As discussed by Cracked in reasons why Back to the Future is secretly horrifying, Biff Tannen goes from being a bullying supervisor in the original timeline to a kind of butler to the McFly family in the 1985 caused by Marty altering the timeline.
Specifically, this scene, George punches Biff when he’s groping Lorraine in the car (the original plan being George saving Lorraine from Marty acting like a jackass, foiled by Biff finding him and locking him in a trunk as revenge for $300 damage to his car).
So my question is this - if George hadn’t intervened, would Biff have actually raped a clearly overpowered and protesting Lorraine? If so why in the blue hell are the two so happy with him in the new 1985, letting him around their family rather than avoiding a dangerous sex criminal (granted the '50s were a bit different, but I’d wager attempted rape would be a serious charge even back then)? We know that in 1985A in Back to the Future II alternate Biff is not above multiple murders (George then attempting to murder Marty). Is he one of the biggest karmic Houdinis in film history?
Well, Elaine was only there because she had recently been trying to date Marty, right? So we don’t have to worry about him in the original timeline.
In the new timeline, maybe he was trying to rape her, and maybe he was just fondling her and would stop at making out. But he was stopped pretty early on either way. Seeing as there are women costars who forgave William Shatner for jumping on them in bed, I could see Elaine forgiving Biff, especially since he’s in such a subservient position at the end. Had he actually raped her, sure, she’d be upset. But, yes, attempted rape could be seen as just “boys being boys,” I’m sorry to say.
He doesn’t spend any time in 1985, though, before the second movie. And Doc is clearly monitoring his future, and has shown a propensity to interfereif something goes wrong. So, even after the third movie, Marty is probably alright.
I personally think that, like the photos and the disappearing brothers, Marty’s new memories would eventually catch up with him, sorta fading in. The fading is just a visual representation of the fact that changes in the timeline take time to propagate in the BttF universe.
Plus we have the (arguably non-canon) cartoon series and video game set after the series was over, and Marty’s just fine. (Would have been cool if Marty’s truck showed up in the game, though.)
Have you seen where his hand was when George threw open the door? He was trying to rip off her underwear. So yeah, Marty’s interference in 1955 not only led to his parents never getting together and erasing his and his brother and sister’s existence, he almost caused his mother to get raped by a thug who already was regularly bullying his father. If things hadn’t been straightened out, George and Lorraine’s lives would have gone completely to hell very quickly after that.
Did the movies ever allude to Elizabeth Shue replacing Claudia Wells as Marty’s girlfriend between the first and second movies? Because it would have been perfect within the series for there to be some joke about changing history.
Revenge of the Nerds and Sixteen Candles both scenes of rape being treated as no big deal.
In Revenge of the Nerds, the nerd had sex with a girl while wearing a mask, knowing full well that the girl thought that he was someone else. But he was just so good at sex that it was all good, right? In Sixteen Candles, nerdy guy had sex with blonde girl, who was so drunk/passed out that she didn’t even remember it, let alone give consent. In the former case, the guy raped with intent. In the latter, we don’t know that exactly happened, but the incident was portrayed as no big deal regardless.
It’s one of my biggest gripes in an otherwise great trilogy, that Marty doesn’t follow up on the incident and advise Lorraine and/or George to get the police in for attempted rape and assault and doesn’t bat an eyelid at Biff as a car-waxer in the new 1985! If he was in custody it would also prevent old Biff from giving him the sports almanac, or at least Biff placing any bets any time soon. “That Biff, what a character!”
Nah, in the original timeline Lorraine fell for George after her dad ran him over (Marty saves George from this and is the target of Lorraine’s affection in the new timeline). In the original timeline Biff nor Lorraine had no reason to be in the car - it’s only because of Marty’s plan for George to save Lorraine from him that either end up there.
Ugh, yes, this absolutely. I had remembered liking Revenge of the Nerds (it came out when I was a little kid, but I had seen it), found it a year or two back on netflix or something, thought “hell yeah!” watched it and that scene kinda sickened me. Soured me on the whole movie.
In Revenge of the Nerds, Louis and Betty do not engage in Clintonian sex. It is implied that all he does is eat her hair pi.
I agree with you that the morning after scene in Sixteen Candles is a little ambiguous since for some reason they both don’t remember what happened, so how does that translate into Farmer Ted raped Caroline? Isn’t it just as possible that Caroline raped Farmer Ted?
I was uneasy about the whole movie when it first came out, though there were also parts I liked. While the popular girls snubbed and pranked the nerds, the nerds’ idea of getting back at the girls was spying on them, distributing suggestive pics of them (the pie eating booth), and rape by deception. It appeared on cable a while back, my husband was watching the rape scene, and I expressed my disgust at it. He said “Come on, it’s just a joke!”, but when I asked him to picture our daughter as the target, suddenly it wasn’t nearly as funny.
In Sixteen Candles I never thought Farmer Ted did anything to her. He had a chance, but he didn’t. When she woke up he just let her think what she thought. And she didn’t remember anything bad so…
I got the feeling that far from forgetting he attempted to rape Lorraine, that they kept him around as a butler specifically because they he attempted to rape her. And they both have been mistreating, or at least humiliating him for years because of it. Which only makes his motivation to change the timeline back again with the sports almanac stronger.
Why weren’t they afraid he might try to rape her again? I don’t know, but I got the feeling they didn’t go to the cops because they wanted revenge on Biff personally.
Pretty unequivocal IMHO. She then softens it for the audience a bit more by saying she thinks she may have enjoyed it. But yeah, pretty much a lack of consent even if he did black out after the event, because that was obviously what he was working himself up to.
You all haven’t even covered the MOST disturbing part of this, which is that another character gives away the passed out girl to Ted like an object or something.
Because that’s what every Fantasy-Comedy really needs, a frank discussion of Rape.
They should have also discussed how Doc Brown probably murdered the Alternate Marty from the “fixed” 1985 by programming the Time Machine to go back to before the Earth had oxygen in order to protect the Timeline and tie up all the loose ends.