Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Feminist Adventure

I thought a fun artifact to analyze using this week’s readings on feminist theory would be the three-part series, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). I think these films are fun to analyze through feminist eyes because they span a 30-year period, and evolve to match the “time’s” of each release.  

The easiest way to analyze this is by looking at the female characters and overall diversity in each film’s cast. 

 

Film 1: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

 

This first film gets a few things right from a feminist perspective. Bill and Ted are in no way stereotypically masculine. In fact, their relationship is so close, an insecure few may even deem it a bit inappropriate. They also poke fun at some masculine tropes such as having Genghis Kahn go berserk using sports equipment.

 

The fault lies in the way’s women are represent. The cast is almost completely white and male, with some small exceptions. For example, there is Missy a young white woman just a couple years older than Bill & Ted but married to Bill’s father. Missy is very much an object in this film. 

 

Another women Bill & Ted collect during their travels is Joan Of Arc, but because she doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t have any lines. The same can be said of the only person of color in this film Genghis Kan. But somehow white male Socrates can somehow speak in English (instead of Greek), and has many lines. Last of all Bill & Ted rescue two princesses who have names but are instead referred to as “the babes”. The princesses Elizabeth and Joanna are “rescued” from being married off to two old men, to modern America only to later be engaged to the two young men…

 

Film 2: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Adventure (1991)

 

From a feminist perspective this film is a bit better, but the cast is still mostly white and male. A couple things of note are that Bill & Ted’s evil robot doppelgängers are obvious representations of toxic masculinity.

 

 

They force themselves on princesses Joanna and Elizabeth, who (in this more female empowered plot) fight them back and then break off their engagements. The motive for the real Bill & Ted in this film is to fight their way out of Hell and save their princesses (which is an old worn out, non-feminist plot) from their evil robot clones.

 

The character of Missy gets a funny plot twist by reappearing as newly divorced from Bill’s dad, and freshly married to Ted’s dad. She is still objectified but reveals the lechery of both dads while signaling that perhaps she is the one in the driver’s seat, not the old men…

 

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

 

This last film of the series has Bill & Ted as middle-aged men and yet to write their world changing song. This last film was written and released in the middle of the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter movement and reflects the times, while still being playfully silly. 

 

First of all, the cast is much more diverse – now middle-aged Bill & Ted have two teen-age daughters, Billie & Thea. Apparently during the writing process Bill & Ted’s kids began as sons but were later switched to daughters. This casting switch may seem like pandering to some, but I think it instead gives a fresh look to what could have seemed like a boring rehash of an old franchise. Unlike their dads, Billie and Thea have been studying music and music history their whole lives and are ultimately shown to be responsible for the world changing song’s creation. The girls have their own adventure through time, collecting famous (and much more diverse) musicians such as African American Louie Armstrong and Lennie Kravitz, cavewoman drummer Grom (played by real female drummer Anne Miller), female Chinese musician Ling Lun and more. 

 

Also Missy makes another appearance by asking Bill & Ted to play music at her third wedding to Ted's brother Decon...

 

Although all three films are not perfect from a feminist perspective, Bill and Ted’s personalities are the same throughout. Casey Cipriani put it well in his movie review for The Bustle when he said, “Bill and Ted have always been a couple of gently masculine feminist dudes, which makes the fact that their daughters save the world just a natural progression of themselves… an exponential elaboration on Ted’s simple message from the first movie: Be excellent to each other.” 

 Articles Referenced:

The Bustle: https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/the-bill-and-ted-face-the-music-ending-features-a-feminist-twist

 

Feminist Flicker: https://sarahmyles.net/2019/10/25/the-bill-ted-franchise-a-feminist-flicker-excerpt/

Question: Do you think “Bill & Ted Face the Music” tried too hard to be “woke”, or do you feel it is appropriate for our current time?