Film 319 Greene
3/24/09
Midterm Visual Essay
Back to the Future (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1985, USA) and the Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (dir. Richard Marquand, 1983, USA) are SF versions of ‘coming of age’ stories for the heroes. Both Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) are facing their passage into ‘manhood’ through an oedipal crisis: that of re-creating an ideal father so they can claim patriarchal authority for themselves. Surprisingly, it is the symbol of Darth Vader that represents the alien as Other in both films as these teenage heroes deal with their the anxieties around gender identity.
Both films deal with the human in terms of the father-son relationship. The sons, Marty and Luke, are standing on the threshold of adulthood, but are held back because their own fathers are less than ideal. Both fathers have been ‘absent’ throughout the boys’ childhoods. Luke’s father has been literally absent having been raised by his aunt and uncle. Marty’s father has been emotionally absent, barely able to function in a patriarchal society, a victim to his ever-present neighborhood bully/boss, Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), and his overpowering wife. The dilemma Marty and Luke face is described by Christine Cornea:
At its most basic, the Freudian model of gender acquisition was based upon the bourgeois family and required the presence of both the father and mother in order for the boy-child to successfully complete his passage into manhood and take up his role within a wider, patriarchal society (1).
The problem both heroes face is that their role models for how to be masculine in an adult world are seriously lacking in redeeming qualities. Luke’s father, Darth Vader (James Earl Jones), is more machine than man and has embraced the ‘dark side’ of the Force. Marty’s father, George McFly (Crispin Glover), is a Science Fiction geek incapable of making anything of him self in an adult world. In order for both sons to resolve their oedipal crisis, according to Gordon Andrew, they will have to change events in order to fulfill their “desire to replace unsatisfactory parents with idealised ones” (2). The Image below is a key turning point in George becoming Marty’s ideal father figure. Marty is giving advice to George to help him win Lorraine. This is quite the opposite of the Oepidal complex, in this case, the son is must rescue his father by defeating the mother (resisting her sexual advances).
Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, like all the Star Wars movies resembles the Western, with good and bad guys fighting over the galaxy, rather than the wide open spaces of the American West. Often referred to as a ‘space opera,’ the Star Wars movies use simple plots, stock characters, and fast pacing to evoke Saturday cinema serials, comic books and video games, all popular with adolescent boys.
Back to the Future also uses contexts that are popular with teen males. According to Gordon Andrew, “… Back to the Future is consistently funny because it is grounded in the broad humor of television sitcoms and classic Hollywood ‘screwball comedy’ (2). The location, Midvale, resembles the small towns depicted in 1950s family sitcoms, such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Broad comedy runs rampant in the film with characters routinely tripping, falling, fainting or getting knocked down. Cars crash six times in the film. And it cashes in on the lead actor, Michael J. Fox, the then-popular teen sitcom star from Family Ties. As Christine Cornea states:
For many, George Lucas’s Star Wars films (1977–2005) and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future series (1985–90), among others, re-created the ‘cinema of attractions’ in their vigorous action and delivery of exhilarating special effects. It was the science fiction blockbusters that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s that more readily reaffirmed cinema’s ‘roots in stimulus and carnival rides’ (4).
Using historical references and contexts that appeal to adolescent males adds to the anxiety of the oedipal crisis in both films. Teen boys are not equipped to deal with the adult/real world because they still live in the fantasy world of pratfalls, swash-buckling and raging hormones.
The anxieties about the heroes’ gender identity are addressed in the films through two views of the alien: the invasion paranoia of the1950s and the postmodern view of alien as ‘aliens R US.’ During the 1950s, Americans were paranoid about alien invasion, especially in the form of Soviet communism. This was reflected in SF movies as aliens threatening to overrun the planet and wipe out humanity, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel, 1955, USA). Often, these films also reflected American anxieties about nuclear warfare and the effects of radiation on the human body, especially, as Cyndy Hendershot points out, regarding male sexuality:
While radiation threatened to undermine manliness, paradoxically, prolonged exposure to radioactivity became the very measure of manliness. [David] Bradley discerns this paradox in the behavior of the navy men he encountered. Bradley comments that, "all they [the sailors] wanted us Geiger men was an assurance of continuing manhood, and they would be willing to tackle an atomic bomb every morning for breakfast, if not before coffee” (5).
Marty’s anxieties around his oedipal crisis is heightened by the threat of never being born. His first attempts to persuade George to take Lorraine to the dance meet with failure. In fact, George stands up for himself only once in the film when he tells Marty, “Look, I’m just not ready to ask Lorraine out to the dance. And not you, or anybody else on this planet is going to make me change my mind” (6)
The invasion paranoia is established in Back to the Future in the image below, when Marty uses George’s fear of alien invasion by posing as “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan” to force his father into taking action. This is probably the most significant image in connecting the father- son relationship in Back to the Future, to the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Marty/Darth Vader threatens George in this image, that if he does not ask Lorraine out to the dance that he will melt his brain. George then complies and proceeds to go forward with his plan. The fear of this alien, as well as his love for science fiction seems to push George to eventually publish science fiction of his own as we see in the altered 1985.
Back to the Future also uses contexts that are popular with teen males. According to Gordon Andrew, “… Back to the Future is consistently funny because it is grounded in the broad humor of television sitcoms and classic Hollywood ‘screwball comedy’ (2). The location, Midvale, resembles the small towns depicted in 1950s family sitcoms, such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Broad comedy runs rampant in the film with characters routinely tripping, falling, fainting or getting knocked down. Cars crash six times in the film. And it cashes in on the lead actor, Michael J. Fox, the then-popular teen sitcom star from Family Ties. As Christine Cornea states:
For many, George Lucas’s Star Wars films (1977–2005) and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future series (1985–90), among others, re-created the ‘cinema of attractions’ in their vigorous action and delivery of exhilarating special effects. It was the science fiction blockbusters that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s that more readily reaffirmed cinema’s ‘roots in stimulus and carnival rides’ (4).
Using historical references and contexts that appeal to adolescent males adds to the anxiety of the oedipal crisis in both films. Teen boys are not equipped to deal with the adult/real world because they still live in the fantasy world of pratfalls, swash-buckling and raging hormones.
The anxieties about the heroes’ gender identity are addressed in the films through two views of the alien: the invasion paranoia of the1950s and the postmodern view of alien as ‘aliens R US.’ During the 1950s, Americans were paranoid about alien invasion, especially in the form of Soviet communism. This was reflected in SF movies as aliens threatening to overrun the planet and wipe out humanity, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel, 1955, USA). Often, these films also reflected American anxieties about nuclear warfare and the effects of radiation on the human body, especially, as Cyndy Hendershot points out, regarding male sexuality:
While radiation threatened to undermine manliness, paradoxically, prolonged exposure to radioactivity became the very measure of manliness. [David] Bradley discerns this paradox in the behavior of the navy men he encountered. Bradley comments that, "all they [the sailors] wanted us Geiger men was an assurance of continuing manhood, and they would be willing to tackle an atomic bomb every morning for breakfast, if not before coffee” (5).
Marty’s anxieties around his oedipal crisis is heightened by the threat of never being born. His first attempts to persuade George to take Lorraine to the dance meet with failure. In fact, George stands up for himself only once in the film when he tells Marty, “Look, I’m just not ready to ask Lorraine out to the dance. And not you, or anybody else on this planet is going to make me change my mind” (6)
The invasion paranoia is established in Back to the Future in the image below, when Marty uses George’s fear of alien invasion by posing as “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan” to force his father into taking action. This is probably the most significant image in connecting the father- son relationship in Back to the Future, to the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Marty/Darth Vader threatens George in this image, that if he does not ask Lorraine out to the dance that he will melt his brain. George then complies and proceeds to go forward with his plan. The fear of this alien, as well as his love for science fiction seems to push George to eventually publish science fiction of his own as we see in the altered 1985.
The filmmakers also referenced David Bradley’s 1948 book, No Place to Hide, when they placed Marty in a down-filled vest. Throughout the movie, Marty is mistaken for a sailor on leave. This is a subtle reference to the sailors involved in the Bikini atoll atomic testing.
In Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, the unveiling of Darth Vader to reveal a ‘saved’ Anakin Skywalker, reflects the effects of radiation on the human body. In the image below, the audience sees the misshapen figure of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker with his bald head, open sores, difficulty breathing and unnatural pallor, all of which could easily have been caused by exposure to radiation.
In Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, the unveiling of Darth Vader to reveal a ‘saved’ Anakin Skywalker, reflects the effects of radiation on the human body. In the image below, the audience sees the misshapen figure of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker with his bald head, open sores, difficulty breathing and unnatural pallor, all of which could easily have been caused by exposure to radiation.
The filmmakers also use reflexivity to demonstrate that the alien Other in the films are, basically, the heroes themselves. Both Marty and Luke, essentially repeat the steps their fathers’ took to reach adulthood, and both of them seem destined, at times, to end up in the same place as their fathers did. While we don’t know the particular steps Anakin Skywalker took to go over to the ‘dark side’ of the Force until the subsequent sequels, we do know from Stars War VI: Return of the Jedi, that he succumbed to his darker emotions. Luke, then, has to learn to not give in to his own alien demons: anger and hatred.
This reflexivity is very apparent in Back to the Future. Mannerisms, dialogue and entire scenes are repeated in both 1955 and 1985. Marty sees his father as weak in the beginning of the film, unaware that he is just like his father. In the image below, Marty, upon his arrival in 1955, has wandered into a diner and sits down next to his father without knowing it. This reflexivity is the basis for much of the humor in the film. In the opening scenes of the movie, Marty confides to his girlfriend that he is too afraid to send his demo tape to a music producer, “What if they say I’m no good?...I couldn’t stand that kind of rejection.” Then, when Marty suggests that his teen-aged father send his science fiction stories to a publisher, George echoes Marty’s earlier words, paralyzed by the thought of rejection. Gordon Andrew describes this constant echoing:
This reflexivity is very apparent in Back to the Future. Mannerisms, dialogue and entire scenes are repeated in both 1955 and 1985. Marty sees his father as weak in the beginning of the film, unaware that he is just like his father. In the image below, Marty, upon his arrival in 1955, has wandered into a diner and sits down next to his father without knowing it. This reflexivity is the basis for much of the humor in the film. In the opening scenes of the movie, Marty confides to his girlfriend that he is too afraid to send his demo tape to a music producer, “What if they say I’m no good?...I couldn’t stand that kind of rejection.” Then, when Marty suggests that his teen-aged father send his science fiction stories to a publisher, George echoes Marty’s earlier words, paralyzed by the thought of rejection. Gordon Andrew describes this constant echoing:
In fact, past and present are so collapsed in the plot of the movie that the young hero Marty's life threatens to become nothing more than a rerun, like the Honeymooners episode repeated during two separate family dinners. The audience gets the eerie comic effect of instant replay when we see gestures, lines or entire scenes from 1985 echoed almost word for word in 1955. The present reruns the past, or vice-versa. These characters seem subject to a sort of repetition compulsion, doomed to neurotic closed loops until Marty intervenes to rewrite the script (7).
Both Marty McFly and Luke Skywalker are looking to change their pasts, and they must ‘save’ their fathers from their paternal pasts in order to be successful. While time-travel is the vehicle for Marty’s rescue, both heroes must also re-play or re-run their father’s past as their own, before they can change events enough to rescue their fathers, and ultimately, themselves. Both Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and Back to the Future provide what Gordon Andrew calls a “resolution to an Oepdiapal crisis and reinforces the traditional American belief that history can change and that time and human character are malleable” (8).
Endnotes
(1) Christine Cornea, “Gender Blending and the Feminine Subject in Science Fiction Film,” Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 146.
(2) Gordon Andrew, “Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time Traveler,” Liquid metal: the science fiction film reader. Illustrated Edition. (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 117.
(3) Ibid, 119.
(4) Christine Cornea, “The Masculine Subject of Science Fiction in the 1980s Blockbuster Era,” Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 114.
(5) Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Invaded Body: Paranoia and Radiation Anxiety in Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and
Fantasy. 39.1 (Spring 1998) 29.
(6) Back to the Future, dir. Robert Zemeckis. perfs. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Llyod, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson. 1985. DVD. Universal Studios, 2009.
(7) Gordon Andrew, 117.
(8) Ibid, 116.
Works Cited
Gordon Andrew, “Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time Traveler,” Liquid metal: the science fiction film reader. Illustrated Edition. (London: Wallflower Press, 2004) 116-125.
Back to the Future, dir. Robert Zemeckis. perfs. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Llyod, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson. 1985. DVD. Universal Studios, 2009.
Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 111-174.
Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Invaded Body: Paranoia and Radiation Anxiety in Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and
Fantasy. 39.1 (Spring 1998) 29.
Star Wars. dir. Richard Marquand. perfs. Mark Hamil, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams. 1983. VHS Special Edition. Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.
Both Marty McFly and Luke Skywalker are looking to change their pasts, and they must ‘save’ their fathers from their paternal pasts in order to be successful. While time-travel is the vehicle for Marty’s rescue, both heroes must also re-play or re-run their father’s past as their own, before they can change events enough to rescue their fathers, and ultimately, themselves. Both Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and Back to the Future provide what Gordon Andrew calls a “resolution to an Oepdiapal crisis and reinforces the traditional American belief that history can change and that time and human character are malleable” (8).
Endnotes
(1) Christine Cornea, “Gender Blending and the Feminine Subject in Science Fiction Film,” Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 146.
(2) Gordon Andrew, “Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time Traveler,” Liquid metal: the science fiction film reader. Illustrated Edition. (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 117.
(3) Ibid, 119.
(4) Christine Cornea, “The Masculine Subject of Science Fiction in the 1980s Blockbuster Era,” Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 114.
(5) Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Invaded Body: Paranoia and Radiation Anxiety in Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and
Fantasy. 39.1 (Spring 1998) 29.
(6) Back to the Future, dir. Robert Zemeckis. perfs. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Llyod, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson. 1985. DVD. Universal Studios, 2009.
(7) Gordon Andrew, 117.
(8) Ibid, 116.
Works Cited
Gordon Andrew, “Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time Traveler,” Liquid metal: the science fiction film reader. Illustrated Edition. (London: Wallflower Press, 2004) 116-125.
Back to the Future, dir. Robert Zemeckis. perfs. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Llyod, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson. 1985. DVD. Universal Studios, 2009.
Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press LTD, 2007). 111-174.
Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Invaded Body: Paranoia and Radiation Anxiety in Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and
Fantasy. 39.1 (Spring 1998) 29.
Star Wars. dir. Richard Marquand. perfs. Mark Hamil, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams. 1983. VHS Special Edition. Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.
