People are nostalgic about the 1980s. Every post-World War II decade has gone through a romantic revival, so why not the '80s?
Sure, the current nostalgia kick is a fad, tied mostly to the new Fox sitcom, "That '80s Show," which airs at 8 tonight on WJPR / WFXR- Channel 21 / 27, but that's appropriate. Saying the '80s had a few fads is like saying Joan Collins wore a few diamonds.
Fads were as important to the '80s as mousse was to George Michael: Leg warmers, Ray-Bans, spiked hair, New Wave, leather and lace, Swatch watches, 20 rubber bracelets on a girl's arm, the preppy look of Izod-Lacoste alligator shirts and Dexter shoes, break dancing, Cabbage Patch dolls, stonewashed button-fly jeans, Boy George, Dan Quayle, Luke and Laura.
You get the drift. Stumbling out of the do-it-if-it-feels-good excesses of the '60s and '70s, the '80s were . . . even more excessive. Nothing was sacred. Women wore shoulder pads and men wore eye liner. Preachers dated hookers. It was that kind of decade. Now, the whole thing's being re-released, which frightens some people more than if they heard a director's cut of "St. Elmo's Fire" was coming out on DVD.
"That '80s Show," inspired by the success of "That '70s Show," is set in San Diego 1984, when Ronald Reagan, Duran Duran and Big Hair roamed the Earth. MTV even showed videos then. (By the way, what if Duran Duran and Mister Mister had ever recorded an album together? They could have named it "They Call Me Mister Duran Mister Duran.")
On "That '80s Show," people watch "Dynasty" and carry around portable phones the size of K-Cars. While it seems doubtful this show will inspire people to drag their "Flashdance"-style sweat shirts and celery-stick-thin leather ties out of mothballs, the current infatuation with the '80s dispels the myth that the decade didn't have a distinctive look that could one day be mocked by future generations.
The '50s had its leather jackets, poodle skirts and slicked-back hair, the '60s its Beatle suits, moptops,psychedelic paisleys and long hair, the '70s its tie-dyes, muttonchops, leisure suits and Farrah Fawcett hair. The '80s, at the time, seemed to be so . . . normal by comparison.
This notion is challenged by looking at a 1984 high school yearbook. The boys with their hair parted down the middle and combed back over the ears and girls with poofy hair and eye shadow look like they're from another time.
Some '80s things never went away, which isn't necessarily good. We still live with MTV, Madonna, AIDS, crack cocaine, "The Simpsons," U2, David Letterman, rap music and Michael Jordan. We even still have a President George Bush.
Some things vanished as if hit by the plague: Lionel Ritchie (hooray!), Indiana Jones movies (well, the first one was good), Molly Ringwald, and hair bands like Motley Crue and Poison (double hooray).
Others, we just wish would disappear. Like Michael Jackson.
As we plow ahead and leave the '80s deeper in our wake, history might judge it as a time of innocence. The Cold War was on, but it never really seemed that scary, at least not as frightening as it did to youngsters in the A-bomb '50s and missile-crisis '60s.
By the end of the decade, college students knew of Vietnam only through history books and "Platoon." When the Berlin Wall crumbled, hopes for world peace soared like a cloud of doves. Terrorism took the lives of people in Lebanon, Rome and Lockerbie. REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" was just a fun, silly song. New York City's skyline was defined by two towering spires. The war in Afghanistan was the Soviets' problem.
Even with the current '80s revival, those days seem very far away.
Ralph Berrier Jr. can be reached
at 981-3338 or ralphb@roanoke.com.
