Online Response #1: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Online Response #1

Deconstructing Authority in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The somewhat confusing nature of time travel in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is explained during the two friends’ bleakest moment.  Needing keys to the jail cell to release the imprisoned historical figures, Ted realizes the time machine could be the solution their problems. 

Bill: If only we could go back in time to when [Officer Logan] had them and steal ‘em then.

Ted: Well, why don’t we?

Bill: ‘Cause we don’t have time?

Ted: We could do it after the report.

Bill: Ted!  Good thinking dude!  After the report, we’ll time travel back to two days ago, steal the keys, and leave them here!

Ted: Where?

Bill: Don’t know.  How about behind that sign?  That way, when we get here now, they’ll be waiting for us.

            Bill bends down behind the sign, and, as predicted, finds the keys to the jail cell.  Ted tells Bill that they must remember in the future to go back in time and steal the keys, and then he remembers they don’t need to because they already have the keys in their hands.  What happened in the past has happened, obviously, but what will happen in the future has also happened.  Time is nonlinear and events unchangeable in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, despite its premise that Bill and Ted’s future as universal saviors might be compromised if they do not pass their history report.  Rufus, as ambassador of the future, should know their destiny is never in doubt.  After all, he lives in the post-Bill and Ted era, a time and place of universal harmony.   He also knows Bill and Ted’s own travels into history will not disrupt the present or future.  Time travel in Bill and Ted’s world does not carry the risk of the butterfly effect.   After each of their near-dozen voyages in the time machine, Bill and Ted return to an unchanged San Dimas, California, despite having done much to potentially alter the course of history.  Their predestination as world leaders/saviors ironically gives them more power and control than traditional authority figures in the film, but the inevitability of their future roles makes them subjects of a greater force, destabilizing the concept of authority. 

            The traditional authority figures of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure make their present felt early in the film, establishing a dichotomy of old authority and new authority, Bill and Ted representing the latter.  The history teacher, Mr. Ryan, and Ted’s father, Officer Logan, each deliver ultimatums: first, pass the history report or get a failing grade; second, pass history or go to military school in Alaska.  Officer Logan, in occupation and personality, is law-an-order rigidity; he is really the only character openly fighting a cultural war.  He does not actually want Ted to pass the history test, because that would only reinforce what he considers bad behavior: laziness, procrastination, lack of focus, inability to prioritize, etc.  He nearly succeeds as the obstacle to Bill and Ted’s present and future success when he locks the historical figures, essentially the history report, in his jail cells after a disturbance at the local mall.  Officer Logan is powerless in the end, though, as his black-and-white worldview cannot stop the great men of history, including his own son. 

            That Bill and Ted are figures of authority throughout the film, not just in an undetermined time in the future, is evident as soon as they start collecting figures from the past.  More impressive than their actual history report is their ability to gather a disparate group of people using little to no coercion.  Their success in managing different personalities illuminates some of the preferred leadership traits of the 1980s.  Bill and Ted are likable, charismatic, and attractive, three characteristics made more desirable by television.  This is an era one generation removed from a presidential debate in which one candidate coolly surged ahead in the polls while his sweaty opponent, betrayed by cameras, dropped in popularity.  This is an era, obviously, that is witnessing the close of the actor-president’s second term in office.  Napoleon, who spends more time in 1980s San Dimas than any other historical figure, struggles to exert his post-revolution style of leadership, with much comic effect, in an era that requires authority to look a certain way.  The princesses also modify their criteria of authority.  Engaged to marry fellow royalty soon, they surely will not lack power.  When Rufus goes back in time to retrieve them, though, they do not hesitate to accompany him; they are just pleased they do not have to marry the “royal ugly dudes.”

            If traditional authority figures are powerless in comparison to Bill and Ted, Bill and Ted are powerless to a separate figure in the film: corporations.  The world of Bill and Ted has a changing superstructure with its own implicit ideologies.  Materialism is what people value most: Bill and Ted dream of stardom on MTV, Bill’s father lives comfortably with his much younger trophy wife, and the entire population of San Dimas spends their time leisurely, either at the mall or the water park.  The powers that be that need Bill and Ted to become rulers need them not for their intelligence, which is sorely lacking, but for their ability to propagate an ideology that will make some people very rich.  Having Bill and Ted as rulers commodifies coolness.  As they perpetuate the virtues of a slacker life, Bill and Ted are also furthering the aims of MTV and shopping malls everywhere.  One would wish Bill and Ted were changed after their time-traveling adventures, but they are not.  They still do not know how to play guitar, and they arguably have not learned much about history.  They simply had the most help in their presentation.  Bill and Ted’s adventure was never about changing them, though; that Bill and Ted’s ascendancy as universal saviors is inevitable takes away their agency and makes them puppet rulers for a faceless, but powerful, authority.  

Reilly Ryan

9/8/2013