Corner of solitude

“Hi, welcome to the future, San Dimas California, 2688. And I’m telling you it’s great here. The air is clean, the water’s clean, even the dirt is clean! Balling averages are way up, mini golf scores are way down. And we have more excellent waterslides than any other planet we communicate with. I’m telling you this place is great, but it almost wasn’t. You see seven hundred years ago, the two great ones, ran into a few problems. So now I have to travel back in time to help them out.” States Rufus at the beginning of Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure.

His next line is “If I should fail to keep these two on the correct path, the basis of our society will be in danger. Don’t worry it’ll all make sense, I’m a professional . . .” and thus establishing the very premise for this whole movie. In order for a utopian like society to exist in the future on earth, Rufus, the time traveling music history slash physics teacher, must find a way to keep Bill and Ted “on the correct path” to greatness and fulfill their destiny. In this case a way for Bill and Ted from flunking history class “most heinously“.

“Let us out!!… Let us out!!“

The future that Rufus has painted for us is a world of prosperity. Where the “air is clean, the water’s clean and even the dirt is clean!” which means that the world has recovered from all environmental pressures, a world without pollution. Rufus also states that “balling averages are way up, mini golf scores are way down“, perhaps a metaphor for people’s socioeconomic status, that people’s standard of living or “balling averages” is “way up” and that poverty “mini golf scores” is for once “way down”. And that the world is not only at peace but have also extended humanity’s prosperity across the galaxy, conveyed by another metaphor “more excellent waterslides than any other planet we communicate with.”

What Rufus has described to us is a perfect world, in other words a “Utopia“. Throughout history civilisations have risen and fallen, but non have come closed to being a perfect society on earth. It seems only in art, literature and mythology such a place can exist. Pop culture has also provided examples, and what better medium to convey the nature of a utopia than film, namely the future in the Bill and Ted universe.