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Coward, Bully, Hero
One of the concepts in Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a thousand faces" is that the "Hero" archetype also has these "shadow forms"
- the coward and
- the bully.
Because of my age/culture etc, I tend to compare everything about The Timeless Art of Story Telling to a particular masterpiece from my childhood: Back to the Future.
Hence, the purest form of "the coward" and "the bully" that leaps to mind for me are:
Coward= "George McFly"Bully= "Biff Tannen"
From their very first appearance on screen, as adult men in 1985, we see the dynamic between them is exactly that of a school yard bully and a cowardly victim. Later we see that this same dynamic is clearly and exactly established by 1955.
Thinking through Back to the Future, and "The hero with a thousand faces" -- one way to think of Back to the Future is as a story where the central character is not Marty, but George. Through this lens we see:
- George is the protagonist, who goes from Coward to Hero
- Biff is obviously the antagonist, and
- Marty is the Mentor, the Yoda, the Old Ben Kenobi, the Mr Miyagi, who teaches George to overcome his flaw and go from Coward to Hero.
Which is surprising, since Doc would seem to "obviously" be the mentor character, until you notice he doesn't mentor Marty (or George) in any way. He just says "Great Scott!" a lot and acts sciency.
I explained all this to my eldest son. He quickly pointed out that the coward to hero arc doesn't really apply to George. How so? I asked. Son explained that at the end George is not reconciled with Biff, they have not transcended the Coward-Bully role, they've pretty much just flipped it around: now Biff is the coward, and George is the bully.
Sure, George is not as mean as Biff was but he seems to hold Biff in a form of peonage.
Interesting point of view. Thinking about it later, I figured that if George had truly become a hero, then Old Biff in 2015 would not have been so bitter in Part 2, causing all the shenanigans that followed.
Marty as the Main Character
Looking at the Back to the Future series overall, Marty's "character development" is present, but strangely placed in relation to the overall story.
In the first film, before he goes into the past, he states:
What if I send in the tape and they don't like it? I mean, what if they say I'm no good? What if they say, "Get outta here, kid. You got no future"? I mean, I just don't think I can take that kind of rejection. Jesus, I'm starting to sound like my old man!
Aside: The "you got no future" phrase is brilliant, incidentally, as it works on multiple layers. The "Jesus, I'm starting to sound like my old man!" line is so straight-forward that it's almost "on the nose".
And, to absolutely driving home the point that this is precisely something his old man would say, George uses almost precisely the same words twice --
- Regarding why he doesn't try to get his science fiction stories published.
- Regarding why he doesn't want to ask Lorraine out on a date, "What if she said No? I don't know if I could take that kind of a rejection..."
Marty is the perfect mentor for George, because he is never a "coward" as such, but there is a subtlety at work in the first movie that is easy to overlook.
While Marty does have the courage to participate in the Battle of the Bands, the pertinent fact is that his rejection there is very discouraging to him. At this point he "can't take that kind of rejection".
At the end of the film, when he presents a virtuoso performance that is effectively a tour-de-force of many future innovations in guitar showmanship from 1955 to 1985 -- his command performance is ultimately rejected by the audience. Here's the crux: Marty finds he absolutely can take that kind of rejection. Far from being crushed, he delivers a fantastic quip, and walks away victorious.
In the second film we learn that Marty has a new Coward-Bully-Hero related quirk: He has been so keen to avoid being perceived as a chicken (a type of coward) that he has been manipulated by bullies multiple times, with dire consequences throughout his life.
This flaw surfaces again in the third film, and leads him to needlessly agree to a duel which will almost certainly kill him. This arc is not resolved until the very end of the third movie, and takes only one moment to solve. Marty has finally learned not to "rise to the bait" when a bully calls him a chicken. Only when he transcends the coward-bully game, can he avoid the car crash that would've so badly impacted his entire family, and all the negative future consequences there after.