The Theme of Nostalgia in The Film

Old-time radio broadcaster Owens Lee Pomeroy once said, “Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, and the past perfect!” It is common for people to engage in nostalgia because they like to reminisce about happy parts of their past or imagine themselves living in a fun era, like the 1950s. By feeling nostalgic about past memories or wanting to live in past times like the ‘50s, people feel happier and more meaning is added to their lives. In the film, Back to the Future, a great sense of nostalgia is provoked when Marty is transported back to 1955 because everything seemed so much simpler back then. In this time, there was a much more defined sense of gender roles and family structure.

In Back to the Future, seventeen-year-old Marty McFly is accidentally transported back to the year 1955 through the ability of a DeLorean-time-machine-car invented by his scientist friend, Dr. Emmett Brown. When Doc is showing off this car to Marty early in the morning, he and Marty are met by attackers infuriated with Doc over stealing their plutonium, which he needed to power the DeLorean. After Doc is seemingly shot to death by the terrorists, Marty scrambles to the car and drives 88 MPH (the speed necessary to initiate the time travel function) sending him back to 1955. However, Marty doesn’t know what he’s done and is unsure of where exactly he is until he picks up a newspaper in town and sees the date “November 5, 1955.” While living in 1955, Marty comes across his dad, George, spying on Marty’s mom, Lorraine, from a tree. George slips out of the tree onto the street, but Marty saves him from getting hit and gets hit himself. This event shakes up Marty’s history because his mom becomes attracted to him.

Throughout the movie, Marty tries to get his mom, Lorraine, to fall in love with George so that history will remain the way it was before. Meanwhile, Marty comes across Doc of 1955 who helps him throughout the movie to be able to send him back to his future home of 1985. For a week, Marty is forced to live in 1955 Hill Valley and “starts” new trends along the way. To escape bullies, he creates a skateboard from a piece of wood on a board. He also sings and plays Chuck Berry’s (at the time unreleased) “Johnny B. Goode” at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance to the bewilderment of the students and principal. “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” was the line Marty uttered after leaving the crowd in silence after finishing the song. At the dance, Marty successfully gets his parents to fall in love and Doc is able to send him back to the future thanks in large part to the great deal of energy that was released from the infamous lightning bolt hitting the clock tower in the town of Hill Valley.

In society today, much nostalgia is felt with the way life used to be back in the 1950s. Most commonly, nostalgia for the 1950s is provoked because of how “everything was right in America, a period in which the United States really fulfilled its destiny as the leader of the world in all respects that mattered” (Bellm). Because the U.S. had finished dealing with the Great Depression and World War II, the 1950s was somewhat of a golden age because of the lack of conflicts going on. A big reason why many tend to look back to the 1950s in admiration is because it was a calm era. In Back to the Future, nostalgic moments include the old-fashioned Coke bottles that required a bottle opener, the gas stations where gas attendants would quickly fill up your car, the diner where all the teenagers would hang out on weekends. As a society today, we tend to reminisce about all the fun times and how seemingly simple things used to be. In the world we live in today, it is nice to look back on this time and wonder if we will ever experience a period like that again in the U.S.

In the movie, we see a sense of more obvious gender roles. For example, when Marty gets hit by the car after saving his dad, Lorraine takes care of him like a mom. And she is his mom. His mom starts to fall for him because that’s how she originally fell for George. Throughout the movie, Lorraine follows Marty around everywhere, and at one point says to her friends, “Isn’t he a dream?” Meanwhile, George is the odd man out once Marty gets hit by the car because Lorraine was supposed to fall in love with George, not Marty. In the movie, Marty tries to instill more courage into George so that he will be aggressive in winning Lorraine’s heart. In this 1955, Lorraine is very aggressive as a female with Marty. This is strange to Marty because in 1985, his mom told his sister that girls should never run after boys and be aggressive about meeting boys. As for George’s situation, throughout the movie he lacks masculinity as far as his contact with girls goes. George also is bullied by a trio of bullies, most notably Biff. Towards the end of the movie, George eventually has enough “masculinity” to punch Biff in the face after Biff was taking advantage of Lorraine in the car at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance. Thanks to the help of Marty, George and Lorraine fall in love with each other once again and history remains the same.

Family structure in the ‘50s was much more different than it is today. In the ‘50s, there was a plethora of nuclear families, or a family that contains a father, mother and at least one child (“The Nuclear Family”). In the ‘50s version of a nuclear family, the man works outside the home while the woman works inside the home caring for the children. As seen in Back to the Future, Lorraine’s family consisted of her father, mother, and three kids in total. Her mom cleaned the house and cooked dinner, while the father worked. In the movie, we see the father come home from work with a brand new black and white television, something they had never had before. As a family, they all watched TV together while eating at the dinner table. In today’s world, it is rare for families to eat together every night because everyone is always seemingly so busy; parents are working, kids are at soccer practice, etc. According to CASA Colombia Research, “teens who eat family dinners at least fives times per week report better relationships with their parents, less drug and alcohol use, less smoking, more frequent attendance at religious services and lower levels of stress” (Sodergren). Families who eat together are healthier both physically and emotionally. A big reason why family life in the ‘50s was more structured was because meal times were ideal for family quality time together. The 1950s represented an era in which families seemed “golden” and more structurally sound than in today’s world.

In Back to the Future, Marty comes to realize that things weren’t perfect in the 1950s. For instance, when he takes Lorraine to the dance, she suggests that they “park,” which prompts her to drink and be sexually aggressive towards Marty. When Marty questions her ethics about drinking, she responds, “Don’t be such a square. Anybody who’s anybody drinks.” In the 1950s, many children grew up in families greatly affected by alcohol and physical abuse (Coontz). Today, we often neglect the negatives that went on during the 1950s, and society often overlooks the trials that the nation faced as far as rights are concerned. The reason why we overlook these difficult times when we are nostalgic is because of selective amnesia (Coontz). This means that we block out the bad parts of memories in favor of the good parts because we want to reminisce about the better times. Obviously, people who engage in nostalgia want to feel good about themselves so they tend to focus on the happy memories. As we get older, our selective amnesia for childhood memories increases because we don’t remember how the memories made us feel quite as vividly. According to researchers Malcolm MacLeod and Saima Noreen, who studied whether or not we can learn to forget our memories, personal meaning often changes with memories making the memories less secure and easier to forget (Spiegel). Personal meaning for memories changes as we get older, so we look at our past experiences differently (Moskalenko). This is an adequate explanation for why we are nostalgic for certain memories.

Another scene in the movie that provokes some negative feelings for the 1950 is the first diner scene when Marty arrives in 1955. The scene involves the owner and a black worker having a quarrel. Marty tells Goldie, the black worker, that he is going to be mayor some day (in 1985). The owner of the place hears Marty and replies, “A colored mayor. That’ll be the day.” As noted here, times for African Americans were not the greatest in the 1950s because of segregation and Civil Rights issues. There were hardships for African Americans and Mexican Americans who were prevented voting in some states by literacy tests that were not administered to whites (Coontz). Other problems included people who did not follow the gender and sexual rules of the day and were “ostracized” (Coontz). Children were also encouraged to drop of high school when they felt too troubled to attend school. Spousal rape was also legal during the 1950s, and if a man beat his wife, authorities did not take it seriously. These issues existed in the 1950s, but we neglect to recall these memories when we are being nostalgic.

In the movie, Marty’s desire to return to his home of 1985 represents his desire for wanting to live in his correct period of time. While 1955 was fun to experience and live in, he wants to return home because he wants to live as a teen in 1985, where is in a band and has a girlfriend he loves very much. In general, we tend to be nostalgic about periods of times like the 1950s because we believe it would be fun to experience society in a seemingly simple and different way. However, we forget about how we are supposed to belong in the present moment because of all the people we love and those who love us. We were meant to live in the moment and better the present world. While it is fun to reminisce about the past, engaging in too much nostalgia does us no good in the end because it is not healthy. Studies show that too much nostalgia can risk an absence of joy in the present and the only way to feel happy is by thinking about past memories. It has also been noted that nostalgia is usually “involuntary and triggered by negative feelings” (Robb). However, nostalgia can give meaning to our seemingly dull lives, according to experts.

While watching Back to the Future, it is fun to think about how entertaining it would have been to live in the 1950s, especially as a teenager. Everything was booming, from the economy to television to the movie industry and much more. Marty was able to live a week in 1955 and experience all the ‘50s had to offer. While he did experience some fun things, he also discovered that the ‘50s weren’t perfect either. Lorraine’s sexual aggression and drinking issue represent how the ‘50s covered up those issues, whereas in today’s world they are much more talked about. It is very easy to get caught up in wanting to live in a time like the 1950s because of how simple it seemed. However, we shouldn’t engage in too much nostalgia about how everything “seemed” better in an era like the ‘50s. While it is healthy to engage in nostalgia, it is not good for you to get so caught up in nostalgia that it takes you away from the present moment. It can be fun wishful thinking to imagine yourself living in an era like the ‘50s, but it is not reality. Unfortunately, we don’t have a DeLorean to travel wherever we want whenever we get a nostalgic urge to visit a different era. But what we do have is the ability to use our nostalgia as a type of reflection to examine our lives. Even when we have a nostalgic moment about a memory that seemingly plays no part in the present, it is interesting to see how much has changed since that memory was made and how much farther you have come as a person. While it is nice to be nostalgic about a “perfect” past, it is important to know that the present moment is what makes these past memories golden.