Upon banning movies and shows with time travel in them, the Chinese government (which is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party) claimed that the reason for the ban was because such fiction “disrespects history,” and that “producers and writers are treating serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.” Critic and journalist Raymond Zhou Liming noted in addition to the government’s official statement that “whatever isn’t possible in the real world belongs to superstition.” Of course, the Chinese government’s rationale only hints at what must be part of the real point behind the ban; as Zach Hindin opined for The Atlantic in 2015, “How might upsetting history, say in a depiction of time travel, upset the status quo?” In another comment, Zhou mentioned how time travel fiction “is actually not heavy on science, but an excuse to comment on current affairs,” a quality that is a byproduct of all genre fiction, intentional or not. When all of this is added up, it’s clear that what the Chinese government really wanted to ban is not time travel per se, but the ways in which stories utilizing the trope revisit, reappraise, and investigate history from a modern perspective.
In this fashion, all time travel stories are subversive, since the majority of them involve the ability for history to be changed (either for the better or for the worse). Even beyond this, “Back to the Future” is a pretty boundary-pushing movie. Its inclusion of topics like terrorism and incest meant that it wasn’t an easy sell to major studios, and even its combination of humor, adventure, and science-fiction baffled at least one executive at the studio it did end up at. The movie is so shrewd in its satire that a joke at Ronald Reagan’s expense was allegedly well-received by the President himself! Even though “Back to the Future” has gained a relatively cuddly reputation in the nearly 40 years since its release, it’s got quite a lot going on beneath the surface, something the Chinese government perhaps caught on to.