Marty McFly's Adventures in Casual Sex-Criming

Let's take a fresh look at 'Back to the Future's' narrative obsession with sexual assault and what it might teach us about our culture

At 5AM StoryTalk, I try to examine art from fresh perspectives and encourage you to do the same. For example, as time passes, as we change with age, as our culture changes around us, much of how we see and understand the world can reveal new truths about art we loved in the past. Today, I want to take this approach with a film I think it’s fair to call beloved by several generations of moviegoers – Back to the Future.

The now-classic time-traveling film was released in 1985, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale and directed by Zemeckis. It was an immediate hit, spawned two sequels, and was ultimately named to the National Film Registry for its historical, cultural, and aesthetic contributions to the art form. But I can’t help but wonder if the NFR took into account the fact that Back to the Future treats sexual assault as a convenient plot device the same way the most horrific horror films do.

Yes, that’s right. Back to the Future is easily one of the rapiest films ever to call itself a blockbuster hit and certainly the rapiest to ever call itself a family film. I say that as someone who hates the word “rapey”, but, Jesus, does this film qualify.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s dive in together. In doing so, I hope we can reflect on how Back to the Future was embraced by audiences around the globe despite its mistreatment of its lead female character and casual and repeated — you might even say obsessive — use of sexual assault to move the plot forward. Not just male audiences, but all audiences. Such was and remains the cultural acceptance of anti-woman violence that I know numerous women who still call this film one of their favorites – some of whom are screenwriters actively committed to improving the representation of women onscreen.

And by the end of the piece, I’ll deliver a twist to complicate this conversation. More on that in a moment.

SEX CRIME #1

In 1985, where Back to the Future’s story begins, we meet Marty McFly and his miserable parents and loser siblings. His father George is weak and pathetic, regularly abused by his high school bully Biff. His mother Lorraine is overweight, a chain smoker, and an alcoholic. When how George and Lorraine met comes up at the dinner table, Lorraine says she still doesn’t know what George was doing outside her parents’ house all those years ago when her father accidentally hit him with his car.

Soon enough, Marty ends up traveling back in time to 1985 in a nuclear-powered DeLorean. I don’t need to go through the plot, which I’m sure you know enough about to keep up with me here. In the past, he encounters his father, just as weak and pathetic as he is in the present. George escapes his attention, though, and Marty has to give chase – which is how Marty finds George perched in a tree, staring through binoculars at a girl changing in her bedroom.

The girl is, of course, Lorraine. Aw, isn’t that sweet? Wait…what?

A moment later, George spills from the tree as a car approaches. We discover this is why Lorraine’s father hit George and how she really met her future husband, who never told her what he was really doing outside her house.

But in this timeline, Marty intervenes, pushing George out of the way. Whoops.

The most important detail here is: George is a peeping Tom.

This is Sex Crime #1. And it’s committed by one of our film’s “good guys”.

SEX CRIME #3

We’ll skip Sex Crime #2 for now. Let’s go next to Hill Valley High School. Because Marty “saved” George’s life, George never met Lorraine and now Marty is in danger of never being born. Marty must somehow make his parents fall in love, which is an adorable idea. Kind of genius, really, except for the peeping Tom part. But on this day at school, George wants no part in Marty’s plans because Biff — George’s bully in the future — is busy sexually assaulting Lorraine. As Lorraine pleads for him to stop, Biff grabs her all over.

Marty has to intervene again, which complicates things for him because at this point Lorraine — his mother — has developed an intense crush on him. Protecting her virtue has only intensified this feeling. Whoops again, Marty.

This is Sex Crime #3. At least it’s committed by a bad guy this time.

All that said, these reversals to the plot action are superb. No arguing with how well-constructed this script is.

SEX CRIME #4

Marty is increasingly desperate to save his future existence, so he hatches a plan to finally bring his parents together. He’s going to take Lorraine to a high school dance where he will pretend-attempt to date-rape his mother in a parked car so that George can “come to her rescue”.

No, seriously.

George does suggest this isn’t a very nice thing to do, but Lorraine is hot, so it doesn’t take a lot of arm-twisting to get him to agree to any plan that might get him a date with her.

No, seriously.

So, at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, Marty parks in the parking lot and gets ready to pretend-assault his mother — who in the future has long insisted she was a prude in high school. Lorraine, however, is anything but — as we’ve already come to suspect. She throws herself at him as he protests, complicating the plan.

Again, great plot reversal.

While this sex crime is interrupted by the victim actually wanting to have sex (ooh, that’s too complicated for me to get into, so let’s just skip that one for now), the intent remains. So, let’s call this one Sex Crime #4.

Then, the car door is thrown open and Biff and his gang of misfits interrupt, ironically “saving” Lorraine from her (fake) rape the same way Marty had to save Lorraine from Biff’s sexual assault earlier in the film. Frankly, there’s so much sexual assault going around, it’s getting easy to make these kinds of connections.

SEX CRIME #5

With Marty locked in the trunk of a car, Biff then decides to actually rape Lorraine.

This is Sex Crime #5, which I have to point out is presented by the film as its own real sex crime since all the others were…I don’t know…innocent? Funny? Incestuous? In other words, this is the only one Lorraine truly needs to be saved from.

Which is when George shows up and, discovering his courage, kicks Biff’s ass like a bad-ass.

SEX CRIME #6

If you think the sex-criming is done at this point, you would be wrong. George and Lorraine take to the dance floor, finally united, except another loser bully shoves George out of the way and claims Lorraine for himself. At this point, the plot turns are getting a little repetitive, but let’s just go with it anyway.

The new bully restrains Lorraine and inappropriately touches her as she pleads for him to stop and for George, yet again, to come to her rescue – which, of course, George does. He’s a real man now. Nobody’s going to touch his woman but him!

DON’T FORGET ABOUT SEX CRIME #2

Okay, we’ve covered all the creepy sex crimes where men treat Lorraine like some kind of plaything to ogle and fight over and rescue without ever considering she has any agency of her own. But that’s the twist. She does have agency of her own and she uses it to…also commit a sex crime.

Back to the Future is like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for sex crimes. “You get to be a sex criminal! You get to be a sex criminal! You get to be a sex criminal!”

Because at the end of the day, Doc Brown, Marty’s mentor/friend in both time periods, is the only lead character in Back to the Future who doesn’t participate in some kind of a sex crime.

You see, after Marty is struck by his grandfather’s car, he wakes up in a dark bedroom. Lorraine sits across from him, all but drooling over the teenage boy in her bed.

Lorraine calls Marty “Calvin” because that’s what’s on his underwear.

Marty then discovers he’s not wearing any pants. Did his mother take off his pants…for no reason?

While it’s entirely possible that Marty’s grandparents removed his pants…though for what reason, I couldn’t tell you…it’s clear his mother is a hornball who, it’s strongly implied, also snuck a peek at Marty’s junk.

In other words, Lorraine commits Sex Crime #2 – against her own son.

No, seriously.

IN CONCLUSION

All that sex-criming finally pays off. With George and Lorraine now a couple, Marty returns to the present and discovers his actions in the past have produced different, happier parents.

George, the predator-turned-bad-ass, now keeps his former bully Biff as a kind of slave. In other words, the masculinity tables have been turned because George won their dick-measuring contest.

Meanwhile, George’s conquest Lorraine is skinny and “hot” again, more interested in playing tennis than tossing back hard liquor. In other words, being married to a real man is a great diet regimen for a woman.

Message: Being a creepy kid who pervs on girls through their windows and conspires to fake-rescue them from fake-rape doesn’t mean you can’t end up on top of the world if you kick the right guy’s ass.

Now, the question for discussion here is, why didn’t any of us notice this or care about it as children or as adults when we rewatched it or, after having kids of our own, showing it to them?

The obvious answer is in 1985, Lorraine was nothing but a plot device, with no real character of her own because women were very rarely given any of their own in these kinds of stories. For every Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor, there were twenty Lorraines.

What makes Back to the Future especially concerning is that Lorraine isn’t just a plot device, she’s casually targeted by men who don’t find sexual assault morally grotesque. Even Marty doesn’t seem especially concerned about rape; he just finds it icky he’s going to try to fake-rap his own mother. On top of how Lorraine is treated, she, as a character, also views violating men’s bodies as an acceptable way to explore her repressed sexuality. Hell, when Marty realizes his mother actually wants to have sex with him and tries to resist, she throws herself at him against his will.

Put another way: Rape just isn’t a big deal to anyone in Back to the Future.

Nearly four decades later, we still haven’t reckoned with this fact because to do so would unsettle our nostalgic memories of our childhood. At the end of the day, it’s just easier to pretend away all the casual sex-criming in Back to the Future than admit a seminal family film is entirely predicated on it.

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