2104: Biff Tannen
| Biff Tannen |
 Title text: I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable. |
Explanation
This comic is based on Back to the Future II. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty MacFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on horse races. He then forms a company, and calls it BiffCo. While in the movie the protagonists reverse this, by stealing the almanac back, Cueball imagines the universe where BiffCo exists as continuing to exist in parallel. This is consistent with the multiverse theory.
The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened.
Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the Back to the Future II universe where BiffCo exists, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in Hillbilly Elegy.
This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is Hillbilly Elegy, which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.
Randall is known to have supported the opposing candidate before Trump was elected, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly sad comics following his election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.
The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the Back to the Future II universe where BiffCo exists. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.
Transcript
[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]
Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with.
Cueball: Their world would be the world.
[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]
Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay.
Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.
Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it Hill Valley Elegy.
[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]
White Hat: ... I hate you.
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I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.
- This is an old unsigned comment. I would like to add for posterity that this has been fixed already. This guy tried to fix this information while the article was young and edits were happening super fast, so his edit got reversed as someone tried to add his edit over someone else's. It has since been fixed for good.162.158.122.156 04:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. 173.245.54.25 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- You inspire one house painter to change careers & suddenly everyone blames you for everything.
- ProphetZarquon (talk) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy 172.68.65.198 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. 108.162.210.136 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. Mjm87 (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. 108.162.210.136 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. 141.101.104.131 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. 162.158.114.40 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- Note that Hillbilly Elegy could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.108.162.212.179 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- I understand the animosity toward far fetched explanations. It doesn't take election fraud or particularly unique societal circumstances for a Republican to win after two consecutive Democrat terms. Both candidates had horrible turnouts and the Republican candidate won. The more interesting question is about Trump winning the primaries and to understand this phenomenon one must dig deep and will find a reasonable yet complicated and boring chain of events inside the Republican party. Mitt Romney failed with lots of votes because Obama was incredibly popular and got even more in a climate when Democrats were reasonably afraid that they might lose the election. Trump pulled off the exact opposite of Romney.
If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. 162.158.186.138 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- Added 162.158.122.156 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?162.158.107.19 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary
- Beats me. Fixed it. 108.162.246.95 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
XKCD on XKCD: "The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'." 172.69.33.233 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
The explanation should include info on what a "counterfactual" is. 108.162.246.95 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
- Done 108.162.212.131 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.
Seems fun. 108.162.221.167 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?
Back to the Future is such a nice movie trilogy. If anyone is discouraged by the discussions over possible relations to Donald Trump, don't be. Those relations are pretty dim and do not worsen enjoyment of the movies, neither for Democrats nor for Republicans. I recommend that everyone here who hasn't watched these movies watch all three. They are a lot of fun. 162.158.122.156 04:58, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Regarding politics
Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... 172.68.132.95 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. 172.68.65.198
Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump... 162.158.255.22 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.172.69.33.23 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
- I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. 108.162.212.131 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
- Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--108.162.221.167 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Note that Biff Tannen was explicitly modeled on Donald Trump (reference). -- Resuna (talk) 14:14, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
The Trump stuff in this comic is completely irrelevant - Kynde had a thing for making as many articles about Trump as he could, even when there is no connection. (For example, this page used to link to his Sad comics page, which I have since disconnected from every article it was linked in). The Relationship to political events subheading - added by a well-meaning contributor who I'm sure just wanted to preserve the page's content and make it easier to follow - is unnecessary, since this comic clearly has no relationship to political events as read. People who say that it does, are trying to forge a connection that does not exist. Biff Tannen being modeled on Trump is an interesting piece of trivia, to be sure, but it is not relevant to the explanation of this comic. Hawthorn (talk) 13:04, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Greetings all from the distant future (July 15, 2024)! The author of Hillbilly Elegy, Senator J.D. Vance, has just been picked as Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election. So I guess there was a weird connection there after all! (Of course, there was no way to predict that way back when this comic was drawn in 2019. Nobody could have really seen that coming. Nobody, that is, except perhaps a time traveler...) --MeZimm 172.68.35.56 23:14, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
List layout
In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive "Alternatively" and such. 162.158.122.156 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
1985A
I have changed instances of "the universe where BiffCo exists" to "the 1985A Back to the Future timeline", or simply "1985A" for short. This is for three reasons:
- To keep the article cleaner.
- To keep future misreaders of the article from either:
- cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary
- adding a comma between "universe" and "where", which would ruin the construct.
- To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.
I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.
162.158.122.156 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Subheads
I have added subheadings. If you don't like subheadings then remove them. This wiki has no style guide. I think they help distinguish the structure of the document. The guy who removed the part about counterfactuals can now more easily skip that part, and we can now more easily talk about specific parts of the article here in the talk page.
Also I know that this is the third topic I have added in a row and that the button says "use sparingly", but these are major changes to the article, and therefore I expect someone to come by and complain and make a huge thread out of it.162.158.122.156 05:28, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
