On this week’s Movies vs. Capitalism, hosts Rivka Rivera and Frank Cappello are joined by Jon Shelton, professor of democracy and justice studies at University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, for a deep dive on the 1985 classic Back to the Future.
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A rough transcript of the episode is available here.
According to a 2021 study, the United States trails behind nearly every country in the European Union when it comes to economic mobility and opportunity. Much of that disparity is systemic: Class, race, and gender contribute to whether a young person will become more or less financially prosperous than their parents.
Almost 40 years ago, Robert Zemeckis' sci-fi comedy Back to the Future spoke to this phenomenon. In today’s episode, the MVC group discusses the film’s focus on hyper-individualism as it relates to economic mobility. They also critique the character of Doc Brown for his reckless “Silicon Valley-esque” scientific approach, and unpack the flawed sexual politics ascribed to the lead female character, Lorraine Baines McFly.
For next week’s movie, MVC will be watching Michael Cimino’s epic Western Heaven’s Gate.
Links:
- The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2023)
- The Goldie Wilson Conspiracy (Yo! Black Pop Culture)
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Guys,
I don't know if the version of the Johnson County War I read long ago is still good history.
But the version of real history I remember puts "Heavens Gate" beyond the pale as revisionist.
Cimimo's first film, "Electraglide in Blue," made him a wunderkind. At at the end, a hippy murders a good cop. Deliberately inverting the end of "Easy Rider" here is no accident.
My rough memory from Time/Life books 'Old West' series (all caveats about history remembered from a secondary source by an old guy apply);
Most of the ranchers in old west weren't grizzled pioneers, like you see in the movies, they were young easterners, who made their way west to build their destinies with grit, determination, and a pile of daddy's gold, reaching to the sky.
In the early 1890s, the large cattle operations in Wyoming had a problem; small independent cattle ranchers were giving the large operators serious competition.
The large ranches could have competed on price using economies of scale. They could have competed on the basis of quality. They could have just bought out the smaller operators.
After carefully considering all the options, the Cattleman's Association decided the most cost-effective route was to hire themselves a death squad, and just kill them all.
They had a professional killer who was already working for them recruit 100 hearties, and arm and equip them.
They then compiled a kill-list of "rustlers", including the sheriff, the mayor, I believe, and about 100 or so other Johnson County politicians and citizens.
Since the rich young money men insisted on accompanying the expedition to monitor their investment, the operation got off to a slow start, and ended up being a little wagon-heavy to accommodate the supplies necessary to maintain the money men, in the style to which they were accustomed.
Before reaching the county seat, where the massacre was supposed to start, they decided stop at a trappers cabin to kill the people in it for the practice (I have heard since that one of the people in the cabin was considered an important target on the kill-list). This took longer than anticipated, so they ended up camping short of their destination.
Unfortunately, this delay resulted in word getting out, and when they woke up, the death squad and their employers found themselves surrounded by the extremely irate and incredibly well-armed citizens of Johnson County, including the sheriff.
The death squad managed to retreat to a friendly ranch. But they were still surrounded, and running out of ammunition.
However, they managed to get a rider out under cover of darkness. That rider got a telegram out to a Senator a rancher's family owned, back east in Washington. A cavalry column was dispatched.
As I recall, the death squad was almost out of ammunition, and worse yet, the citizens had managed to get some dynamite.
But just as the death squad and their wealthy employers were about to be apprehended the forces of justice, the cavalry column dispatched by the Senator arrived and "took them into custody", to the extreme fucking chagrin of the sheriff and the citizenry.
And none of the rich young men had to suffer the indignity of spending a day in jail. Another thrilling tale of the Old West. The End.