#1980s #PopCulture #Nostalgia #GenerationX
Hey there! It’s always fascinating to reminisce about the vibrant pop culture of the 1980s, but have you ever stopped to consider what might be missing from the nostalgic portrayals? 🕺 Let’s dive into some key elements that pop culture tends to overlook when depicting this iconic era.
Clothing and Fashion Trends
👗 While neon colors, leg warmers, and scrunchies are often highlighted in 80s-themed media, there are other fashion trends that are less frequently acknowledged, such as:
– Shoulder pads
– Acid wash denim
– Members Only jackets
– Fishnet gloves
Diverse Music Genres
🎶 The 1980s saw the rise of iconic pop stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna, but there were also other vibrant music genres that shaped the decade, including:
– New wave
– Hip hop
– Hair metal
– Synth-pop
Technological Advancements
💾 The technology of the 1980s laid the foundation for our digital age, yet pop culture often overlooks key innovations like:
– The Walkman
– Cassette tapes
– VHS tapes
– Early personal computers
Cultural Movements and Events
🌍 Beyond the glitz and glamour, the 1980s were marked by significant cultural shifts and events that shaped the era, such as:
– The AIDS crisis
– The fall of the Berlin Wall
– The Challenger disaster
– The rise of MTV
Conclusion
The 1980s were a rich tapestry of culture, technology, and social change that can’t be fully captured in a single movie or TV show. By exploring the lesser-known aspects of this dynamic decade, we gain a more nuanced understanding of the people and events that shaped our world today. So, next time you dive into 80s pop culture, keep an eye out for these often overlooked details that add depth and complexity to the nostalgia. ✨ #TheMoreYouKnow
This isn’t specific to the 80s but the experience of boredom. There were many periods of time during the week when you simply had to sit there with your thoughts and be bored. This has been almost completely eliminated by phones, and I think it explains why attention spans are so fucked.
Reagan. The Moral Majority and the rise of the new Puritanism.
Pop culture sort of covers the 80’s pretty well – but kids today don’t fully appreciate how incredibly different the world was before the internet and cell phones. Absolutely transformative.
Anything we wore that wasn’t neon. Pop culture acts like the 80s were just a sea of nothing but neon for ten years.
Wasnt quite an adult yet but the mountains of cocaine that “well to do” people did as a party drug is staggering. Cocaine was “cool”
The homophobia
So. Much. Cocaine. Like, it was everywhere. The dude who used to deliver beer where I worked would just casually say, “you want a bump?” and we’d march into the beer cooler and snort coke. And that wasn’t Los Angeles, or Miami. That was in rural middle Georgia.
More fist fights
Less name brand clothes
More judgment
Less stress
More independence
Less available music
More pizza
Less vegetables
Drink driving. It was just a given that you’d take your chances. Cops knew to also look for anyone driving really, really carefully at super low speed.
Herpes. The free love 70’s were over, people were still banging around like rabbits, but the bill was being presented.
AIDS wasn’t heard of yet but being gay was a death sentence in the wrong town, bar, park.
Topless beaches. (Every beach in Aus. Now we all have skin cancer.)
Last of the generations living under the bomb. The year 2000 wasn’t just a science fiction speculation, we honestly wondered if the world would make it. Wonder if that screwed up our sense of the future. At the same time we all just stopped using CFCs in spray cans and air-con to save the ozone layer.
Taking a trip to the record store to read the lyrics of the songs you hear when the radio chose to play them. Unless it was Aussie Crawl. They were a lost cause.
That disco was still going strong until the middle of the decade.
That interest rates on mortgages was 15-20%
Women needed their husband’s signature to have a credit card
Lots of non-mainstream cliques and subcultures were left out:
Filipino DJ battles, break dance crews, and their home made pleated pants.
Goth and industrial dance clubs and their imported leather platform boots.
Mexican chola hairstyles, makeup, and attitude.
The cheap gas in the late 80s. There was a time when I had $2 and I rolled my truck into the gas station on empty. I pumped in $2 and had a quarter tank.
$0.52 a gallon, courtesy of the Iran/Iraq War.
The 80’s were crazy! One time me and my friends launched guerilla warfare on invading Soviet and Cuban troops in our small Colorado town.
The sheer sense of doom and pervasive low-key terror of nuclear war. The Soviets’ nuclear arsenal pointing at us, and their nihilistic posturing in some ways remind me of the climate change dread we now have. Living with an existantial threat is not something new.
The obsession people/media had about the ’50s and ’60s. Part of it was stuff like Back to the Future and ’50s themed diners and baseball jackets being popular, then there was the 20th anniversary of various Beatles albums, Sgt. Pepper obviously.
I think the Boomers at that point were in positions of influence and were looking back on their teens and twenties with rose tinted glasses, so the rest of us had to suffer these cultural echoes from the generation before.
Reading everything, literally everything I could get my hands on. Cereal boxes, newspapers, magazines. Luckily my library was a bike ride away but carrying those back on my bike was fun.
The poverty. I mean, I know things are hard now, but we had it pretty damned hard back then, too. The judgement, as someone said earlier, was pretty hard, and it was VERY hard on folks who couldn’t make their own way.
The job market sucked, so there was a kind of undercurrent of tension – what the bleep is the future going to be like?
Contrast that with: this stuff is so cool! (Early computer games, music videos, neon, big hair).
Whipped back and forth between great hope and huge anxiety.
What a mess it was to get cleaned up! That sparkle blue eye shadow didn’t come off easily and if it got in you eyes it was Spanish Inquisition! That red lip gloss ran all over. And shampooing your hair 3 times to get out the spray and the mousse…..
I loved the 80s and I had a marvelous time, we could actually afford concert tickets! But it was messy … but way worth it!
Cruising……before social media, we would drive up and down North Avenue, see and be seen. Stop at different businesses, the hicks hung out at the four wheel drive store, the cool kids at the Walgreens parking lot, the jocks at the McDonald’s. But it was a small town so we would stop at all of them during the evening. That was our social world along with keggers in the desert all through high school and for folks that stayed in town for years after high school.
How long the 70s and 60s lingered in spaces in houses and offices and other people’s minds.
I would say that pop culture gives people a distorted view of the 1980s. Those of you who watch Stranger Things: The 1980s weren’t like that. Plus, modern representations of the 1980s are shaped by people who probably lived on the coasts. You don’t see much representation of 1980s country music, line dancing, that sort of stuff. Let me tell you – if you lived in Texas, or really anywhere in the American South, that shit was everywhere.
The active and passive hatred of the LGBT community back then.
The government and medical community let AIDs and HIV run rampant. The former cause it took out the undesirables, the latter cause they wanted to study it not fix it. MILLIONS across the globe would have lived if money had been allocated to finding solutions and promoting them.
Then there was the unrelenting bashing, butchering, rape, murder… And for the most part nobody in charged cared. Unless it was mass violence cause then the bystanders could have gotten hurt to. I was a gun carrying Pink Panther, and I even used it.
When people talk about “The Movement” or just the 80s at all, it’s all bars with leather daddies and hanker chief code. How tacky lesbians used to look… And at the best how brave we were back then.
Columbia House Record Deals.
The insane amounts of smoking inside. Especially restaurants.
Being a latch key kid. No frequent communication with your parents. I can’t tell you how many times I stayed out all night as an 18 year old and no one but who I was with knew where I was or what I was doing. Life360 is a parenting game changer. They didn’t know what I was doing all day as a 12-17 year old, either! You only called your parents at work if it was an emergency.
The casual racism/homophobia.
Kids played “Smear the queer” where one kid had a ball and was the designated “queer” and everyone else had to try to tackle them.
After ET, The Outsiders and Red Dawn, 3 of the biggest movies of the 80s, C. Thomas Howell was set to be the next big thing and he decided to make Soul Man, a movie about a rich white kid who does a pharmaceutical version of black face so he can get into Harvard as an affirmative action token. The whole movie was filled with racist basketball and penis jokes.
Smoking everywhere 🚬 and I do mean everywhere!
How rapey Tom Cruise is at the beginning of *Top Gun* in the restaurant
Cigarette smoke everywhere. There was no respite from it every time you went somewhere you would come home with your clothes stinking of cigarette smoke. Every time you rode in a car with your parents or grandparents you could count on them to fire a a cancer stick before the car even starts moving and you asked them to not smoke in the car they would just say something like “this is my car and I’ll smoke if want to.” and if they were in your car they would get bent out of shape if you told them not to smoke in your car. They would hold babies on their laps and smoke a cigarette in the car with the windows rolled up.
Cocaine, AIDS, and the fact we all thought we were all going to die in nuclear apocalypse at any minute.
A lot of weird fashion stuff.
OP clothing. Ocean Pacific. Those cutoff half shirts. Those half tshirts have never come back. Well for girls. But def not guys lol.
Painter hats were a thing for a bit.
Swatch watches.
Zips shoes.
Polo rugbys.
Rat tail haircut. Wanted one so bad but mom said no. Thanks mom for helping me dodge that one!
You can’t convey/show just how great Sat morning cartoons were.
They do show this. Being gone all day with your friends and my parents not even knowing what we were doing. It wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t have phones and we were def hanging out all the time. The movie stand by me was 1960 I think but that is spot on to my childhood in 70s and 80s. We would absolutely go find that dead body and hike across the county like that.
There was a period in the 80’s when people dressed up a lot. Suits. Corporate look to go with the greed. Lots of focus on consumerism and making money. Big houses. People living beyond their means and focused on looking successful. I spent my high school and college years in the 1970’s looking forward to joining some kind of revolution to make the world better and when I finally got out of college it was all make money, look out for you and yours, it’ll trickle down bullshit.
People smoked everywhere. You could smoke in hospitals.
Cars were slow, ugly, deathtraps. Think K-cars, Chevettes and tin-can Hondas. Plenty of 70’s big American cars still around too. Streets smelled like exhaust and gasoline.
The cold war was coming to a climax and there was a pervasive dread of nuclear war. Reagan and Thatcher were adored by their electorate, but it was all wishful thinking. The west decided it didn’t want to deal with reality and chose dogmatic fools for leaders. Russians too, but the people didn’t get to choose.
Racism, sexism, homophobia and other bigotry were all out in the open. Moral Majority and the politicization of religion stuff.
People were poorer.
In short, most things are better now.
Our rooms weren’t decorated in neon pink and teals. Most of us had fake wood paneling on the walls.
I was a child in the 80s, but something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in modern pop culture retellings of 80s life, which I recall witnessing, is this – people think of the weird, wacky, fun colors and hair etc of the 80s – like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George styles – BUT for many people and mainstream communities, that was considered ‘weird’ ‘rock and roll character’ kind of presentation. People would often openly stare, laugh at, or disparage people who looked openly unique. It took a lot of courage to go out styled like that. (It was acceptable to have a more ‘subtle’ take on the fun colors trends.)
I believe the best real-time representation/evidence of this is in the Cyndi Lauper ‘Time After Time’ music video – there’s a scene where she sits down in a diner with her boyfriend and his friends. She pulls off her cap to reveal her new hairstyle – half shaved and unnaturally dyed. Her boyfriend’s friends start hysterically laughing, the boyfriend is quietly embarrassed, and she runs out of the diner in tears.