Tuesday Afternoon (Sleep-Deprived) Brain Dump
Ok, wise-ass, so what about YOUR generation?
Refugees from planet eighties, you mean?
The best thing I can say about the eighties is that they were unboring (should be an umlaut there, sorry). They had a sort of "permanent revolution" frisson, what with styles, musical tastes, political attitudes and geopolitical orders changing every few months or so. This was fun. The powers-that-be made it even more fun by raising the drinking age, guaranteeing a collective obsession with booze (and a robust demand for imported beer).
I want to stick up for the eighties -- my youth! -- but I have to admit they really were vacuous and superficial, as widely thought. It's telling that we've had seventies-retro but not much eighties-retro. "That 80s Show" flopped. And no wonder; nothing to be retro about. Big hair, who cares? The seventies were a culturally rich decade, a time of blurred social, racial and gender lines, very democratic. The eighties were a time of retrenchment, reinforced social stratification; all kinds of activities and products took on a new-found hi-brow veneer. No more Pabst or Black Sabbath. Instead, we had "quality" everything.
When I see movies from the seventies I'm often struck by how they neglect to flatter the middle class the way eighties flicks do. The seventies gave us Rocky and Saturday Night Fever. My formative decade's contributions were Risky Business, Back to the Future, and numerous movies about sheltered, uptight kids learning to dance. Eighties music, meanwhile, promoted cultural apartheid, whereas disco celebrated blending. The band of the decade was REM, white boys free of urban influence.
Reagan, power ties, and AIDS -- that's the eighties for ya.
There's that Auden line concerning "a low, dishonest decade." Except the eighties weren't low; they were a constant buzz, except for brief interruptions like the stock market crash. It was a euphoric dishonest decade. As enjoyable as it was forgettable.
END RANT
2:51:58 PM 
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