I know I have rolled my eyes whenever anyone suggested Zemeckis was trojan horsing illicit left-wing satire into into Forrest Gump, but I legitimately believe that Back to the Future is more or less doing that very thing from the inside out -- building a ludicrous test case wherein the 1950s and 1980s were in direct dialogue with each other, in many cases as broadly as possible ("Ronald Reagan? The ACTOR?!") and in other, more surprising ways, as when the movie zeros in on the hypocrisy of the silent generation's endorsement of the good old values of yesteryear (i.e. Marty's mom insisting "back in my day we NEVER parked in the car with boys!" and, in flashback, proving herself quite the, ahem, backseat driver). It's possible it might have read differently to some who were more politically aware than I was in 1987/88 (when I first saw it) and for whom the decade's retrenchment was a very real and very disappointing trend. But, real-time for me was that I was seduced by the direction and (per MD'A) the awesome use of "plant and payoff" as a kid and retroactively assigned political subtext with age.Mister Tee wrote:I also found the film’s epilogue a depressing reflection of the era’s Reaganite values – the father’s whole life has change because he punched somebody out. And how has it changed? – he has a ton of money, and his social-leper daughter now has lots of good-looking guys taking her out. The film might as well have stayed in the 50s; that where its ethos came from.
I haven't read it yet, but the BFI monograph on the film looks like a must-read.