Back to the Future

Simon, via his own bloggige, bringing this article to attention, re '80s revivalisms as demo-trageting marketing trend. Which reminds me of why this is the one "decades blog" that I was always hard-pressed to ever contribute to.

 According to the marketing logic cited in the NYer article,  I should be winsomely nostalgic for the 1980s. It's the decade in which I went to high school, entered adulthood, finally got out of the shithole town I'd grown up in by eventually going off to college, & etc etc. Yet it's probably the one decade I feel the least the nostalgic about. Why? Because it was a totally shit decade. Because of the politics; because of the economics; because of all the shit music and shit fashion, all of which was inescapably hegemonic at the time due to the way media and culture worked in those days.

 All of which is why, quite frankly, I'm quite fine with seeing the decade being associated -- by way of the cited marketing campaigns -- the last place that most people would ever go to shop for electronics, a lowest-tier fast food chain, and a video game that is unanimously considered the worst in history. Seems only fitting.

Jeans 2

If in the 70s jeans were a subcultural uniform, by the 80s the jeans and t-shirt combination went mainstream and became the new uniform for almost everyone. Marketing types and other squares might wear jeans in their leisure time without fear of making a political statement any stronger than, “I’m cool”. Just as advertising had moved from images of the strictly demarcated cultural capital of oil paintings to flat, classless cool, so had jeans gone from having definite class and political connotations to being just something to wear at the weekend.

They also became part of high fashion. Calvin Klein had dramatically boosted its sales by making jeans that had the company logo on the back. Instead of the loose, utilitarian-derived shape of blue jeans, Calvin Klein – "the supreme master of minimalism" – made jeans that were slim, smooth and urban. (This look was a throwback to the 50s and was indicative of 80s regression) Along with its famous branded underwear, Calvin Klein and other high-end labels had created a new type of fashion: designer utilitarian clothes. The cheap-to-make could now also be the expensive-to-buy.

If the status of jeans in the 70s can be represented by Plastic Ono Band, the album cover that does the same for jeans in the 80s would have to be Born in the U.S.A. The record was Bruce Springsteen’s big shot at fame. He had beefed up in the gym and had written upbeat, forceful songs that would have a radio-orientated, synthesised sound – a marked change from his previous record.

The plan worked and the album was huge. The lyrics of the title track told the bitter story of a working class Vietnam veteran who can’t get a job when he returns home from a futile war. The chorus line of “Born in the USA” is sung both patriotically and with bitter irony, but – like the difference between First Blood and Rambo II – the nuances of Born in the U.S.A. could not survive the lack of subtlety demanded by 80s pop culture. Jeans were also part of this unambiguous position – all people saw was a guy on the cover wearing blue jeans in front of the American flag. Jeans vaguely represented America, so they were therefore good. Any connection with manufacturing or labour – as within America itself – was just a memory.

continue
part 1

Tech Noir Sex

Sexuality as the mediated, oppressive, conscious contagion attacking personal agency, biology and ontology. Subject to deception, technology, ideology and social stratification (The Law being as un/dead as Bela Lugosi). Subcultural neuroses that would eventually become common parlance, and then repackaged accordingly. AIDS was beginning to be diagnosed around the same time, but wasn't a mainstream panic until the middle of the decade. If sci-fi/horror's nightmares don't exist at its time of writing, it may be necessary to invent them shortly after.

All the above are cult classics, highly influential in their respective (sub)genres. 'Sleeper' hits that took years to grow an audience (or canonization for Blade Runner), their motifs moving across fashion, adverts, pop videos, and product design, ie. everywhere. A virus of the pleasure principle. Away from the peer pressures of cinema viewing, the lonely - guilty? - space of home video gave these films room to gestate. The lifestyles, behaviour and economic conditions of their characters now appear far less alien than they did in 1982/83. We may be more alienated than these doom-mongers could forecast. Consider the shape Cafe Videodrome has taken since, and your statistical likelihood of surveying either (a) a corporate-led social network, or (b) pornography shortly after looking at this blog. All those immaterial encounters... like tears in the rain...