A deleted scene from Back To The Future has been doing the blogging rounds for the past few days, and while some have suggested it’s newly discovered, it’s actually been around for a while (it first appeared on the DVD release), but it is interesting.

In it Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) worries that having to date his mom back in the 1950s is going to be enough to turn him off women for life.

He says, “I can’t believe I’m going to feel up my own mother. This is the kind of thing that could screw me up permanently. What if I go back to the future and I end up being… gay?”

Doc Brown then responds, “Why shouldn’t you be happy?”

It is a rather old-fashioned attitude to homosexuality, but the reason it was cut wasn’t to do with the idea people can be turned gay, or indeed Doc’s joke about not understanding what that word has come to mean by the 1980s.

Nope, it was due to the fact that as the makers cut the film together, they realised that Marty’s mother having an infatuation with him, and him then going on a date with her where he intends to be, err, ungentlemanly, was actually a bit screwed up for a family film. Therefore things that highlight what an Oedipally disturbing situation it is were toned down, and this is one of those things.

However, some have suggested it’s homophobic. Take a look below and see what you think. [Read more…]