I Have Questions About Back to the Future 2
It's relevant. Trust me.
I know.
Don’t take time-travel movies too seriously. Especially Back to the Future 2.
But I have to ask this: why weren’t Doc and Marty stranded in 2015? Why didn’t they disappear from reality like that picture from the first movie?
Here’s the situation: Marty buys a sports almanac in the year 2015. The idea being to take it back with him to 1985. He plans to win some gambling money.
Noble pursuit, but not today’s focus.
Biff, the villain of the series, is like 80 years old in 2015. He eavesdrops on this conversation between Doc and Marty about proper uses of the time machine. Biff thinks “yeah Marty, great fuckin idea.”
80-year-old Biff steals the time machine and travels back to 1955 to give the almanac to his younger high-school self.
That should be the end of the story. The 1955 Biff wins bigly and builds his own casino tower. The town of Hill Valley becomes Hell Valley, with biker gangs roaming the streets and iron bars on all the neighbourhood windows.
When old Biff returns to 2015, it should be the 2015 of this new reality. Doc and Marty either cease to exist or the 2015 they’re in transforms around them.
But what happens in Back to the Future 2?
Biff returns to Doc and Marty’s 2015 (the one we the viewers have been accustomed to) and then… dies?
None of it matters. Because… well, damn. I just answered my question in the introduction.
Biff returns to the “normal” 2015 because Doc and Marty would always succeed at getting the almanac back.
They just needed to visit the alternate 1985 first.
Old man Biff returning to 2015 and seeing nothing has changed would mean his plan failed somewhere along the way.
Of course, this brings up the question of free will. But it’s a time travel movie. From 40 years ago. We’re as far away from Back to the Future as they were from Casablanca.
And Back to the Future 2 takes place in 2015—twenty years in the future. Or, if you’re reading this in the year it was published, nine years ago.
So what even is the point of this writing? Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about unchecked aggression here, dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand. Across this line, you shall not pass.
Also, dude, you’re mixing up multiple lines here. And this post is getting borderline schizophrenic.
Like, why were we discussing Back to the Future 2 when the real question is about the first film?
At the end of the movie, Doc succeeds in sending Marty back to his time in 1985. Turns out there are consequences to Marty’s actions in 1955. Like, the whole fiasco with his parents.
That’s the plot of the first movie.
Long story short, before Marty time-travelled, his Mom suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome when meeting his Dad. In essence, Marty’s loser Dad scored the hot chick in high school without even trying.
So when Marty inadvertently alters the timeline, his Mom gets the hots for him instead. And his father, George McFly, must prove himself to get Lea Thompson into bed.
This has consequences which make the new alternate 1985 a better reality for the McFly household.
So why would Marty McFly in this alternate 1985 go back in time?
He clearly does. When the Marty of our film heads back to the future, he arrives a little early to warn the Doc about Libyan terrorists. He then sees himself using the Deloran to go back to 1955.
But why? Why would he even be there? The Doc might be there with some other high school kid. But not Marty McFly.
In this reality, where George McFly grows up to be cool, where his Mother doesn’t turn into a middle-aged drunk, where Marty has his own truck in the garage, his girlfriend becomes Elisabeth Shue, and his brother wears a suit to an office but still lives at home — why would Marty even hang out with the Doc?
The Doc was a father figure for him since his real dad was a bonafide loser. And why would the McFly’s live in the same house!? Why would their adult children still live there if they’re also cool and successful now?
And what about the Marty of this alternate 1985?
When he goes back to 1955 what is he going to find? Another version of himself pushing his dad out of the way of the car to trigger the timeline of where he came from?
People say (and by people, I mean me, about 500 words ago) that this is the problem with time travel movies. You can’t take them too seriously.
But the issue isn’t time travel, per se. It’s the language we’re using. And how that relates to time.
For, time itself is a finicky subject. People think Einstein figured it all out. But Einstein really only described how clocks work.
Time itself is a far deeper phenomenon.
But first, grab a fucking dictionary. This is about to get heavy.
Words
Let’s not mince words. Mince words make mince meat. Let’s make apple pie instead.
Like calling the “climate emergency” ManBearPig without rejecting the underlying science.
Words have to conform to an objective reality to at least some extent.
Yet some things are too abstract. Other words cater to something real but evasive. Like, it’s not what you say but how you say it.
A small error can compound into something larger. (See, philosophy).
You can alter entire concepts based on nothing more than a seemingly inconspicuous interpretation of a certain word.
Lawyers make a lot of money with this shit.
But this is one of those “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situations.
You can’t blame lawyers for the fact that there aren’t any objective definitions of words. All definitions, including the ones I’m using, are subjective.
Ask any lawyer worth their salt and they know words don’t possess intrinsic meanings.
As law professor John Hasnas put it: “The law is always open to interpretation and there is no such thing as a normatively neutral interpretation.”
In other words, words mean what we intend them to mean. As Humpty Dumpty said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
That’s not to say a word can’t have nuance. Humpty Dumpty was a simple fuck. We can add layers of meanings to a single word or sentence.
But words themselves don’t contain meanings separate from human experience. The word “carrot” means jack-shit to a jack-rabbit.
Did you grab your dictionary? Good. Time to use it. An online version works if you just want to open a new tab.
OK, now look up a word. Any word. I don’t care which one. In fact, it doesn’t matter. This is the shittiest magic trick in human history.
Look at the word you chose. Now look away.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
This is how dictionaries work. They record commonly agreed-upon definitions.
That’s it.
If a dictionary started printing things like:
Apple. Noun. A vegetable with violent explosive power due to the sudden release of energy resulting from the splitting of apple seeds of a heavy chemical element (such as amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside) by neutrons in a very rapid chain reaction. Also called a banana.
Nobody would buy that dictionary. Not unless it was a gag gift.
So dictionary publishers don’t invent words. They don’t control words. They merely record-keep according to the masses.
The masses? It’s that nexus of purposefully acting people.
They decide, that is, we decide what the definition of words should be. Everyone is going to have their own, subjective understanding behind these words.
But, we still find ways to communicate and cooperate.
When I say “grab the ladder and head on over to Barney’s, we gotta measure his roof there.” The image in your mind won’t be identical to mine, even if we can both picture Barney’s house. But it’ll be close enough.
Our concepts of “ladder,” “measure,” and “Barney’s roof,” are virtually the same.
Dictionaries give common definitions of words so we can communicate. But these words remain subjective to every individual.
Words are, after all, just concepts of the mind. And they go beyond just text. Speech plays an important role, as well as body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures.
Nonetheless, words are special in the sense that you can’t unread something. If I write:
A man opened his front door and his little dog ran between his legs. The dog ran out onto the street. A passing car just missed the poor fella but then a giant hawk dove down. With its large talons, it scooped the little dog right up. The hawk flew away with the man’s little dog and the man watched them until they only a tiny speck in the sky.
You can’t help but comprehend what you just read. Even if you don’t picture the scenario in your head that vividly. You still understand what I’m saying. It’s virtually involuntary at this point.
Words words words. You can’t unread a word.
Words force concepts into your mind. One could argue the mind is words, in a sense. That human consciousness is a learned social behaviour that originates from words.
But that is neither here nor there.
For now, it’s important to consider that words and their definitions really are based on social conventions. There is nothing inherently objective about language.
That’s why Biff isn’t wrong to say “Make a tree and get out of here!” Or why Marty is willing to throw his life away when someone calls him “chicken.” Why George tells Lorraine that she is his “density.”
It’s not the words that matter but their intent.
Perfectly precise communication is impossible because language is fundamentally subjective.
We all have our concepts. We can distill these concepts into minute details, but, as with the ladder example, the image in your head will never correspond to mine.
Language and communication ultimately rely on abstraction and intuition. There’s nothing objective about it. That’s why you can barely understand English from 1585.
And that’s why some people think the Back to the Future trilogy is boring.
Besides, as mentioned, words are only one part of human communication. A lot of people speak with their hands.
Ever flirt with someone? Tell me the eyes don’t convey more than the words.
“Language barriers” isn’t just something that exists with second languages. You don’t need to know more than one for language barriers to exist.
We find objective words in their intended meaning, not by appealing to intrinsic value. Definitions will have correct and incorrect interpretations based on the communicator’s intent.
Intent.
What do I mean by that?
Is that like consent? Can you consent to intent? Or is your intention to consent by convention?
What is love?
Love.
The kind you clean up with a mop and bucket.
No, actually, I’m talking about the other type of love. The type between Doc and Marty. A bromance for the ages.
Or the kind of love between Doc and the woman he meets in 1885… Mary Steenburgen. Clara Clayton.
Love is a word. It’s a concept. It’s actually many concepts.
Consider, the love you have for your spouse. Your family. Or the love you have for an activity or sport. Or, if you’re like me when you discovered Henri Bergson.
Ol’ Henri was a French philosopher, which is a hit-or-miss in my book. But I like Henri. His ideas on time fit nicely into my subjective bias suitcase.
And that’s nice.
Funny, back in the day, he debated publicly with Einstein and was well-known. But today, Einstein is synonymous with the word ‘genius’ and Henri Bergson sounds like you misheard my friend Jesse’s last name.
Bergson separated time into two types.
First, mechanical time. This is quantifiable, measurable time. This is the stuff we divide into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, and centuries.
We coordinate and cooperate according to mech time. Monday to Friday. Saturday at the pool at 3 pm.
Real-time, or duration, or “la durée,” is the subjective, qualitative time we experience. It is continuous and fluid.
Real-time, or la durée, is the flow of our consciousness. Moments are interwoven and cannot be separated. This time is more fundamental to our existence.
Mech time is a language. La durée is experience.
Mech time is sex. Useful and measurable. La durée is love.
It hits you in the gut.
And your gut contains 500 million neurons. These are connected to the billions in your brain through your nervous system.
The gut-brain axis isn’t some new-age woo. It’s a scientific reality.
So intuition isn’t some lofty concept one can safely ignore. In many ways, it’s a more accurate way of understanding reality than intellect.
Consider, the intellect breaks things down into discrete parts. It devolves everything into measurement. On November 5th, 1955, you must go 88 miles per hour down the road by the clocktower. God forbid someone pulls out onto the street at the last second.
On the contrary, intuitions grasp at the continuous flow of la durée.
We as a species have far more experience with intuition than we do intellect. And we’re the only species to develop intellect. Everything else living on the planet merely has good primal intuition.
Evolution relies on instinct, not intellect.
Natural selection, right? Survival of the fittest? Henri Bergson didn’t think so. Not in certain terms. When we talk about Darwinian evolution, we’re talking in terms of mechanisms.
That’s not to say it’s incorrect. Only that they’re metaphors. Bergson proposed that life evolves through a vital force, the élan vital.
And this force can only be understood via real-time, the continuous flow of la durée. Past, present, and future are not separate entities.
The past shapes and informs the present, and the present unfolds into the future.
So in a sense, Back to the Future is right. The past isn’t static. It’s not some dead archive in our memory. It’s actively present. Our memories and experiences influence our current actions and thoughts.
The past can only exist in the present.
And our present is perception coloured by memories. Our perception creates our rich, qualitative experience of time.
La durée is the flow of experience. It’s where new ideas emerge. As Bergson defines it, the past is an active experience.
The past is always in the present.
As for the future? According to Bergson, we are not predetermined. Our backs are not to the future, so to speak. Our actions in the present create the future.
We are not fixed destinations in space-time. We are an active unfolding reality.
The present is all that exists.
La durée is where the past and future meet. It’s where our memories and anticipations come together.
It’s not a point on a timeline. It’s not November 5th, 1955.
It’s watching the entire Back to the Future trilogy on your couch one rainy weekend with your girl under your arm, blankets wrapped around your legs, the cats over your shoulders, and endless bottles of wine in reaching distance. It’s ordering from a food app when neither of you feels like cooking, and while she uses the bathroom you think “yeah, life is fucking great.”
That’s la durée.
I Have Questions About Back to the Future 3
The real questions arise from Back to the Future 3.
Like, what is that child actor doing? Is he signalling to someone off-stage that he has to pee? Why didn’t they reshoot the scene? Didn’t anyone notice?
He’s clearly speaking some kind of language. I think he just has to pee. That’s the most logical explanation.
For those unaware: at the end of Back to the Future 3 (spoiler alert) the Doc arrives in a flying train time-machine with his wife Clara and their young family. While the Doc gives a passionate farewell speech to Marty (and us, the audience), one of the child actors makes hand signals. First a “come here” motion, then a finger-point to his crotch.
The universal sign for, ‘Come over here, I’ve gotta pee.’
The child actor ruined the scene but I guess they liked Christopher Lyoyd’s take so they kept it. No one would notice. Right?
Imagine being that kid.
What’s that gotta look like from his perspective? Big studio lights. Big-ass 1980s cameras. All you know is you’ve got to stand there. Something about action. But you drank too much juice and now you have to pee. But if you make eye contact with a certain someone and do the hand signal, shortly you will be satisfyingly peeing.
La durée.
Language fails to capture the la durée’s essence. La durée’s fluidity and conceptual continuity. Language breaks down our experience into distinct, static elements.
But our temporal experience is undefinable.
Example: the words I’m using here are only skimming the surface. I literally cannot convey the full richness and flow of experience. But this isn’t a cop-out. Let me provide an example within the example.
You know that feeling after you’ve finished a really good book or movie? It’s like the entire experience is within you. From start to finish, you can comprehend it as an entire thing.
It’s something you experienced. It’s just there. Of course, as soon as it occurs we start putting it into words. We freeze these moments in time and define them. They lose their continuity.
La durée dissolves into mech time.
Of course, language is a double-edged sword here. A useful tool but also dangerous when taken too seriously. Like money.
Language gives us communication and understanding. But it has its limits. We cannot define our direct experience.
The best we can do is use metaphors and symbols. We can approximate la durée. Deduce its existence beyond feeling. Language and metaphor can suggest rather than define.
Stories, poetry, music, and other creative works evoke la durée. Scientific descriptions and technical language fail to capture the nuances of human experience. Only art can do this.
And this is why the Back to the Future trilogy is important to our understanding of la durée. Its time-travel anomalies highlight the flaws in our own thinking. Mistaking mechanical time for real-time.
Consider, the Grammar Nazi.
We’ll call her her for inclusivity reasons. This Nazi loves grammatical structures like it’s reality itself. Rigid and fixed rules dominate her mind.
Seriously. She filters all thought and experience through a rigid framework. She is at odds with the flowing nature of la durée.
Consider, the Grammar Nazi insists on correct tenses. Past, present, and future. This suggests a segmented view of time and thus reality itself.
But language is subjective and always open to possible miscommunication and misinterpretation.
Thus, the Grammar Nazi, with her fixed nature of words and grammatical rules, creates a conscious wall that separates herself (and others under her influence) from the true essence of la durée.
Of course, language can dance around the essence of the la durée.
As mentioned, through film, literature, poetry, metaphor, music. Rhythms in general can do the job, like drum circles. And philosophy is good at gesturing toward la durée’s ineffable nature.
Anything that engages the individual’s intuition and imagination evokes la durée. Meditation is perhaps the purest or simplest way to experience it unfiltered.
I recommend zazen.
But Onto the Real Questions
What does it mean to go back in mechanical time? If such a thing were possible, what would it mean for the Back to the Future trilogy?
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning of this piece, one should not take time-travel movies too seriously.
Especially Back to the Future. The best “mech time” explanation I can give is one that involves John Titor and cone-shaped time travel within the multiverse.
But who needs that explanation?
What we really need is an interpretation.
We interpret la durée as mechanical time. Just as we interpret real life in words. Recognizing patterns in nature allows us to thrive. First as hunter-gatherers and later as civilization builders.
Language may fail to capture the essence of life but language brings variety and variety is the spice of life.
So ultimately, we’re discussing two different things.
Essence vs. spice.
La durée vs. mech time.
Language and grammar vs. what we actually mean.
Back to the Future is a fun, fictional trilogy of films that highlight how we view time. But it’s not how time really works.
Likewise, dividing the world up into marginal units helps explain how we’re wired as evolved apes walking around on this third rock from the sun.
But it’s not what we really are.
A core essence, a ground of being, permeates everything. We are a continuous flow of experience. An unfolding reality.
Seeing yourself as a fixed point in space-time is like the Grammar Nazi who views words as objective, fixed, universal things.
What does this mean? What’s the point of all this? To quote Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future 3, while his son Verne Brown makes a gesture toward his crotch,
It means your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.