(Rock music)
- (Greg) What’s up Wisecrack? Greg here ready to have a most resplendent time talking
about a film with the best dialogue in the history of cinema.
- (Bill) Who's he? - (Bartender) He's Billy the Kid.
- (Bill) He's famous dude. Let's bag him.
- (Greg) Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is frequently dismissed as a silly teen flick
about two stoner-esque metalheads who would literally rather do anything than go to school.
But what if it’s secretly a genius film about the radical power of learning?
- (Ted) No way. NO WAY!
- (Greg) Well, maybe way, dude. Maybe way dude. Let’s find out if Bill and Ted’s
Excellent Adventure is Deep or Dumb? We swear it will be
- (Bill & Ted) Non, non non, NON-HEINOUS!
- (Greg) Or maybe the opposite? Anyways, Spoilers here and a most triumphant time ahead!
- (Greg) Now, a quick recap. Bill & Ted centers on two pleasant metal heads remarkable only
in the fact that they are the future saviors of the world. Except right now they’re about
to flunk history, which will get young Keanu Reeves sent to military school
- (Ted's Dad) If you fail history, you flunk out of school. You know what that would mean
don't you Ted? - (Ted) That I would have to go to Oates military
academy.
- (Greg) And destroy the duo’s sick band-
- (Bill and Ted) Wyld Stallyns!
- (Greg) Their only means of salvation? Give a killer oral report on an apparently-random
assortment of historical time periods. Just when all hope seems lost and Keanu might have
to open a book, a guy named Rufus from the future shows up with a dope time-traveling
phone booth. They use it to kidnap historical figures, bring them to the present, and ace
the shit out of that presentation. As a result, our dudes are on track to save the world,
so long as they can learn to play their instruments first. The end.
So could this time traveling stoner fare possibly be deeper than the soulful eyes of one Mr.
Reeves? We got two arguments to throw at you.
Here’s number one: Bill and Ted might be all about the failures of Western-style education.
It’s no secret that these dudes do not care about their own learning.
- (Bill) Uh oh, we’re late. - (Ted) For what?
- (Bill) School dude!
- (Greg) The classroom is presented as a place where facts are to be memorized and regurgitated.
Not only is this a very boring way to learn, it’s also a really big societal problem!
According to educator and philosopher Paulo Friere, and his “banking” concept of education.
Freire argued that western education functions under the premise that the teacher knows everything
important, and the student functionally knows nothing. Education is therefore something
to be given from the teacher to the student, deposited like coins into your dumb ol’
piggy bank of a brain. According to Friere, the result is that, “the scope of action
allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.”
This is visible right away in Bill and Ted, where we see the chalkboard of a social studies
classroom filled with a shortlist of historical time periods, waiting to be systematically
deposited into these impressionable minds. Bill and Ted’s teacher doesn’t ask them
to argue about the possible causes of World War I or theorize if powdered wigs were good
for head-banging - he asks them to recite admittedly very simple facts:
- (Teacher) Who was Joan of Arc? - (Ted) Noah's wife?
- (Greg) Freire, who spent his life educating impoverished, disenfranchised folks in Brazil,
believed the banking model to be inherently oppressive, treating students like “adaptable,
manageable beings.” You fill someone’s brain with random facts, and make sure they
don’t have the will or ability to think critically about those facts. And from there,
you don’t have to worry about anyone changing the world, whether through a mass protest
movement or weirdly influential metal band. If this is a problem with normal school, it’s
certainly dialed up to 11 in military school, an institution built to teach kids to “shut
up and listen to authority.” And fittingly, it’s the prospect of Ted leaving Wyld Stallyns
to become a cadet mindlessly doing burpies that threatens the very rad utopia that our
boy Rufus was sent to protect.
But how do you overcome the drone-minded nature of education banking? According to Friere,
you do so by becoming an active participant in your learning. Specifically, Friere believed
in the power of “problem posing” education, in which the teacher enters a dialogue with
the students, rendering all participants “jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”
Kinda like a teacher who encourages you to argue with them about George Washington’s
farewell address instead of quizzing you about what year he crossed the Delaware.
And “problem posing” seems at least a bit similar to what’s happening between
Rufus and Bill and Ted. They’re not two dumb-dumbs for him to fill with information,
he approaches them with reverence and respect. Although, admittedly, my guy is in a real
weird spot, because he both has to help them and worship them as saviors of the world.
Rufus shows them the time machine, teaches them how to use it:
- (Rufus) That book will give you the number of any place you want to go.
- (Greg) And explains its implications:
- (Rufus) These are the circuits of history gentlemen.
- (Greg) He even gives a little historical background.
- (Rufus) Austria. 1805. The french have just invaded.
- (Greg) But then he leaves them to their own devices!
- (Rugus) Gentlemen, you’re on your own.
- (Greg) Bill and Ted now must pursue a more active educational model, essentially rounding
up a crew of historical figures to become their substitute teachers. Along the way,
they creatively solve various issues they encounter, ranging from broken antennas to
figuring out how to get in touch with the medieval babes of their dreams.
- (Bill) How are we gonna meet em?
- (Greg) Key to the problem posing educational style, Freire said, is communication. As he
put it, “Authentic thinking, think­ing that is concerned about reality, does not
take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.” By communication, we
can only hope that Friere was imagining this glorious exchange our boys have over Socrates'
writing, just before meeting him.
- (Bill) The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.
- (Ted) That's US dude!
- (Greg) What’s more, Bill and Ted immediately enter a dialogue with Socrates or uh:
- (Ted) So - Crates
- (Greg) Sharing their own wisdom gleaned from growing up in the 80s
- (Ted) All we are, is dust in the wind dude. - (Bill) Dust. Wind. Dude!
- (Greg) Which appropriately blows this Athenian’s mind. Over the course of their journey, instead
of simply memorizing Joan of Arc’s name, they’ll learn about her youthful achievements.
Instead of memorizing Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, Ted undergoes analysis
by the good doctor.
- (Ted) Whoa!
- (Greg) Perhaps most importantly, Bill and Ted are empowered with the knowledge that
they have a tremendous effect over history. They are our saviors after all. This notion
of a student’s active role in the making of history couldn’t possibly be more antithetical
to the feeling you get when memorizing facts about Alexander the Great. As Freire put it,
problem posing education trains students in the art of how to “see the world not as
a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.” While Freire was talking
about empowering people to think they could change the present, or their own circumstances,
this film literalizes that idea by making Bill and Ted actually capable of changing
the future. As they learn how to control the forces around them, and harness that power
to help them achieve their goals, you can almost see what Freire calls “the emergence
of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.”
- (Bill) After the report we'll time travel back to two days ago, steal your Dad's keys,
and leave them here.
- (Greg) In a weird and perhaps slightly metaphorical way, Bill and Ted are taking charge of their
own education, and along the way, discovering their own agency and EVEN learning some things.
- (Ted) He is sometimes known as the Father of Modern Thought. He was the teacher of Plato,
who was in turn the teacher of Aristotle. And like Ozzy Osbourne, was repeatedly accused
of corruption of the young.
- (Greg) Now, when I first heard this idea, I thought “oh hell no, this movie is dumb
as hell.” And maybe, it’s a stretch to compare stoner-bros to kids rising up against
the government in South America? But I gotta say, I’m pretty convinced on this one. So
convinced, I’m going to rate this argument “pretty damn deep.”
But now we gotta get to the real wild stuff. Argument number two. Here’s the pitch: Not
ONLY is this movie about the failures of our education system, but it’s also an exploration
of the shortcomings of the written word itself. Damn, I feel attacked!
Alright! To get to the bottom of this, we need to look at the dichotomy between an oral
vs a literary society, i.e. one dominated by what comes out of your mouth hole or is
received by our ear holes versus one dominated by what you read via your eye holes and write.
Bill and Ted begins in the modern world, where the written word reigns supreme. We’re a
literary society through and through. But they are punished for their refusal to, you
know, read and learn fixed facts about history correctly, thus leading them to imminent academic
failure. However, Bill and Ted are the absolute embodiment of a burgeoning ORAL culture, given
their tendency to communicate via song and music,
(bad guitar playing)
- (Greg) Even when discoursing with futuristic weirdos.
According to scholar Lynne Lundquist, the way history functions in an oral vs a literary
society is critical to understanding Bill and Ted. In a literary society, Lundquist
explains, historical narratives are fixed, rigid, and unchangeable. After all, you can’t
change the printed word. In an oral society, where storytellers can adapt each story or
song to suit their audience, MYTHS reign supreme. Like how Homer’s Odyssey is likely a combination
of several different enduring stories told from generation to generation in ancient Greece
that eventually got written down. What’s more, oral societies tend to be more equal,
because, as Lundquist explains, the written word was historically weaponized by the powerful
to deny rights to the illiterate masses. In contrast, oral traditions, like folk songs
or folklore are accessible to just about everyone.
Maybe it’s a weird coincidence, but just about every literary society we visit in Bill
and Ted is violent and cruel, while oral-based societies like Athens are presented as peaceful
and idyllic.
- (Bill) It was most tranquil!
- (Greg) And also fittingly, they kidnap Socrates who was one of the last philosophers of Ancient
Greece, that we know of, to communicate solely through the oral tradition. He also famously
feared that reading and writing would cause the downfall of civilization. The only reason
we think we know what kind of stuff Socrates said is because his student Plato wrote a
bunch of it down.
In keeping with this, Bill and Ted seem to epitomize the egalitarian nature of an oral
society. When cramming for their test, they solicit the conversational, anecdotal help
of various patrons of the Circle K, in keeping with classic oral learning.
- (Ted) The lady in that car over there said that Marco polo was in the year 1275.
- (Greg) And critically, their teacher, perhaps sensing their resistance to literary culture,
throws our boys a bone and offers them the chance to pass via a dope ORAL presentation.
Freire might extra appreciate the fact that this presentation is structured around the
idea of communication and critical thinking - Bill and Ted must explain what various historical
figures might THINK and SAY about their present day world.
- (Ted) He loves San Dimas!
- (Greg) Which brings us to the other primary tension: myth vs history. Whereas the history
they learn in school is fixed and rigid, made up of dates and hard to memorize facts, Bill
and Ted’s ahistorical mission to bring figures of the past into the present is the very stuff
of myth making. By collecting Joan of Arc, Napoleon and crew, Bill and Ted are tearing
apart the history that our literary society is so obsessed with. Sure they absorb actual
facts along their interactive history lesson -
- (Bill) Nah. Just got a minor Oedipal complex.
- (Greg) But they also use this new knowledge to draw ahistorical comparisons-
- (Ted) A time when much of the world looked like the cover of the Led Zeppelin album "Houses
of the Holy".
- (Greg) They even call Socrates the “Ozzy Osborne” of Athens, underscoring what Lundquist
calls the “collapse of historical context” taking place in favor of a more mythical style
less concerned with literal truth. What’s more, as Lundquist explains, Bill and Ted’s
myth-telling, unlike rigid history, can be customized to fit their audience of San Dimas
high schoolers, nowhere more fittingly than in this moment
- (Abraham Lincoln) Be excellent to each other and... party on dudes!!!
- (Greg) The evidence of Bill and Ted as champions of an oral society is telegraphed when we
see the future, a place that has been changed by the power of Bill and Ted’s music, where
the words they have said in the past have been carried down across generations.
- (Bill & Ted) Later! - (Group) Later!
- (Greg) Now I’m not entirely convinced. But Lundquist has more: she argues that the
film’s sequel, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, further champions oral society. Bill and Ted
have apparently established a university where students learn aurally, via headphones, and
through interactive lessons with historical figures. What’s more, the movie’s villain,
who wants to change history and dethrone Bill and Ted as the world’s saviors, outlines
his diabolical plan … in a BOOK. A book that he makes people read and calls “the
new history”. Once again, literary society is clearly the enemy of our favorite metalhead
duo.
Now it pains me a little bit to imagine a society where literature doesn’t matter.
But I gotta give it to Lundquist man, the oral vs written society bit is a little convincing.
I’m not saying that Bill and Ted is intentionally saying all this. However, we do think that
the series, maybe inadvertently, makes a most excellent argument about the power of active,
empowered learning in primarily oral societies. At the same time, it majorly champions the
power of myths in helping us better understand the world and our place in it, whether we’re
the saviors of humanity or not.
And so, in our final moments: is Bill and Ted Deep, or is it as dumb as an infinite
loop of Keanu Reeves saying:
- (Ted) Whoa, whoa, whoa!
- (Greg) I’m gonna outrage your 10th grade American history teacher and rate this take
on the film “surprisingly, incredibly deep.”
But what do you guys think? Has Wyld Stallyns rotted our brains? Or is there really a lot
more going on in this film than first meets the eye? Let us know in the comments. As always,
huge thanks to our patrons for all your support. Slam that subscribe button like it’s a portal
to the future and, as always, thanks for watching. Peace.