Yesterday was a very weird day on the Internet. As Allahpundit noted at Hot Air, the entire Content-Industrial Complex dedicated itself to churning out takes and listicles about Back to the Future Part II, a very mediocre movie, because yesterday was the day Marty McFly went into the future in that movie. And we don't even have hoverboards yet! SMDH.
Still, I was a bit taken aback by the following tweet from TV's Andy Levy:
@SonnyBunch where is your "biff is the real hero of 'back to the future'" piece i can't find it
— andy levy (@andylevy) October 21, 2015
I was confused because TV's Andy Levy posited this as some sort of bold contrarian stance, when I thought it was just commonly accepted that Biff is, in fact, the hero of that series.
I mean, think about it for a minute. On the one hand you have a whiny Oedipal brat who the movie unfairly (and probably racistly) credits with inventing rock and roll and a creepy old man who spends his nights hanging out with (probably) underaged high school boys in deserted mall parking lots when he isn't palling around with literal terrorists. On the other, you have a self-made entrepreneur, a go-getter who uses the time machine not to take his mom out on dates but to become one of the great job creators in American history.
Biff has been characterized as a "bully," but he's really a high achiever from an impoverished background, a hard-edged rascal who was raised by his nagging grandmother because his parents weren't around. Think back to the end of the first film, when Biff has supposedly been "put in his place." Marty has changed the present to ensure that his father is a best-selling author, a privilege that ends up gifting the Oedipal brat a giant, gas-guzzling truck. Biff, meanwhile, has to work hard to get everything he has—your heart has to go out to the guy as he's waxing the McFlys' car, really putting his back into it as they heckle him about the quality of the job he's doing. He's a small businessman trying to catch a break—he's literally head over heels about his awesome new matchbooks as the second film starts, a small thrill any entrepreneur can recognize—while his decadent overlords sneer at him from the porch.
It's the second film where we see Biff's true genius shine through, of course. Whereas Marty and Doc use the DeLorean to travel through time in order to get Marty's useless, spoiled kid out of trouble with the law, Biff uses the time machine to travel back through time and build a grand empire. Hotels, casinos, museums, you name it: Biff has made something. When you make something, you know what happens? You create jobs. How many people do you think worked in Biff's numerous establishments? Hundreds? Thousands? How many children went to bed with a good meal under a solid roof because of Biff's hard work? How much tax revenue did his casinos generate?
And Marty wants to take all that away from him—from his fellow citizens, really—just because Biff may have bumped off his creepy, Peeping Tom dad and because he can't stand the thought of Biff having intimate relations with his mother, who, remember, Marty once took on a date.
So, yes, Biff Tannen is obviously the hero of the Back to the Future movies. We would be lucky to have such a man in our own time--a hotel and casino magnate with fabulous hair who could lead us into the future and Make America Great Again. If only such a hero would arise from the ashes of Barack Obama's America.