That's not how meaning works, though.

Look, I get it, not everybody cares or knows how semiotics work, but it's always baffling how much people get invested in the notion of "no politics in art" no matter how often this comes up.

Yes, there are politics in Back to the Future, as in any other film where the worldview of the creators becomes the perspective from which the entire film is put together. Things in movies don't happen by accident, they get carefully written, acted and shot. Everything in a movie is something somebody is saying, and like any other thing you say it has both superficial and subtextual meaning.

So yes, BTTF does spend the entire movie boiling down maturity and success to being financially successful and self-confident. Because it's an American movie from the 80s and that's how young Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale saw being self-fulfilled looking like in 1985.

And yes, they poke good intentioned, light fun at Reagan being president. And they acknowledge some form of past racism in the form of Goldie being president, but also holy crap, the way Goldie is characterized also tells you a lot of how the Bobs saw race working and let's just say that nothing in BTTF2 and Forrest Gump was accidental.

Is it an active piece of propaganda? No, that's not where the bar is for containing a political or even politicized worldview. But it does present a worldview, and that is... a pretty centrist, eminently materialistic take on what was a fairly conservative world.

I promise that's not an insult.