Back to the Future: All It Takes Is A Little Self Confidence

Back to the Future has been a certified classic for almost 40 years. Upon first glance it looks like the story of a kid who makes a simple time travel mistake and then spends the rest of the film trying to correct it by making sure his parents fall in love and save his family’s future. It’s got everything from comedy, a love story (two in fact!), suspense, a killer soundtrack. But then I got to thinking what really makes it a timeless tale. Then it hit me: this is a story about the power of confidence, not just love.

In the dinner scene at the beginning of the film we see Marty and his family unhappily gathered together. We see that this is a family that loves each other but they’re each unhappy with themselves, and therefore are unhappy as a family. Marty’s brother Dave gives their dad a kiss on the head before catching the bus to his crappy fast food job. Marty’s mom Lorraine looks at her husband George longingly but pitifully. Marty’s sister Linda curtly pulls the curlers out of her hair and tells Marty his girlfriend called. It’s the gestures like this that let us know that this is a family that cares about each other, yet they are each lacking in personal confidence or satisfaction. They each sit slumping in their chairs with discouraged expressions on their faces; Lorraine sips her beer and reminisces about better times, George hides behind his notebook, Marty looks at them all sadly.

Flash forward to the end of the film after Marty has returned home from his adventures in time. He’s been gone for weeks meddling in his parents past and assumes he has returned to life as it was. However, to the rest of the family only one night has passed, and Marty wakes up to a completely different reality at breakfast than the one he left at dinner. His brother and sister sit contentedly at the table. Dave’s fast food uniform has been replaced with a suit because “he always wears a suit to the office.” Linda’s glasses are gone and her tacky wardrobe of bright colors and chunky jewelry has been replaced with pastels. The most telling detail is the exchange Marty overhears between Linda and Dave:

Dave: “Some guy called for you. It was either Greg or Craig.”
Linda: “Well which one was it, Greg or Craig?”
Dave: “I don’t know! I can’t keep up with all your boyfriends!”

This is an exact mirror of what “original” Linda said the night before when she almost jealously told Marty that Jennifer had called for him and complained to her mother about “how am I ever supposed to meet anybody.” Linda and Dave are in effect the same siblings Marty left behind. They are the same ages they were, they sound and look the same, they have the same names. The biggest difference is that they are both confident people now. In the original 1985 that Marty knew, there was no real reason Dave could’t have gotten an office job or Linda couldn’t have gotten a boyfriend (or several). The only reason was that they didn’t know how. And that’s because their parents didn’t know how to teach them to be confident.

When Marty goes back to 1955 he sees that his parents met by chance, with Lorraine’s dad accidentally hitting George with his car, giving Lorraine a chance to play Florence Nightingale. With this original scenario George and Lorraine didn’t have to do anything to fight for each other, and they each stayed comfortably in their insecure bubbles; George as a bumbling pushover wannabe writer and Lorraine as an alcoholic party girl. But when Marty tampers with fate and pushes his dad out of the way of the car, he creates a situation where his parents have to work to get together. As Marty coaches his dad about how to get Lorraine’s attention he not only teaches him how to talk to girls, but he teaches George how to assert himself, how to say what’s on his mind, how to put himself out there and be vulnerable. “We gotta show her that you, George McFly are a fighter. You are somebody that’s gonna stand up for yourself. Somebody who’s gonna protect her,” the best dating advice a son could ever give his dad. In this desperate attempt to make George man up and chase Lorraine, Marty is unwittingly teaching his dad in very simple terms how to live his whole life, not as a wimp hiding behind his notebook, but as a fighter who shouldn’t be afraid of rejection.

“Get outta town! I didn’t know you did anything creative,” Marty says shocked as he discovers George’s hidden talent for sci fi writing. “Oh no, no no. I never let anybody read my stories…what if they didn’t like them…what if they told me I was no good,” George explains his crippling fear of criticism. After a week of Marty’s lessons culminating in an epic punch in Biff’s face, George has learned not to let fear stand in his way. Cut to the new 1985 where George’s first novel “A Match Made in Space” has been published, with the freshly printed copies delivered to the McFly house. With Marty’s coaching George is able to conquer his fear of rejection in all aspects of his life and become the writer he always wanted to be. And Lorraine has a husband she looks at with pride, not pity.

“You shouldn’t drink! You might regret it later in life,” Marty warns Lorraine as he grabs a bottle of liquor from her hands as they “park” the car at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance in 1955, and in that very instant saves her from a future of alcoholism. “Anybody who’s anybody drinks,” Lorraine explains to Marty exasperated, before taking off her shrug and crushing his body with hers against the car door. We see original Lorraine at dinner in 1985 as a hopeless alcoholic warning her kids about the dangers of chasing boys declaring that she “never called a boy, or chased a boy, or sat and parked a car with boy!” Seeing her clearly contradict her self in the car with Marty in 1955, we see that future Lorraine regrets her past wild behavior thinking that it contributed to her dismal future. But as Marty reacts like “such a square” at her smoking, drinking, and provocativeness she starts to have a change of heart as she realizes she doesn’t need to try to be cool or be “anybody who’s anybody.” She’s fine being herself, and better yet George already liked her without all the flash. Thus we see her in the new 1985 with the same vivaciousness she had in high school, but without the drinking problem or warnings about how “we all make mistakes in life,” something she said ominously in the dinner scene. Instead she and George laugh and flirt as they come home from a tennis game, showing their common interests and lasting attraction to each other. Before, these things were clearly missing from their original marriage where at the dinner table they could barely make eye contact and George’s laugh made Lorraine grimace.

By changing the course of their initial meeting, Marty inadvertently teaches his parents to be the masters of their own fates and in turn they are able to pass this along to their kids. Seeing them gather together at breakfast a mere few hours after their dysfunctional dinner in another lifetime, they are a happy, supportive, content family of confident individuals. Lorraine encourages Marty on his big date with Jennifer up at the lake with the new car. George hands Marty his newly published book and unwittingly quotes Marty right back to him, “like I’ve always told you, if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything!” In 1955 Marty told George these exact words, preceded by “George there’s nothing to be scared of, all it takes is a little self confidence.” Almost 40 years later and Marty’s message is still as true as ever. All it takes is confidence to build the life you want, and the McFly family remains a timeless example.