h/t Dr Mazza.
Back to the Future. Released in theaters July 3, 1985. I’m at a loss to write about what it felt like at that time. Peak Reagan, though we found out decades later that that was quite the Blue Pill.
Released for Fourth of July long weekend, but the movie is set in the Fall. School had to be in session, of course! The opening sequence, which contains a most unfortunate blasphemy, takes place on October 26th. Muslim terrorists have their plutonium stolen, and it was permitted to portray them on-screen. Imagine.
Marty goes back to 1955, and the entire premise of the film hinges on the cultural shockwave that immerses the viewer. Truly, a different world. But if the movie were made today, he would go back to 1995. Aside from smartphones not existing yet (though cell phones did), really the only thing that would stand out? Awful drab brown fashion, Nash Bridges and Frasier most famous examples? For the record, the best thing on TV during the mid-90s was Whose Line is it Anyway. Look for the reruns, and thank me later. Now, enjoy a little Huey.
This links Back to the Future with 911 – has anyone seen this?
https://youtu.be/P1ULjJ3EqyY?si=oesDvCd889Wen528
No, Meg. Don’t go there.
Putting aside the 9/11 stuff, Zemeckis’ dark vision of the future Hill Valley is an eerily spot-on vision of the America to come.
From around the late-90s onward, the culture started rapidly losing its form and definition (and everything else that makes a culture a culture). When I look at old pictures from the 00s and 10s, the only way I can tell them apart is by the picture or video quality, and how good the phone taking the picture was. Otherwise, the fashions, hairstyles, cars, architecture… none of it tells me anything at all (except maybe the ubiquitous bubble cars and EVs of the 2020s).
The 70s, 80s, and most of the 90s all have glaring distinctions. I can look at any picture from those eras, pictures of perfect strangers, and guess within 3 years when the picture was taken. Everything post 2000 feels like one continuous, artless, joyless decade. A decade that just stopped trying.
The number of movies worth watching (or fit to watch) seems to decrease with each passing year. I watch very few but one I enjoyed was The Vanishing (made in 2018) with Gerard Butler. Well-acted, tense, atmospheric and with occasional outbreaks of primitive but not gratuitous violence. Perfect for the grandparents.
For the most part, the life and soul of the arts have rotted away. Music is effectively dead, movies and television have become an endless parade of imitations of imitations, architecture has been reduced to manufacturing cheap and disposable structures built to be destroyed in a generation or less, practically ever car on the road looks exactly the same and come in one of three colors (white, mostly), advertising is completely devoid of creativity and nuance, style and fashion are non-existent, novels are mostly trash, etc, etc.
Creativity and inspiration come from a soul that desires a connection with the Almighty. That’s the “muse” that drives men to pursue goodness, truth, and beauty through art. Even in the early post-Christian era (mid 60s through the mid 90s), that desire hadn’t been completely extinguished, and beautiful art was not only sneaking through, it was being appreciated and rewarded (imagine a film like “Braveheart” even being green-lit today, let alone sweeping the Oscars).
Inspiration and creativity have been (deliberately) crushed in modern culture. We may get the occasional glimpses of it here and there from established artists from the old world who still have the cache to do what they want to do (like Terrance Malick, whose “A Hidden Life” was the last truly beautiful thing I’ve seen on the screen)… but once those artists die off, we’re going to be left with nothing but satanic auto-tuned hip-hop, alcoholic (also auto-tuned) country/pop, cartoon spinoffs, mindless Marvel movies, slasher flicks, ubiquitous pornography… and the distant, fading memories of a world where men still wanted to make beautiful things. (And if you’re keeping your cherished works of art and literature from the old world on digital files, you won’t even have the memories for very long…They will be wiped out at some point.)
We don’t have a culture anymore. We have an anti-culture. Nothing of this era will be remembered by history, except as a cautionary tale.
Whenever a movie breaks the 2nd Commandment, I pause it and say a prayer of reparation. The fun-for-the-whole-family movie Back to the Future had so much blasphemy, I took the disc out and threw it in the trash. It would’ve been a great movie otherwise. Shame how blasphemy has been normalized.
Great comment.
You simply can’t watch things which blaspheme.
I live in a rural Australian town and, being down on my luck, for a while drove taxis however I had to quit for the principal reason that nigh on every customer, across a range of age & socio-economic profiles, blasphemed. Sometimes just an ‘innocent’ “O my G__” but typically the very much worse & worst. Even from young, well-dressed & sober women, young families, etc.
What a dreadful age this is.
Isn’t it painful just to mingle in society these days. You would be covering your ears in Ireland where Our Lord’s precious name is taken in vain by man, woman and child, even amongst devout Church going believers…
It was actually more prevalent in 80s movies than it is today. A lot more. “Back to the Future” is the perfect example… that script was utterly polluted with blasphemy by Zemeckis and Bob Gale (a quick check of Wiki’s “Early Life” section for both men will explain why).
I don’t believe that’s because anything has gotten better. I just think the name of Our Lord is so far removed from the lips of the average person today, it doesn’t even rate as a blasphemous profanity. His Holy Name just means nothing to them.
Of course, as we all know, His Name will mean everything to each and every one of them some day. We can only pray that it happens while they’re still drawing breath on this earth.