A pop-punk remake of “The Boys of Summer” was even a hit in 2003 to make that fact even more ‘80s, it was recorded by a band called The Ataris.īut by 2010, it felt like we had hit peak Pac-Man. The Killers and Interpol echoed the sound of New Wave, Missy Elliott sampled Run DMC, and music by artists like Andre 3000 and Beyoncé was sonically infused with a streak of Prince’s purple badness. A production of Xanadu ran briefly on Broadway, followed a few years later by hair-band celebration Rock of Ages, which planted its Spandex in Times Square and stayed there for years. TV shows like Freaks and Geeks, showing up a tad early to the party in 1999, the inevitable That ‘80s Show, and Everybody Hates Chris flashed back to what, in the new millennium, now qualified as the wonder years. Indie and art-house movies ( Donnie Darko, The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland) as well as mainstream blockbusters ( Transformers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Watchmen) hearkened back to the era. Like the 1950s fascination that swept through the 1970s (see: American Graffiti, Happy Days, Grease), the obsession with the ‘60s that coursed through the ‘80s ( The Big Chill, The Wonder Years, Dirty Dancing, the rise of classic rock), and the presence of the 1970s in the pop culture of the 1990s ( Dazed and Confused, That ‘70s Show, Boogie Nights), the ‘80s wave began to rebuild in the 2000s, precisely on time. (But not, for the record, longer than Duran Duran’s career, which is still going relatively strong.)Ī fondness for the era of synth-pop first emerged like clockwork, right on America’s usual nostalgia schedule: roughly 20 years after the ‘80s ended. Our cultural fixation on the Duran Duran decade has now officially lasted longer than the decade itself. I note all of this not to suggest that New York Times trend pieces, like history, often repeat themselves, but to underline a truth that anyone who consumes TV, music, or movies already sees as self-evident: that the ‘80s has not, and seemingly will not, go away. And that third confirmation that the ‘80s are alive and well, particularly fashion-wise? That appeared in the Times just six months ago, in April, 2016. The second took note of the revival of the dawn-of-MTV decade, particularly within the world of music, just a year later, in 2002. The first one, in which Michiko Kakutani argued that nostalgia for the 1980s had fully infiltrated American culture, was published in April of 2001. Those are three headlines from three different New York Times trend pieces written at three different points over the past two decades. “Don’t You Forget About Me! The Formerly Irredeemable ’80s Return.” “Get Out Your Shoulder Pads: The ’80s Are Here.” Your social activism was about saving the Goondocks.Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/VultureĪll week on Vulture, we’re examining ‘80s pop culture, and how it lives on today. You knew that the blue part of the eraser was a lie.Ģ3. If you had a box of these, you were the shit.Ģ2. You perfected the note-passing technique.Ģ1. You had the goddamn Dewey decimal system.Ģ0. You will never be able to erase the memory of Justin Timberlake’s ramen hair phase.ġ9. On the other hand, it was an excuse for another trip to Tower Records.ġ8. The horror of listening to your song skip and realizing your CD was messed up. If you had one of these bad boys, you could entertain yourself in class forever.ġ7. And the scratch ‘n sniff ones got their own section.ġ5. You obsessively saved stickers in a special photo album. These things were like tiny nunchucks.ġ4. This was the best part of your school day.ġ3. Until the miraculous advent of pagers, if you were trying to meet up with friends, you just went and took your chances.ġ2. There was always the terror of your friends’ parents picking up the phone.ġ1. This is what your Friday night consisted of. You had to rely on Bob Saget for your funny videos.ĩ. You spent hours playing with a frustrating multicolored mental torture device.Ĩ. You often died of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.ħ. You learned the esoteric art of fortune telling by playing MASH.Ħ. Teachers tricked you into being quiet and putting your head down on your desk by pretending “Heads Up 7UP” was an actual game. You risked physical injury every time you had to sharpen your pencil in class.Ĥ. All you needed were your Flintstone vitamins.ģ. Remember that familiar screech when you logged on to the Internet and then waited 5 years for AOL to load?Ģ. They’ll remind you of a simpler time, when you entertained yourself with silly putty and an actual newspaper (look it up, youngsters – we didn’t have your fancy online articles) and when a scratch on your new CD could ruin your whole evening. If you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, you’ll feel these posts deep in your soul.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |