Longtime radio host Owens Lee Pomeroy once said, "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: You find the present and past perfect!" It's common for people to be nostalgic because they like to remember happy parts of their past or imagine living in a fun era, like the 1950s. By feeling nostalgic for past memories or wishing to live in bygone times like the 1950s, people feel happier and more meaning is added to their lives. In the movie Back to the Future, a great sense of nostalgia is provoked when Marty is transported back to 1955 because everything seemed so much simpler back then. During this time, there was a much more defined sense of gender roles and family structure. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Back to the Future, seventeen-year-old Marty McFly is accidentally transported back to 1955 through the ability of a DeLorean-time machine invented by his scientist friend, Dr. Emmett Brown. When Doc shows this machine to Marty early in the morning, he and Marty are greeted by assailants enraged at Doc for stealing their plutonium, which he needed to power the DeLorean. After Doc is seemingly fatally shot by terrorists, Marty climbs into the car and drives at 88 MPH (the speed needed to initiate the time travel function) sending him back to 1955. However, Marty does not know what he has done and does not it's safe. of where exactly he is until he picks up a newspaper in town and sees the date "November 5, 1955". While living in 1955, Marty meets his father, George, who spies on Marty's mother, Lorraine, from a tree. George slips from the tree onto the road, but Marty saves him from being hit and is hit himself. This event disrupts Marty's story because his mother is attracted to him. Throughout the film, Marty tries to make his mother, Lorraine, fall in love with George so that the story remains as it was before. Meanwhile, Marty meets Doc from 1955 who helps him throughout the film so he can send him back to his future home of 1985. For a week, Marty is forced to live in the Hill Valley of 1955 and "starts" new trends along the way. . To escape bullies, make a skateboard out of a piece of wood on a board. He also sings and plays "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry (unreleased at the time) at the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance to the amazement of the students and the principal. “I guess you guys aren't ready for this yet,” was the line Marty uttered after leaving the audience in silence after finishing the song. At the dance, Marty manages to make his parents fall in love with him, and Doc manages to send him back to the future thanks in large part to the large amount of energy released from the infamous lightning bolt that struck the clock tower in the town of Hill Valley. In today's society there is a lot of nostalgia for the way life was in the 1950s. Most commonly, nostalgia for the 1950s is prompted by the fact that “all was well in America, a time when the United States truly fulfilled its destiny as a world leader in every way that mattered” (Bellm). As the United States was finished dealing with the Great Depression and World War II, the 1950s were a golden era due to the lack of ongoing conflict. One of the main reasons why many tend to look back on the 1950s with admiration is because they were a calm time. In Back to the Future, nostalgic moments include the old Coca-Cola bottles that required a bottle opener, the gas stations where the gas attendants quickly filled up your car, the diner where all theteenagers met on weekends. As a society today, we tend to remember all the fun times and how seemingly simple things used to be. In the world we live in today, it's nice to look back on this time and wonder if we will ever experience a similar time in the United States again. In the film, we see a sense of more obvious gender roles. For example, when Marty gets hit by a car after saving his father, Lorraine takes care of him like a mother. And she is his mother. His mother begins to fall in love with him because that is how she originally fell in love with George. Throughout the film, Lorraine follows Marty everywhere and at one point says to her friends, "Isn't this a dream?" Meanwhile, George is the odd man out once Marty gets hit by the car because Lorraine was supposed to fall in love with George, not Marty. In the film, Marty tries to instill more courage in George so that he will be aggressive in winning Lorraine's heart. In this 1955, Lorraine is very aggressive as a woman with Marty. This is strange for Marty because in 1985 his mother told his sister that girls should never chase boys and be aggressive when meeting boys. As for George's situation, throughout the film he lacks masculinity when it comes to connecting with girls. George is also bullied by three bullies, most notably Biff. Towards the end of the film, George finally has enough "masculinity" to punch Biff in the face after Biff took advantage of Lorraine in the car at the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance. Thanks to Marty's help, George and Lorraine fall in love once again and the story remains the same. The family structure in the 1950s was much more different than it is today. In the 1950s, there were a plethora of nuclear families, that is, families that contained a father, a mother, and at least one child (“The Nuclear Family”). In the 1950s version of the nuclear family, the man works outside the home while the woman works at home taking care of the children. As seen in Back to the Future, Lorraine's family consisted of father, mother, and three children in total. His mother cleaned the house and prepared dinner, while his father worked. In the film we see the father come home from work with a brand new black and white television, something they had never had before. As a family, they all watched TV together while eating at the table. In today's world, it is rare for families to eat together every evening because everyone is always seemingly busy; parents work, kids are at soccer practice, etc. According to CASA Colombia Research, “adolescents who eat dinner with their family at least five times a week report better relationships with their parents, less drug and alcohol use, less smoking, more frequent attendance at religious services, and lower levels of stress” (Sodergren). Families who eat together are healthier both physically and emotionally. One of the main reasons why family life in the 1950s was more structured was because meal times were ideal for spending quality time together as a family. The 1950s represented an era when families seemed "golden" and more structurally sound than today's world. In Back to the Future, Marty realizes that things weren't perfect in the 1950s. For example, when he takes Lorraine to the dance, she suggests that they "park", which pushes her to drink and be sexually aggressive towards Marty. When Marty questions his ethics regarding drinking, he responds, “Don't be so square. Anyone who is anyone drinks. In the 1950s, many children were growing up in families heavily affected by alcohol and physical abuse (Coontz). Today, we often overlook the negatives that happened in the 1950s and society often overlooks the trials that the nation went throughaddress regarding rights. The reason we overlook these difficult moments when we are nostalgic is because of selective amnesia (Coontz). This means we block out the bad parts of memories in favor of the good parts because we want to remember the better moments. Obviously, nostalgic people want to feel good about themselves, so they tend to focus on happy memories. As we age, our selective amnesia for childhood memories increases because we don't remember how the memories made us feel so vividly. According to researchers MalcolmMacLeod and Saima Noreen, who studied whether or not we can learn to forget our memories, personal meaning often changes with memories making memories less secure and easier to forget (Spiegel). The personal meaning of memories changes as we grow older, so we look at our past experiences differently (Moskalenko). This is an adequate explanation for why we are nostalgic for certain memories. Another scene in the film that causes negative feelings about the 1950s is the scene at the first restaurant Marty arrives at in 1955. The scene involves the owner and a black worker arguing. . Marty tells Goldie, the black worker, that he will be mayor one day (in 1985). The owner of the place hears Marty and replies, “A black mayor. That will be the day." As noted here, times for African Americans were not great in the 1950s due to segregation and civil rights issues. There were hardships for African Americans and Mexican Americans who were prevented from vote in some states due to literacy tests not being administered to whites (Coontz). Other issues involved people not following the sexual and gender rules of the time and being “ostracized” (Coontz). dropping out of high school when they felt too upset to attend. Marital rape was also legal in the 1950s and if a man beat his wife, the authorities didn't take it seriously. These problems existed in the 1950s, but we neglect to call them out these memories when we are nostalgic. In the film, Marty's desire to return to his 1985 home represents his desire to want to live in his correct time period. Even though 1955 was fun to live in and experience, he wants to go home because he wants to live as a teenager in 1985, where he plays in a band and has a girlfriend he loves very much. In general, we tend to be nostalgic for times like the 1950s because we believe it would be fun to experience society in a seemingly simple and different way. However, we forget how we are supposed to belong in the present moment because of all the people we love and those who love us. We had to live in the moment and improve the present world. While it's fun to remember the past, engaging in too much nostalgia ultimately doesn't do us any good because it's unhealthy. Studies show that too much nostalgia can risk an absence of joy in the present and the only way to feel happy is to think about past memories. It has also been noted that nostalgia is usually “involuntary and triggered by negative feelings” (Robb). However, according to experts, nostalgia can give meaning to our seemingly boring lives. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay As you watch Back to the Future, It's Fun think about how fun it would have been to live in the 1950s, especially as a teenager. Everything was booming, from the economy to television, cinema and much more. Marty got to live a week in 1955 and experience everything the 50's had to offer.