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Back to Your Future, Not Mine: Time Travel’s White Masculinity WRITTEN BY SARAH GARCIA ART BY PALOMA NICHOLAS rendered as prizes for white male protagonists. “About Time” (2013) demonstrates this specific heterosexual male perspective by limiting the ability to time travel to the men in the male protagonist’s family. The protagonist abuses this power to gain the woman of his dreams, even reversing time to stop her from having another boyfriend. By portraying time travel as an exclusively male ability, the film upholds the patriarchal notion of women as passive objects of desire subject to the whims of time rather than active shapers of history. Aside from “About Time,” Rachel McAdams has also starred as the protagonist’s female love interest in “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (2009), “Midnight in Paris” (2011), and “Doctor Strange” (2016). In each film, her typecasting demonstrates how women are excluded from time travel fiction unless they are fulfilling a secondary, heterosexual role. When I think of time travel movies, I personally jump to well-known examples like “Back to the Future” (1985) and “Groundhog Day” (1993). “Back to the Future” is particularly beloved, following protagonist Marty McFly as he travels back in time to 1955. Over the course of the film, Marty alters past events, creating a more prosperous life for himself. Through time travel, he revises pre-established history and faces no consequences for his actions. But why is Marty in particular allowed this power? In fiction, who has access to time travel, and what “real life” implications may this specific narrative have? Occasionally, we see instances of time travel outside of fiction. The histories of the “real” world are repeatedly subjected to acts of revisionism, with institutions of power rewriting history to misrepresent the past in significant ways. For example, in an area south of Houston, Texas in 2015, high school student Coby Burren found that his textbook described enslaved Africans as “workers.” Similarly, in 2018, a teacher in San Antonio, Texas asked students to list the “positive” and “negative” aspects of slavery on a worksheet titled “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View.” Both cases reveal how history is a biased construct. We are often taught about historical events in ways that downplay the traumas of the marginalized in favor of the privileged; with the incidents in Texas, slavery is reframed to erase suffering and alleviate white guilt. Both examples enact historical revisionism — the practice of reinterpreting traditionally accepted notions of history for a desired aim. We can see that, both in real life and in the media we consume, white men are granted the power to rewrite history or represent it on their own terms. In “Back to the Future” and other time travel films, white men are frequently the protagonists because they are seen as the great arbiters of time. Marty’s revisionism, for example, extends beyond simply enhancing his own life once he alters the musical history of Black people. While in 1955, Marty performs Chuck Berry’s 1958 song “Johnny B. Goode,” disrupting history and retroactively making himself the song’s creator. Though unintentional, Marty abuses his access to time travel by stealing the work of a Black man. Shedding light on the “real life” incidents in Texas, Marty performs historical revisionism and reveals how white men assume history belongs only to them. Romance is another frequent theme in time travel films, with women
Both “Groundhog Day” and “Happy Death Day” feature protagonists who repeat the same day over and over again. However, unlike the male lead of “Groundhog Day,” the lead in “Happy Death Day,” Tree, repeats the day she is murdered. The violence enacted on Tree emphasizes the apparent vulnerability of the female body in contrast to the assumed strength of the male body. The female time traveler is thus not allowed to freely engage in time travel like men. Instead of using it for her own benefit, time travel functions to ensure her survival without allowing her to exert agency. Time travel TV shows like 2019’s “Russian Doll” also reinforce this violent, restrictive trope of the female time traveler — a testament to contemporary media’s perpetuation of this trend in such narratives. Meanwhile, other marginalized communities rarely play time travelers in mainstream narratives. While exceptions certainly exist — like the 2006 film “Déjà Vu,” 2012’s “Men in Black III,” and the 2019 Netflix film “See You Yesterday” — they are few and far between. The heterosexual white male protagonist consistently dominates this role because he is defined as the “default” figure throughout history. A white man can travel through historical periods without encountering the violence women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities face on a daily basis. Marginalized communities are barred from controlling time in fiction because, in real life, they are pushed to history’s sidelines, restricted from writing their own historical narratives. As a settler colonial state, the U.S. is only able to maintain its power through a selective account of history, written by its beneficiaries: powerful white men. This exclusionary revisionist history doesn’t find its origins in mainstream media and film, but such industries do reflect and reinforce these narratives. How we construct history influences how we see ourselves and others, exposing that, if marginalized communities gain greater agency over time travel and other science fiction concepts, more radical possibilities will emerge in our collective consciousness. This is why we need more adaptations of novels like Butler’s “Kindred,” Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Salt Roads,” and Marge Piercy’s “Woman on the Edge of Time.” Contemporary narratives may suggest that there isn’t enough room in the DeLorean to fit us all — so thanks for nothing, Marty. But, by uplifting marginalized narratives, room is made for more liberating and transformative experiences, debunking the power of the white male time traveler.
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