Analyzing Representation in Back to the Future

Back to the Future is my favorite movie, and it was filmed in 1985. This movie has a lot to say about how characters and groups are represented. Marty McFly and Doc Brown, the two main characters, show us how ideas about gender, intellect, and race were portrayed in the media at the time. This movie reflects stereotypes and leaves out certain groups, showing how media often mirrors the norms and biases of the time period.

Marty McFly is the typical 1980s male hero, bold, confident, and rebellious. His character follows traditional masculine traits, and the movie shows how his defiance of authority and willingness to take risks lead him to success. However, this limited view of masculinity leaves little room for other types of male characters. Women, like Marty’s mother, Lorraine, are portrayed as passive or emotional, supporting male characters rather than being central to the action. This choice reflects the selection of traits that reinforce gender stereotypes, making it clear how Back to the Future sticks to conventional ideas of gender roles.

Doc Brown is another example of how this movie relies on exaggerated stereotypes. As the "mad scientist," Doc is eccentric and quirky, which makes him funny but also isolates him socially. His character is a classic example of how media often portrays geniuses as odd or disconnected from society. On top of that, the movie romanticizes the 1950s, showing it as a perfect, nostalgic time, while barely addressing the racial and social issues of the time. Characters of color, like the worker from the diner, have minor roles, and the film doesn’t explore the challenges they likely faced. De-centering of unrepresented groups is common in Hollywood, where the focus is usually on the experiences of the dominant social group.

Back to the Future reflects the stereotypes and cultural norms of the time. By looking at how gender, intellect, and race are represented, we can see how the film selects certain traits to emphasize while ignoring others, revealing the biases that were present in the media when it was made.

Kotsias_soundscape_per8

 During class, I learned that all the sounds I hear in movie, other than dialogue, is not recorded by filming the actual object, but using foley or pre-recorded sounds. For this project, we had to find and make sounds to create a 1-2 minute scene without video. We were only allowed to use 7 words for the whole scene and the rest had to be found on a website or made using foley. 

Our approach to this project was to find the sounds first and see which ones we could make better using foley. We chose to make a scene about two men in the forest looking for Bigfoot, so we had a lot of sounds to pick and make. 

During brainstorming, we figured out all the sounds we needed to complete this project. Then we made the outline. The outline helped us a ton because we already knew what sounds to look for on the websites. We used Adobe Premier Rush to edit our project. 

I think that we could have added a few more background sounds to the scene and that we did very well managing the time on each individual sound. 

Project Link: https://youtu.be/LMQ2Dg1TVbY?si=0bTzOJt7tX6NnP7n