Well, here's what I think of the 1980's (I was born in 1992): What the hell? The music is terrible, the fashion is atrocious, the hair is so stupid (and some people haven't given it up), and the movies and tv shows were silly. I imagine that in 30 years I'll look back and say the same thing. (This was meant to disarm everything I just said.)
Dear Person Born in 1992: An amazing thing happened a few years before you were born that you've likely read about but never fully understood. After nearly eighty years, the world was no longer divided in half, with both sides swearing total annihilation of the other side. After nearly fifty years, there was no longer a prevailing sentiment that the world would end in a thermonuclear fireball. After nearly thirty years, five billion people no longer considered - every day - the fact that armageddon was half an hour away, 24/7/365. It's easy to say "oh, but people didn't think about it all the time" but it's also accurate to say that if people didn't think about it all the time, they were reminded of it regularly. One cannot frame the Cold War in the same terms as the Global War on Terror. The Soviet Union was not Russia, was not China, was not North Korea - it was a monolithic, totalitarian presence with four times as many nuclear weapons as we had that our president called "The Evil Empire." '80s culture, more than any other, reflects a fatalistic optimism - "enjoy yourself while you can because you'll be dead soon." Whereas the 60s and 70s were an era of "free love" the 80s brought us AIDS, which still killed you back then. It was an era where the computers that you have lived with your entire life were just starting to penetrate into the collective conscious (but certainly not the collective living room). It was an era where the thousand channels you take for granted were busily blossoming from four. They 80s were an era that started out with marketing to children through television being illegal and ended with Transformers, GI Joe, He Man and Rainbow Bright. It was an era of banking dergulation that swept us from austerity and inflation to massive tax cuts and a rebirth of the new Oligarchy. It is the period that followed the Long Boom and ended Monetarism. Back in the '80s, the future founders of Google and the dot-com era were not visionary wunderkinds, they were future listless slackers distrusted by the Baby Boomers because they didn't do a good enough job babysitting their children. There are certain periods of culture that, even through the long lens of history, remain unique and relevant. Which is not to say they are beyond reproach - there is much that was tragic about the 80s, not just historically speaking but also culturally. My recommendation to you is to look on the 80s not as a descendent of the era too comfortable in your own trappings to truly understand and empathize, but as a visitor from a distant culture absorbing and reflecting on the downfall of Communism and the twilight of Capitalism from a privileged vantage. You might see a thing or two of beauty. Have a video. it's four minutes of your life and, in my opinion, is a nice capsule of the cultural mores that nobody is talking about (but everyone has on the back of their minds) throughout all the horrible culture you mention. If you have the patience, here's two hours of horror. Quite simply, we had other things on our minds and lots of us, when we look back on it, consider ourselves fortunate to still be here in this unimaginable era of 2013. It was a foregone conclusion where I grew up that if we were around in 1998, we'd be eating dog food and polishing The Great Humungous' boots. Patrick Nagel says hello from an era when coke addicts died from heart attacks because they did "aerobithons" for charity.
Random Wikipedia fact: The song was a hit in France, where it peaked at #2 for three weeks and remained on the top 50 for 19 weeks. It is currently the 636th best-selling single of all time in France.
> After nearly eighty years, the world was no longer divided in half, with both sides swearing total annihilation of the other side. This is a bigger deal than a lot of young people know. I was born in '63. This was recorded in 1959 - some gallows humour expressing very real fears.
I can see people not really getting hair metal. It's a - you had to be there - sort of thing. But I WAS there. And it was awesome.
>and the movies and tv shows were silly. You take that back! 80s movies are the best movies! But yeah the hair and music.... oh god the hair and music was awful.
Weird Science (1985) Back to the Future (1985) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) Platoon (1986) Poltergeist (1982) The Abyss (1989) The list goes on ... http://www.imdb.com/list/-Kt5UvjvcVk/
THIS is what I'm talking about. Plus, Ghost Busters, Top Gun, the first three Indiana Jones movies, Star Wars Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi, Risky Business, Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Raising Arizona, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, BIG, Beverly Hills Cop, Caddy Shack... and those are just ones I could name off the top of my head. Sure, most of them are just action or comedies, but 80s was like the king for movies of that nature. 80s was honestly the best decade for movies that I've been on this planet for.