Does Hollywood Really Have Nostalgia For the 80s?
Cultural Objects in the Rearview May Be Larger Than They Appear
All summer long everyone has been talking about how we are stuck in the 80s between the Summer of (Kate) Bush and the smash hit Maverick. That may be true for this year, but frankly it feels like we've been making up for lost time.
Huh? Um I mean, you did read that article about how even in 2016 we are still stuck in the 80s right? Yes I did. And back then I drank the Kool Aid. But in light of this great audiobook about how Boomers still run the show, I'm not so sure. I reread that article about how even in 2016 we are still stuck in the 80s. Using Jen Chaney's own examples, I will prove my point.
She compares the 20 year nostalgia cycle of the 00s/80s to that of the 70s/50s, 80s/60s and 90s/70s. I didn't notice the first time but on closer inspection, the decades prior to the 80s had a way more rose tinted hue.
50s
The article mentions Happy Days and Grease as examples of 50s nostalgia in the 70s. Needless to say, both were very leisurely strolls down memory lane. Even in the 80s, Back to the Future was a magic blast to the past that cemented Michael J. Fox as the poster boy of Reagan-era conservatism.
60s
As early as the 70s, American Graffiti looked back at the summer of '63, before Kennedy got shot. No movie was a better commercial for hanging out in another era. But lord knows the ad campaign continued for the 60s in the 80s, with The Big Chill, The Wonder Years and Dirty Dancing all giving a very soft-focus look back.
70s
On TV, there was That 70s Show. Even indie films like Boogie Nights glamorized the sexy yet innocent '70s.
80s
Boogie Nights also cast a dark pall over the 80s as the decade of greed and crass commercialism. Truthfully, this is a Rosetta stone for how Hollywood saw the 80s. Donnie Darko took place in the 80s, but it was more of a haunted house experience than a Tunnel of Love one. Squid and the Whale was about children of a bitter divorce. Now to be fair there were semi-nostalgic glances like The Wedding Singer, 200 Cigarettes and Halt and Catch Fire. But the first two treated the 80s more like a punching bag for cheap jokes and Halt was far from a sentimental look back.
Weirdly enough, breaking the 20 year rule, it wasn't until Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) that you had a fond look back at the 80s. Three years later we got The Goldbergs. But it's funny that the aforementioned article asks why we are still obsessed with the 80s even in 2016, because that was the year Stranger Things came out and that's what really rolled the boulder of 80s nostalgia.
Wait, didn't you skip over all the 80s reboots? I did. Truthfully, these further underline my point. The reboots were always meant to correct, retcon, or politically correct the blockbusters of the past. Transformers but with a better soundtrack. Ghostbusters but feminist. 21 Jump Street but funny.
So why did it feel like the aughts were jam-packed with 80s nostalgia? The Internet. Memes; videos; social media posts; blog posts. In other words, it flourished in the one domain where Gen X, not Boomers, rule the roost.
Arguably, this very divide between boomer ancient media and Gen X new media does a fine job not only explaining why there wasn't much true 80s nostalgia before Stranger Things, it also clarifies why it took an Internet company like Netflix to get the ball rolling. Between kids having unsupervised walkie talkie adventures on bikes and the countless 80s movie references smuggled into each frame, this was the first show to suggest that the 80s were fun in an un-ironic way.
The Duffer Brothers were to 80s action blockbusters what Tarantino was to 70s kung fu films and 60s spaghetti Westerns. Which is interesting if only because Tarantino has gone on record numerous times saying the '80s were the worst decade for movies since the 50s.
Many of the Gen X indie auteurs like Tarantino, PT Anderson and Wes Anderson played the classic Gen X hipster card of digging through the 60s and 70s vinyl crates for overlooked classics to use as needledrops.* It took The Duffer Brothers to use 80s songs as the soundtrack for cinematic shots that revered the 80s.
Paper Girls on Amazon Prime seems to be picking up that mantle. Again no accident that it is from Amazon Prime, an Internet company. So next time you stream some 80s nostalgia, remember: you are not only looking back, you are looking forward to a future without Boomer control of media.
* A trick that conveniently lets Xers use Boomer culture while not paying tribute to official tye-dye Gods like The Beatles and Hendrix (Wes Anderson of course couldn’t resist).