, one member of Biff’s gang sniggers that the “dork thinks he’s gonna drown.” The cruel truth of this statement is that Marty – as Doc Brown’s acolyte – has been chosen to weather the apocalyptic tsunami that will engulf the world. As henchman to the scientist, Marty has indeed been given a life preserver - that the scientific vanity of Doc will allow them both to survive the storm of oncoming Armageddon.
Perhaps the most significant intervention of Back to the Future, Reagan and the bible is the cross-pollination of ideas that concern Libya during the 1980s. The first film represents Libyan Nationalists as a bunch of terrorist clowns – deadly, but incompetent. Although they succeed in exacting revenge on Doc Brown for his double cross (selling them “a shoddy casing full of used pinball machine parts” rather than the nuclear bomb they desire) they are hardly shown as an efficient fighting force. Driving their ragged VW Caravanette and using cheap soviet-made machine guns that are prone to jamming, these towel-headed buffoons scream demonically and jabber like jawas as they pursue their dogmatic rites of vengeance against the American scientist. Described as ‘bastards’ by Marty, they are in fact one of the key ideological icons of the first film – determining the right-wing values at the heart of the trilogy. The sight of Middle-Eastern terrorists spraying machine gun fire outside JC Penney is perhaps a foreshadowing of the 9/11 attacks and there can be no doubt that it forms a potent image of maniacal fundamentalism. (What could be a more barbaric target than a suburban mall, where families, teenagers and children congregate to socialise and suckle on the teat of American consumer culture?) What is of key importance in this context, however, is Reagan’s comments concerning the biblical foreshadowing to Armageddon or the ‘End of Days’, made to State Senator James Mills in 1971, while Reagan was still Governor of California.
"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.”
The Libyans are certainly the harbingers of Apocalypse within the context of the trilogy’s first instalment – shooting Doc and chasing Marty round the car-park until he unwittingly travels back to 1955. Their instant vilification reveals the fear at the heart of American Christianity, with Doc’s manic shriek of “The Libyans!” reflecting the panic felt by Americans during this period of American history.
Compare the first film’s demonisation of the Libyans with the farcical digital face off between Reagan and the Ayatollah Khomeni in the Café 80s during the 2015 sequence of Part 2. Here Reagan is portrayed as a genial digital eccentric, stuttering and scratching his voice in the manner of 80s icon Max Headroom and greeting Marty with the phrase “Welcome to the Café 80s, where it’s always morning in America – even in the after-n-n-noon.” He invites customers to try the Mesquite-grilled sushi, before his patter is interrupted by another digital avatar – that of the Iranian leader, who urges Marty to try the hot special. Their conflict for consumer attention quickly escalates into a squall of digital noise, before Marty has to calm them with an innocent consumer’s cry for help: “Guys! Guys! All I want is a Pepsi.”. This perhaps reflects the different political climates in which the original film and its sequels were made, with parts II and III produced during the thawing of the cold war and thus reflecting the American public’s growing disinterest in international affairs. Having been bombarded with images of Glastnost and Iran-Contra scandals, they did not care about the evil empire and simply wanted to enjoy their caffeinated beverages in peace.
But while the sequels were made when the supposed menace of communism had been eradicated from the American consciousness, the first film reflects the state of red-alert that was present in the American mind-set. It can be no coincidence that the film is based around the 1950s, an era of heightened alert to the ‘perils of communism’. While the McCarthy hearings had ended by November 1955, the nation was still in a state of anti-red fervour and Ronald Reagan himself was undergoing a political conversion from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican. As President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan had assisted the House Un-American Activities Committee in routing communists from the movie industry. Using the codename “Agent T-10”, Reagan informed on colleagues suspected of leftist tendencies and helped the FBI compose their blacklist of actors, writers and directors with communist sympathies. The fear of communism had a profound effect on Hollywood at this time, with many notable figures tainted by the red brush and the mere suggestion of leftist politics being enough to end careers and wreck lives. The legacy of McCarthyism was such that no president of the US could ever be seen to be ‘soft on communism’. The red menace was a common metaphor in the American shared consciousness and is often used as an explanation for the boom in science fiction during this era, with hostile invading aliens forming a convenient cipher for the ‘inhuman’ communists who stood against the libertarian democracy of the US. This can be seen in such 50s classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Day The Earth Stood Still.
In the case of Back to the Future, the science fiction parallels are clear to see. On his first arrival in the 1950s, Marty crashes the DeLorean into a barn, where his appearance is mistaken by the simple farming folk as the arrival of an extraterrestrial. Scared at the thought of this invader, the farmer grabs his shotgun and shoos Marty out of the farm with a gleeful cry of “Take that, you mutated bastard!”. It is clear that this fracas represents the fear of communism in the American heartland. Ignorant of the precise nature of the ideology and methodology of the communist system, the rural American needs only to know that it is godless and evil and must be fought at all costs. Whether the invasion comes from little green men or burly red Cossacks, the homeland must be defended by any means necessary. That such a threat was not only a possibility, but an almost certainty, forms much of the American psyche during the post-war period. Witness the younger Doc Brown commenting on the radiation suit his elder self wears in the videotape prelude to his own assassination in 1985. “Radiation suit? Of course! From all the fallout in the atomic wars!”.
That nuclear holocaust was almost a foregone conclusion during the mid twentieth century says much about the political landscape that followed it. A nation living in fear of an unknown, unseen enemy that must be destroyed in a holy war creates a pre-destined lineage of mutually assured destruction that runs from the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 to the present apocalyptic crusading of George W Bush. It is particularly apposite when talking about the Reagan presidency, as the threat of nuclear war was tied in with his fervent belief in the forthcoming apocalypse. Again, we refer to his conversation with James Mills in 1971.
"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."
With thoughts of Biblical Armageddon and nuclear weapons buzzing around his head, it is no wonder that the American people felt such a state of high alert. Their president not only believed in the end of the world, but had his finger on the button that would make it all possible. Perhaps, like the reference to Doc in Revelation 1:18 mentioned earlier, Reagan believed that it be divine providence that he held “the key to hell and death.”
The trinity between the bible, communism and space is perhaps best expressed through the bizarre Freudian love-triangle that forms the first film’s romantic thrust. George’s initial reticence to approach Lorraine is rectified by Marty masquerading as an alien (“Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan”) and threatening to melt George’s brain if he does not ask Lorraine to the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. This extraterrestrial intervention eerily mirrors Reagan’s own theory that alien invasion would end the cold war and unite humanity. Speaking of an upcoming summit between himself and Soviet premier Gorbachev, Reagan was heard to remark:
"[H]ow easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries ..." j
It is tempting, therefore, to see George and Lorraine as representatives of the US and USSR, who are brought together by the alien threat of Biff Tannen. Unfortunately, the linear chronology of human existence makes this metaphor unworkable, as it is impossible that Reagan could have inspired Bob Gale to insert this cosmic political metaphor in the screenplay of BTTF I, as the remark was made on the 4th of December 1985, some six weeks after the film’s setting of October 26th. What is perhaps a more worrying conclusion is that Reagan might in fact have been inspired by the film to formulate his theory. (Reagan is known to have watched the first Back to the Future film, delighting in Doc’s disbelief that an actor could become president and asking the projectionist to rewind and play the scene again.) Reagan was known to be very taken with the idea that alien invasion could end the cold war and is known to have repeated the theory several times. Indeed, Back to the Future is not the only work in which this theme is mentioned, as it is fleshed out more fully in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark 80s graphic novel Watchmen, in which the superhero Ozymandius fakes an alien invasion on New York in order to bring about peace between warring superpowers.
But if the political parallels between the McFly alien invasion and that wished for by Reagan cannot be made, perhaps there is a more earthly connection that can be made. The Iran-Contra scandal rocked the Whitehouse in the eighties, bringing about serious questions concerning the presidential office. Reagan approved the sale of weapons to the Iranian government in exchange for the release of American hostages and in order to raise funds for the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua, despite the fact that Iran was listed as one of the US’s main enemies at the time and the funding of the Contras was expressly forbidden by rule of law. The secret deal, known within the highest echelons of American power mongers as “The Enterprise”, was not only an act of political subterfuge, but also a profit-making exercise for those involved. With no records being kept of the transactions, the opportunity for corruption was rife, with several officers skimming profits off the top. When “the enterprise” was revealed to the American public, there was mass outcry and many called for Reagan’s impeachment – something he managed to avoid with obfuscation and charming manners, further cementing his reputation as the ‘teflon president’.
Until now we have focused primarily on the first film in the Back to the Future trilogy, but to fully understand the relationship between the films and the Iran-Contra affair we must compare parts I and II. The first instalment seems the strongest affirmation of the Reaganite agenda, instilling the audience with a sense that all is right with the conservative dogma instilled by the down-home sensibilities of both Reagan and the era of the 1950s. In addition, the first film clearly endorses the 80s yuppie mantra of success at all costs, as seen in the transformation of Marty’s family. At the beginning of part one the McFlys are presented as the lowest of the low – plebian white trash who eat peanut brittle for dinner and drunkenly make cakes for uncle ‘Jailbird Joey’.
While the all-important stable American family dynamic is present – two parents, three children, etc – there can no doubt that the McFly family is not doing well in the world. Elder brother Dave works in McDonalds while fat dumpy sister Linda bemoans the fact that she is clearly the most unattractive girl in Hill Valley. Within the first ten minutes we see that the relationship between the parents is clearly stagnant – the bitter remorse oozing out of Lorraine as she looks over her beaker full of gin at George as she recounts their first kiss. With her rueful lament punctured by George’s staccato laughter, it is clear that theirs is a relationship based on mutual pity and resentment, lacking any passion and with each blaming the other for how their lives have turned out.
Compare this with the portrait of the family presented at the end of part I, with the re-invention of the McFlys as a tribe of go-getting eighties yuppies. Dave now works in an office, Linda in a boutique and the previously squalid tacky house is now furnished with expensive décor. George’s wrecked heap is transformed into a gleaming BMW and the parents now flirt and fizzle with sexual chemistry. Biff is transformed from the ogre that loomed over the McFly family into a snivelling servant – he has become the house nigger of the McFlys new colonial palace. (Interestingly, the McFlys still live at the same address, which seems unusual given their apparent change in fortunes. Surely their new prosperity would have led them to bigger digs?)
Through one act of aggression (George knocking out Biff), aided by the covert assistance of Marty, the entire fortunes of this American family have been transformed from depression and economic uncertainty to wealth, health and security. The parallels between the McFlys’ and the Iran-Contra affair need hardly be pointed out. In this scenario, Marty acts as the CIA, covertly assisting the under resourced guerrilla to overthrow a tyrant, with Biff representing the figure of (democratically elected) Nicaraguan communism. While the first film justifies the US backed insurgence by showing all being well within the American family at the end, the second film shows how deep the conspiracy runs and just how much effort is required to maintain “the enterprise”. George and Lorraine’s marriage relies on Marty’s covert assistance not once but twice, with a second incarnation of the youngest McFly trying not only to retrieve Gray’s Sports Almanac, but also not be seen or undo any of the events he instigated in part one of the trilogy. While the internal referencing was (at first) exciting for the films pre-pubescent audience, the truth is that it is a contrived narrative mess, showing just how deep the rabbit-hole of American foreign policy goes. By the time the two sequels had entered production, the full extent of the enterprise had been revealed to the American public and it is almost as if the two sequels are intended as an apology for the right-wing dogma set out in the first instalment.
We can see that Part II is concerned largely with the dire consequences of time-travel, or – in a wider sense – an interference by man in the natural order of things. Avarice is the key vice in part II, as Marty’s own desire for wealth and fortune comes back to haunt him as Biff Tannen creates a corrupt, corporate Hill Valley in which George McFly is dead and Lorraine is once again a boozed-up trollop, albeit with enormous bazongas. It is Marty’s own personal Armageddon – a vision of Hell on earth that seems expressly designed to torment his soul, in which he has no place to turn and no-one in whom he can seek solace. Here we see the true consequences of Marty and Doc’s attempts to play God, not the happy ending of suburban yuppies given by Part I. The first sequel shows that there is a huge price to paid for the slender security afforded to the American family and in order for that security to remain, it is best that the public be kept unaware of the true cost of peace. Part II presents a dystopia – a complex exploration of the issues or morality, greed and ambition that perhaps is a more bitter reflection on the Reagan years. While part I ends with Marty admiring his new 4x4 and telling Jennifer that “everything’s just great”, the second film questions the validity of the statement and attempts to calculate the cost of the wealth, health and prosperity that Reagan provided in the 80s. While it may serve as an apology for the forthright conservatism of the first film, the franchise squanders the possibility of redemption with the risible Part III, which throws aside any notion of serious socio-economic analysis with its ridiculous parable about the Old West.
This, perhaps, is the ultimate victory of Reaganism in the trilogy – that it manages to deflect serious questions about the manner in which the McFlys conduct their contribution to the American dream by resorting to a glorified image of cowboys and pioneers. It is an evasion that the Teflon President would have been proud of – avoiding the serious enquiry and the possibility of censure with misty-eyed mythmaking and the eulogy of God’s own country. While the third film does contain a few coded references to Reagan’s vision of the end, these are few and far between and the filmmakers choose to avoid the terrible inevitability of Armageddon by brushing aside the concepts of causality that they tried so hard to establish in the first two films. It is a cop-out, an attempt to undo the inevitability of the apocalypse that Ronnie, Marty and Doc all know is coming. Unable to face the real consequences of America’s barbarous foreign policy, the message instead is one of personal responsibility and culpability. While decisions may have been made by shadowy forces of which the common man knows little, all will have to suffer the same fate. What it presents is an illusion of choice, a reassurance that destiny lies in one’s own hands rather than the black and white of bible scripture.
Doc’s final assertion that “Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one” is a desperate attempt to undo all the foreshadowing of the first two films. Having warned of the impending doom, the filmmakers now find themselves unable to face up to the reality of oblivion and palm off the responsibility on to the audience. Having shown how badly science and business will fuck things up, the overall message of the films is that you may as well let idiots run the show.
And if that isn’t an endorsement of Reagan, then I don’t know what is.
Text by Tom Alexander
Footnotes:
1 Gorbachev
was later heard to comment “I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though
I think it's early yet to worry about such an intrusion...”
The term “Bony Fish” comes from an overheard conversation in a Camden pub some time in the mid 1990s.
While discussing the contents of their tropical fish tanks, the camdenites then began to speculate on the edibility of their rare tropical fish. The consensus was that smaller fish (such as Tench) would be too crunchy and finickity to eat. This then led to a conversation about seafood in general and when salmon was mentioned, one of the parties was heard to utter the immortal words:“Now that, my friend, is a bony fish”
Since then, the term “Bony Fish” has come to be known in some circles as code for amiable, but generally ill-informed conversation. This is not a slight intended towards the pub icthyologists, but rather an appreciation of the random, abstract speculation in which all of us indulge from time to time and to which this irregular journal is dedicated.
If it’s ill-conceived, poorly researched, wildly inaccurate and yet mildly diverting then that, my friend, is a bony fish.
THE BONY FISH
A
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