Overview
They called it the Reagan Revolution, and I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed like the Great Rediscovery: a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.
—Ronald Reagan (1989)
In the comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), directed by David Mirkin, the Valley Girl holdovers Romy White (Mira Sorvino) and Michele Weinberger (Lisa Kudrow) plan to attend their 10-year high school reunion. As they revisit their yearbook, a flashback takes spectators to Sagebrush High School to witness the torture that once plump Romy and the once disabled Michele (a victim of scoliosis—sporting a back brace) experienced at the hands of the A-Group—a quartet of fashionable cheerleaders. While dodging their antics, the pair attempts to avoid the stigma of being labeled members of the C-group—reserved for members of the science club.
In one memory, focusing on Prom Night, the now-thin Romy (who lost weight after a bout with mono) and Michele (sans back brace) arrive dressed as "The Madonna Twins"—while they believe their fashionable frocks make them appear to be "the only ones not dressed like we’re going to a hoe-down," they are still victims of the A-Group’s schemes. Of course, the irony of the film is that no one has really changed much in 10 years, and the site of the reunion allows the A-Group to stage one more humiliation.
What the film gets right in its flashbacks to the 1980s is the dichotomies represented in the styles and trends of the era. The decade was a time of extremes. Values were either conservative or liberal. Fashion either reflected money (Preppies and Valley Girls) or the latest visit to local thrift stores or a heavy metal concert. Hair was either permed and teased into a giant wall of bangs and layers or chopped off in the front and allowed to grow long in the back in various forms (like the rat-tail or the now-infamous mullet).
The prosperity of big business allowed fictional characters like J. R. Ewing and Blake Carrington, sporting fashionably dressed wives living in ostentatious grandeur, to blaze across television screens, as well as former hippies Michael and Elyse Keaton to question the ethical antics of their tie-wearing son, Alex P. Keaton. While shopping centers replaced record stores with little silver discs, and arcades replaced pinball machines with video games, people stayed home because they wanted their MTV, searched their backyards for wrinkly extraterrestrials, and went to the movies to escape to galaxies "far, far away." The definition of the word "Madonna" changed forever.
The extremes of the 1980s can be understood in two popular teen films that bracket the decade. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), directed by Amy Heckerling, follows the "typical" lives of high school students working at menial jobs for extra money to buy gas for the car. The film’s dialogue sharply registers the innocent expressions of lusty boys stalking "innocent" girls. The hero is fun loving, benign "surfer-dude" Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) who orders pepperoni pizza to be delivered during history class. His lone ambition is to be recognized as the greatest surfer on the California coast.
Heathers (1989), on the other hand, is an ironic teen comedy steeped in a cynical bravado. At the end of the decade, the "typical" teen shops with a parents’ Mastercard, plays croquet after school, gossips, gets drunk, and throws up at college parties. The film’s dialogue is littered with caustic profanity. The hero (Christian Slater) stages student murders to look like teen suicides, and its heroine (Winona Ryder) is his angst-ridden accomplice. She worries about having her SAT scores sent to San Quentin and ultimately saves her school by destroying him after triggering his homemade bomb with her own handgun.
For these dichotomies and countless others, the 1980s should be viewed as a remarkable decade. Its extremes single the era out as a time of great advancements and critical tests of the human spirit. No wonder people look back at it with such curious fondness after such relatively little time has passed between then and now.
It is impossible to fully grasp the 1980s without understanding Ronald Reagan and his hold over the nation. Like so many decades in American history, notably the 1900s of Theodore Roosevelt and the 1930s of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president stood as the defining figure of the era. Interestingly, Reagan casts a shadow not only for his presidency, but also as a symbol of the power of popular culture based on his past as an actor and company spokesperson.
Many of the most powerful political statements made during the period melded popular culture and activism. Spike Lee’s 1989 motion picture Do the Right Thing, which he produced, wrote, directed, and starred in, told the story of racial conflict in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. After an afternoon of building racial tension between the blacks who live in the area and the white owner of Sal’s Pizzeria, violence erupts, which ultimately ends up with white police officers choking an African American boy to death. In retaliation, the residents burn the pizzeria to the ground.
The film opened to great controversy because of white fears that blacks would riot after seeing it. The hit song from the film, Public Enemy’s "Fight the Power," also received criticism for inciting African American listeners. Lee stoked the controversy by claiming that white critics who thought that blacks could not control themselves after watching the movie were guilty of racism. Though the film received the 1989 Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival, it did not receive any Academy Awards, sparking more discussion about the role racism played in Hollywood, particularly when Driving Miss Daisy won the "Best Motion Picture" award. The movie featured Morgan Freeman as a black chauffer in Atlanta. (The controversy and the feelings of many were summed up in another Public Enemy track, "Burn Hollywood Burn.")
Ironically, so much of the politics of the Reagan era focused on bringing back the wholesomeness of earlier times. It was as if the president saw something fundamentally wrong with the era, or that earlier decades were so much better.
Yet, today, we seem to live in a constant state of 1980s revivalism. In the summer of 2006, a concertgoer could see some of the biggest acts of the decade on tour, including Def Leppard, Motley Crüe, and Bon Jovi; catch the film version of Miami Vice on the big screen; and see countless turned-up collars and preppy clothes on any college campus in the nation.
Use the links on the top left and top right sides of the page to find out more about the news, films, movie stars, songs, books, Broadway shows, awards, fads, fashions, sports, and other elements of pop culture in the 1980s. Or, if you’d like, continue reading from The 1980s by Bob Batchelor and Scott Stoddart.
Adapted from Bob Batchelor and Scott Stoddart, The 1980s. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), xi-xiii.