I want to know what pop culture was like in the 80s for those who lived it. I was not born in the 80s but I've always been in love with it from the music to the movies and even if the fashion was not my style, I feel like it was the last decade where people had their own identity!
I personally think being a "superstar" was created in the 80s with the likes of MJ, Prince, Madonna, Whitney, Janet, Bobby Brown, etc...
What are your opinions?
It was my childhood so I have only a childish lens of it but being a kid in the 80s was totally awesome! It was such a colorful era and, as an action buff, we saw the rise of so many action stars.
There was also a kind of cultural homogeneity to it (along with previous decades), at least in my perception, that seemed to start to dissipate in the 90s and onwards. Like even though there was quite a variety to 80s pop culture like a wild variety of music, there was something underlying it all that seemed to tie it all strongly together more than music of the 90s and onwards, or at least in my admittedly biased perception.
Also I think that was when we really started to see the best and last of exclusively practical effects in films before CG started taking over as well as hand-drawn cel animation in cartoons before digital started to take over.
It was all so colorful and really sparked my imagination as a child: synth music, action stars like Arnie, amazing sci-fi films like Bladerunner, Terminator, Aliens, Robocop, The Fly, Back to the Future, etc, the Nintendo and the beginning of video games that weren't just extremely repetitive loops with only high scores to chase, etc, etc.
It depends on which part of it you look at. We were just coming out of the god awful disco era of the `70's and punk was quickly becoming new wave. By the mid `70's, t. v. had become a brain dead wasteland of stupid shows! About the only t. v. I watched was MTV, The Bowery Boys, Nick At Nite and a weekly cable show called, Night Flight. There was another similar one called, Up All Nite that I watched sometimes. Otherwise, I'd mostly watch HBO.
The music was fantastic, it was second only to the psych era of the `60's!! At least up until the mid to late `80's. Rap showed up in `86 and music has been going downhill ever since! Most of the movies were pretty fucking good, too!
I'm pretty sure people called it the new romantic period. At least it was for me! I got my first two doses of pussy!! I finally got into a band, we finally made our first album and started working on our 2nd, I met a lot of great people in college, started working on my first solo album, started heavily collecting psych records... but, there was also a couple of dark periods, for me. I lost my 1st girlfriend after just 4 months, she claimed she was just using me to make another guy jealous. A year later, I got my second but, lost her shortly afterwards, too because, what I didn't know was that she was already on her way to her 3rd nervous breakdown before we got together! After she'd been in a psych hospital for 4 or 5 months, she decided to go back to my guitarist who refused to let her talk to me, anymore. And, in `84, the band broke up for a few months. Later, I found out it was because my singer was dealing with testicular cancer from being exposed to agent orange in Vietnam! Thanks loads, Monsanto!! (ASSHOLES!!)
Late `80's were sort of okay. Music was dragging its feet, movies weren't that great, t. v. was starting to get slightly better but, I kinda stopped watching it for the most part about 15 years before. And, we were finally starting to get SOME fame!
Opinion
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I don't know what it was like in the US but in the UK it was really rad. Whatever your scene was there was a lot going on, and it wasn't the sanitized pre-packaged shit sandwich you get now. Now let's hear some typical music from the era:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nMplIrSlg8E
Far better than the trash we have today. Right into the 90's.
It was as shitty, shallow and meaningless as it is now.
Just - expressing that garbage was done differently.
Well consider there was no internet so the only mediums available were radio and t. v. to get something out to the masses. And that was controlled. Not so much today. Any moron today can post a video and have potential of it going viral.
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