When I was in high school, I had a pair of friends who were obsessed with the 1980s. Born in 1987, they had matching shirts that proudly proclaimed, “Made in the ’80s.” They wore leg warmers and side ponytails with alarming panache. These two girls were instrumental in making our Sadie Hawkin’s dance ’80s-themed. They regularly listened to Tiffany and Toto and used preferred ’80s nomenclature like “What’s your damage?” and “Don’t have a cow.” It was the start of something I didn’t actually recognize at the time, despite my own proclivity for ’80s punk-rock safety-pin-and-spit style. I was like their little punker sidekick, and I think their friendship with me was partly to add that niche to their cadre of ’80s pop culture cliches.
When I think back on those days, laying in bed reading SPIN magazine’s cover story on Interpol while these two crimped their hair and talked about how cute Eric Stoltz was, I didn’t realize they were at the forefront of a cultural revival. But this is a co-opted revival, intent on glamorizing the ‘80s and baking it in a neon haze. Like putting Vaseline on a lens, it romanticized a time these two girls only knew from movies and Yahoo! Searches.
Specific decades, with their trends and styles, have gone through their fair share of revival in the past, with the 1950s cropping up in the ’70s and, to an extent, the 1960s nipping at the ’80s pop culture dominance in the late 2000s. This goes back to the Renaissance, obsessed with the culture and times of Greek and Roman civilization. But the revival of the 1980s has lasted longer than the decade itself, popping up in movies, music, and fashion for nigh on 20 years now. Our modern pop culture is speaking to us in a lexicon of nostalgia, pumping out synth-rock pseudo-glam stereotypes and fulfilling the thrall that nothing today is as good as what was then. It’s like we’re living in a constant state of FOMO – except what we missed out on was a decade we never had the opportunity to experience in the first place.
In 2002, right before my two dear friends adopted their passion for the past, a funny thing aired on VH1. I Love the ‘80s (originally a BBC show adapted for US audiences) provided a ten-episode arc of celebrity respondents pouring over the frenzied fads of each titular year. Their ironic summaries of a shared history with their target audience (25-40-year-olds) struck a chord with a younger crowd. You would call us millennials. We didn’t grow up with the prolific technologies available today, but we did see them come about. Some of us were early adopters, and some of us (my family included) hopped on the wagon a little later. Y2K was a big deal, especially with the technological advancements the 1990s held, and when that didn’t happen, we may have been left with some sort of cultural identity crisis. What were we going to be? We started off pretty bad in September 2001 (something the collective of my generation will never forget seeing in real-time). It left us with more uncertainty about what our generation would be remembered for. Now I’m not saying I Love the ‘80s was the pinnacle of pop culture, but it did capture a close-enough-to-remember irreverence mixed with MTV editing that grasped something very specific to having a safe and superficial worldview in the wake of American tragedy.
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After the initial airing of I Love the ‘80s, Rockstar Games dropped Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in October of 2002 – this is still my most played GTA game. Mostly, I cheat code my way into five-star threat level and listen to V-Rock while trying to heist a helicopter. V-Rock, like all the stations and set pieces of the game, were ripped from 1980’s Miami, homaging TV series Miami Vice and cartel classic Scarface. Within two days of its release, it sold 1.4 million copies, making it the fastest-selling video game in history. It was also the first GTA game to release CD soundtracks based on its iconic radio stations, with shlocky DJ interludes and all (ah, Lazlo, what a rocker. He dropped out of school after the twelfth grade, man). It further indulged a cross-platform need for ’80s consumption.
The very next year, with the success of I Love the ‘80s, VH1 returned to the deep running waters of the decade to produce I Love the ‘80s Strikes Back. Continuing its talking-head postmodern memory reel, it indoctrinated the already enrapt youth of my generation with a gaggle of new trends to adopt and flaunt. The ‘80s were a decade of micro-niches. There’s a wealth of tiny trends rooted in those 80s years ripe for genre-plucking. The target demo, especially those in the creativity business, saw a meaty market in remembering what was their youth. I Love the 80s 3D didn’t do as well as the previous entries, probably because it had exhausted its talent and trends, but also because we were ready to make our own ‘80s. Forged from the love of the former, a slow uptick in creativity through co-adoption started to form. We no longer wanted to consume the ‘80s, we wanted to make it our own. We could rebuild it. We have the technology (oops, ‘70s reference).
While TV and movies mulled over the idea of taking on the formidable mining of the earlier decade, music was already sampling its sounds. Literally. Rihanna’s hit single “SOS” sampled Soft Cells’ “Tainted Love,” while Flo Rida’s “Right Round” reworked Dead or Alive’s memorable song “You Spin Me Right Round.” Alien Ant Farm and Fall Out Boy were covering Michael Jackson. And who can forget Bowling for Soup’s classic callback to the decade “1985.” Artists were tapping the decade for slick melodic-funk synth and style. The whole pop-punk movement borrowed the thrashing ‘80s punk of The Ramones and the Gits and tailored in a Psychedelic Furs/Hall & Oates vocal track to tug the chords of teen heartstrings (what would be fondly remembered with side-bangs and fashionable stitches as “Emo”). Today, synthwave and other like-genres offer a hypnotic call back that has begun lending itself to impossibly perfect film scores. One would only look at the completely founded albeit absurd fascination with Steel Panther to see that hair metal is still a scene worth enjoying. Last year, Weezer released a viral sensation of the throwback earworm “Africa” by Toto – the sheer popularity of it solidified the cultivation of the decade for modern listeners.
TV and movies would soon follow, but meanwhile, ‘80s 8-bit cheese hit our computer screens with the release of Minecraft in May 2009. Not only could we create our own world, but we could do it with ‘80s digital swagger. It entered its beta phase in 2011, and by April, it had earned $33 million. By 2012 and the earlier release of the alpha phase, it became the 6th best-selling PC game in history, which is impressive considering the game’s lack of active marketing, mostly utilizing word-of-mouth distribution. By 2013, it solidified its spot as the best-selling PC game ever. With graphics and animation getting better every month, this block, an 8-bit-inspired slice of arcade animation, had torn into the top spot of the PC gaming world.
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I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the literary geek-totem Ready Player One (2011), which ostensibly captivated the already angsty collection of gamer-kids with the promise of VR dominance while also reminiscing on all the artifice and camp of a decade pre-techno fuel. It brings up an interesting point, thinking of the referential nature of the ’80s and how much film and media of the time promised a techno lifestyle of Weird Science babes, Mac & Me robot friends, and Back to the Future time travel. There was a meek obsession with developing technology that wasn’t about changing the world – it was about the small details of our lives. There is also a miraculous irony in Ready Player One. When technology advances to the state where you could put yourself in any reality, the one chosen for mass consumption is the cutting edge, daring, audacious, individualistic 1980s (Black Mirror’s 2016 episode “San Junipero” could also be referenced here – but more on that later).
2013 saw the beginnings of ‘80s pastiche hitting the TV airwaves. FX released a hit series, The Americans, following two KGB spies as they infiltrated Washington shortly after Reagan’s election. ABC released a hit sitcom, The Goldbergs, utilizing the childhood memories of creator Adam (F) Goldberg as a backdrop for many ‘80s-theme episodes and callbacks. The next year, the show Halt & Catch Fire used the decade of computer development to catalog a period drama about the IBM innovation wars. The television and streaming service adoption of the era only grew, and between 2016-2018, shows like Stranger Things, Glow, Pose, This is Us, and Black Mirror’s critically-acclaimed episode “San Junipero” capitalized on continued interest in ’80s pop culture and co-option. American Horror Story just released its latest theme: “1984.” These shows, in particular, are renownedly acclaimed by audiences and critics, bursting at the material seams with tie-in artifacts like toys, board games, artwork, and household items featuring their iconography. This goes double (perhaps quadruple) when we hit the big screen.
Now, where to begin with movies? To stall any disservice, and make my point directly, here’s a list of just a few movies spanning 2013-present that are either set in the ‘80s or borrow the tropes of the decade for maximum nostalgia: It: Chapter 1, Drive, Bladerunner 2049, It Follows, Turbo Kid, Sing Street, The Guest, Summer of ‘84, Kung Fury, Mandy, The Void, Ready Player One, Dallas Buyers Club, You Might Be the Killer, Midnight Special, The Babysitter, Hobo With A Shotgun, Everybody Wants Some, Call Me By Your Name, The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle. The upcoming DC film, Wonder Woman 1984, is even bringing superheroes on the bandwagon. 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody featured an all-out, replicated Live Aid performance by the actors cast as Queen, fulfilling a request I’m not sure audiences had – considering you can find the performance by the actual band in its entirety on YouTube. It seems like there is an unspoken thirty-year rule in Hollywood: once it’s been 30 years, it’s ready to be remade (see, A Star is Born). This list avoids the many ‘80s remakes we see being mined for their ideas and abundance if only to spare readers an encyclopedia of ways the decade has been (and is being) replicated.
The wheel also turns not just with creation but with expansion. The 1980s, and other decades of the immediate past, are being repackaged, restored, and crammed with outtakes, bloopers, never-before-heard singles, and never-before-seen interviews in beautiful packaged collector’s sets. While our cultural attachment is adoption, it’s also somewhat cohabitation. The relics of the “olden days” are prized artifacts of recent memory. We’re eager to snap photos of our latest acquisitions of the former age and share them on our smartphones. YouTube channels are dedicated to the acquisition and analysis of retro action figures, VHS tapes, and old-school gaming consoles. The humble rumblings of an arcade is almost more appealing for a night out than a club, as noted by the active rise of arcade-bar hybrids across the globe. Is it odd to think of how desperate we are to connect to a pre-tech craze past? Drawn by the allure of living in the moment, letting go of techno-ties to the world, yet still on the verge of a technical renaissance, could it be that in the past 30 years, technology has made so many leaps that our cultural identity is desperate for something simpler?
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And then, in what felt like a flash, there was a serious political callback in 2016, as “Russia bad” Cold War implications started chomping at the newsreels. We’d been asking for the keys to the 1980s zeitgeist door for years, and suddenly, it wasn’t just remakes and homages on a fictional scale. We moved past cultural 80s-obsession; it became political and social, as well. It’s almost funny to think how perfectly entwined Russia was in getting involved with our ‘80s obsession by re-villainizing itself as America’s “Big Bad.” But let’s not get too political here.
We’re at a tipping point. Never before has a culture looked so immediately into the past for inspiration and refused to give up the goat. While the ’80s are perhaps the most prolific, we’re living in a world of remakes, reworkings, and reboots. We’re revisiting long-awaited sequels and returns (see: 90210 reunion, remake Dallas, and return Veronica Mars). Netflix is spending millions of dollars to keep licensing on throwback fair (Friends). The powers that be are remaking the exact same movie with new technologies (The Lion King). New, original movies with spectacular ideas are borrowing name brands just to capitalize on audience recognition (imagine if the new Child’s Play was exactly the same premise, but it wasn’t a Good Guy doll, instead some other toy. Still pretty damn good and original, right?). While still, other companies are literally killing off beloved characters from former fare to make room for a new empire of toys and theme parks (Star Wars).
In 1986, the animated series Transformers released a feature film. The series was pretty much a vehicle to sell the Hasbro-produced Transformer toys, to begin with, so when the time came for the movie, the idea was to generate interest in a new crop of plastic properties. The opening moments of the film saw the somewhat violent deaths of several beloved characters by the villainous Decepticons. Soon after came the punishing blow: they killed off Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. The backlash was insurmountable. Kids turned on the series, and there was a palpable onslaught that caught Hasbro’s attention, leading to The Return of Optimus Prime in the Hate Plague episodes of the TV series. Why do I bring this up? Because in the ‘80s, the consumer had the power to change the narrative. It seems to be one of the only things we haven’t adopted from the decade. That and corded phones. (Note: that property was brought to the big screen in 2007).
Taking a moment, I’m not trying to bag on our obsession with ’80s pop culture. It was an iconic decade with instantly recognizable sounds, fashion, and film fare. It is full of cultivatable property and originality that has turned what was once thought of as a ridiculous set of years into a ripe and ready gold mine for imitation. T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.” In a generation of lost poets looking for our maturity, is it so hard to believe that our cultural inclination turned to the past? Our imitation, as my two dear high school friends could tell you, is the sincerest form of flattery. It seems the cultural goal would be to make it our own. But how much of it is our own? When do we stop being an immature generation of 30-somethings imitating a recent past and mature into thieves? There are rare and winsome examples of original fare, those that refuse to return to the former and instead craft their own narrative, and that’s what I mean by the tipping point. If we don’t stop allowing imitation to control our consumerism and cultural identity, instead embracing the ownership of new (even if new is “inspired by”) fare, we cannot mature as a society. We’re stuck in a proverbial vacuum, continually sucked back to our immediate history and tipping the scales against creativity, leaving a hole in the future of nostalgia itself.
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I’ll end with some thoughts from Don Coscarelli. In an article published by Fangoria in Vol. 2, Issue #1 last year, Coscarelli looks back at the making of his iconic, wholly original film Phantasm (1979). In the article, he sites a number of works that influenced the making of Phantasm, including Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, 1953’s Invaders from Mars, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Brian De Palma’s Carrie, and John Frankenheimer’s The French Connection II. He states, “…by the time Phantasm was finished, you’d be hard-pressed to see direct influences…” And he’s right. It’s a love letter, a mash-up, a stolen property, a remake, an adaptation, a reboot, but it’s also original, new, insane, amazing, and memorable. Maybe it’s over-abundance, maybe it’s smart-money marketing, maybe it’s techno-fatigue, but we are firmly at a tipping point where we can’t escape the 1980s influence on our society. And while it’s fun, it’s steeped in nostalgia – a longing for the past – that we cannot seem to overcome. It is just that we believe movies, music, TV, and fashion were better in the past. Is it that we think we can never be as good as it was? I think about thirty years from now. What will they say of this decade? Will we be “The ‘80s Revivalists?” How unoriginal. “The Hanger’s On?” How infuriating. It is our task to let go. With the world of remembering at our fingertips, we need to take heed of the 1980’s ultimate lesson: live for the now. It’s time to come back to our future.
