Image by Yong Chuan Tan.
What is there about time-travel to the past—not the frightening future—that has sold millions of books and movie tickets and still seizes the attention of television and science-fiction audiences?
We know about time-travel from Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the 1980 film Somewhere in Time to the 60-year-old, long-time British TV series Doctor Who . Not to mention the “what-if” games (“What if the British had won the American revolution?” “What if Mozart had been tone deaf?” “What if I’d been born rich?”).
The latest, serious treatment of time-travel is contained in a BBC article about a few physicists’ views of the age-old hypotheses about the elasticity of time. And it’s not by a tricked-out car, depicted in Back to the Future . Or Twain’s crowbar blow to the head. Or self-hypnosis in Somewhere in Time .
Instead, it is rooted in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity (of course) that the “flow of time isn’t constant.” It can move fast or slow. A 1949 study is cited using math in a “closed time-like curve…that loops back on itself.” The film Groundhog Day exemplifies that hypothesis, but involves only a repeated 24-hour timeframe, not Twain’s three-year throwback of 13 centuries.
Another hypothesis follows along those lines: two “cosmic strings” moving in opposite directions, each containing closed-time curves. Yet another contains minuscule “wormholes” permitting a short-lived passage between two points in time. It’s hardly enough for romance, marriage, and childbirth between humans of different eras. But Twain makes it seem so.
Now, most of the physicists quoted indicated a trip to the past is unrealistic and lacks a physical vehicle for human transport. Yet some ordinary history buffs have taken time-travel into their own hands. Like Civil War re-enactors whose participants know regimental minutiae and invest in period costumes, flags, and blank munitions for this annual sacred rite.
Count, too, boys in backyard battles between cowboys and Native-Americans. Equally, include altruistic doctors bringing the latest life-saving techniques and medications for house calls on primitive societies. Or sales agents visiting backward tribes with state-of-art products in their sample cases.
And what about the well-known phenomena of retrogression (“I’ve been here before”) perhaps lodged in our brain cells—especially from traumatized forbearers—along with the genetic codes of looks and diseases? Deja-vue time-travel from past to present. A Tennessee-born friend touring the Chickamauga battlefield, was suddenly riveted to one spot. Her curiosity led to historical research revealing a direct ancestor had to be wounded there.
Considering the past’s living conditions, the question arises about why anyone would want to visit previous centuries.
In my asking this question of dozens of women above age 30, several admitted they loved “period” movies or TV shows, but almost all declined invitations to a time-travel to the past. Evidently, family tales about previous lifestyles and dangers endured were true accounts of women’s backbreaking duties of cooking, cleaning, childbirth, elder care, farming, Native-American vengeful attacks —and obeying church dictates governing their behavior.
One exception in this informal survey was a high school graduate who chose the 1970s because of popular music, drive-in movies, game arcades, discos, and women’s liberation. But for most, it certainly wasn’t the liberated life of the actress depicted in Somewhere in Time.
Notice that Confederate and Union re-enactors are men. Most would never clutter up their “fun” by recruiting women except as nurses, cooks, or camp followers. What woman would want to play a civilian, especially with children? They always take the greatest repercussions of any war, antiquity to Gaza. What man caught in the thrill and excitement of war games wants to be reminded of that reality?
By contrast, most men tend to romanticize the action-filled past of derring-do deeds. Authors’ motives—Twain to screen and television writers— seem to range from playing to men’s historical curiosity or vicarious vengeance, ego satisfaction or power tripping of today’s techno-savvy hero over people of long ago.
Reddit , the community online open posting board since 2019-2023 has asked men about their most admired historical figures. Were they able to time-travel, the assumption would have to be the excitement of visiting the same time and place that produced these men. For instance:
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) Jesus (6 or 4 BCE-30-36 AD)
Napoleon Bonaparte (1768-1821) Genghis Khan (1162-1227)
Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) Plato (428 or 427-348 or 347BCE)
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
Revenge is another motive for time-travel to redo major events seen by many men today as unjust. And in our history, those murderous actions to settle this country are shockingly numerous. Take the Trail-of-Tears , for example. President Andrew Jackson signed the 1830 Indian Removal law permitting cotton growers to seize cultivated lands of five southeastern tribes at federal gunpoint. Out of the 100,000 forced to walk or ride to Oklahoma’s “Indian Territory” 1,200 miles away, at least 15,000 died between 1831-36.
“The South Will Rise Again” has been the hope of millions below the Mason-Dixon line to reverse 163 years of history. Aside from re-enactments, the closest Confederate flags have come to flying over and inside the Capitol has been the January 6th vengeful and failed insurrection led by president Trump.
However, this failed effort to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and democratic government scarcely matches World War I’s brutal Treaty of Versailles, according to authors like economist John Maynard Keynes. It imposed such destitution on Germans that it triggered the emergence of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and World War II’s 75 million casualties on the Western front. Judging from Germany’s current political leaders’ war-mongering , they’re still yearning for a time-travel reversal of those defeats.
Twain’s Connecticut Yankee was a munitions maker who represents would-be time-travelers’ egos and love of power. Transported to King Arthur’s time for three years, he quickly applies his headful of modern knowledge to yesterday’s dilemmas such as predicting an eclipse and performing other “miracles” like fixing a leak in a holy fountain. When Arthur’s life is threatened, he convinces Lancelot to lead the Round Table Knights to the rescue on his “invention”—bicycles. He soon becomes Arthur’s prime minister and war expert (of course). At one point, he and his teenage fans hold off an army of 30,000 with “land mines, Gatling guns, and electric fences.”
So in knowledge there is indeed not only power, but supposed greatness by successful Wall Street speculators, big-time swindlers, and those with inherited wealth. Who but America’s 1% would benefit from time-traveling through centuries of ruling-classes causing poverty and misery (like the 1930s Great Depression) to the nation’s 99%?
That could explain why the felonious, grifting presidential candidate Donald Trump chose the self-serving present slogan “Make America Great Again” for two election campaigns. We of the 99% need to ask him before November, “Just when will that greatness extend to us?”
The post Time-Travel Favored Mostly by Men, Rarely by Women appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
