Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now

[marmar]

via AlterNet:




Ballantine Books / By David Sirota

Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now
In his new book, David Sirota examines how '80s propaganda led us to reject the past and ultimately embrace the capitalistic future planned out for us.

March 25, 2011 |


The following is an excerpt from Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything by David Sirota (Ballantine Books, 2011).

Die, Hippie, Die! Every time one of these ex-hippies comes prancing in from yesteryear, we gotta get out the love beads and pretend we care about people. - Alex P. Keaton, 1986

For the past several days I've been noticing a steep rise in the number of hippies coming to town. . . . I know hippies. I've hated them all my life. I've kept this town free of hippies on my own since I was five and a half. But I can't contain them on my own anymore. We have to do something, fast! -Eric Cartman, 2005


In 1975, a Democratic Party emboldened by civil rights, environmental, antiwar, and post-Watergate electoral successes was on the verge of seizing the presidency and a filibuster-proof congressional majority. That year, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were two of the three top-grossing films -- the former a parody using the late-sixties sexual revolution to laugh at the puritanical fifties, the latter based on the novel by beat writer Ken Kesey. Meanwhile, three of the top-rated seven television shows were liberal-themed programs produced by progressive icon Norman Lear, including "All in the Family" --a show built around a hippie, Mike Stivic, poking fun at the ignorance of his traditionalist father-in-law, Archie Bunker.

A mere ten years later, Republican Ronald Reagan had just been reelected by one of the largest electoral landslides in American history, and his party had also gained control of the U.S. Senate. Two of the top three grossing films were Back to the Future, which eulogized the fifties, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, which blamed sixties antiwar activism for losing the Vietnam conflict. Most telling, "All in the Family's" formula of using sixties-motivated youth and progressivism to ridicule fifties-rooted parents and their traditionalism had been replaced atop the television charts by its antithesis: a "Family Ties" whose fifties-inspired youth ridicules his parents' sixties spirit.

The political and cultural trends these changes typified were neither coincidental nor unrelated, and their intertwined backstories explain why we're still scarred by the metamorphosis. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/books/150364/back_to_our_future%3A_how_the_1980s_explain_the_world_we_live_in_now/

[geckosfeet]

1. Ok... 'quotes' from cartoon characters. That explains a few things in itself.

I would maintain that the Stivic character was shoveling against the tide of Archie Bunker, and was somehow prescient of the Regan era. I would go so far as to extend the type of relationship (dominant loud mouth rwinger vs somewhat mouse like lwinger) to something like Hannity and Colmes show.

The relationship is a kind of cultural icon - we need to break it.

[baldguy]

2. The political climate is usually reflected in popular culture.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Only Eric Cartman is a cartoon character

And of course, the comedy reflects the culture. I'd say that in All In The Family, Archie was working against the tide represented by Mike and Gloria, not the other way around. The tide of the time was 'end the draft and the war' which in fact happened. Archie was an openly racist, sexist believer of the Nixon Party line. He was a thing of the past, clinging to a President that left in disgrace, a war that was immoral, and a draft that was draining the nation's youth. The show encapsulated the actual events going on in American families at the time.

[geckosfeet]

6. Funny. Biggoted and ignorant as he was, I always saw Archie as the dominant force in that show.

[unblock]

8. he was of course the center of attention. the other characters took turns arguing with him.

even the neighbors took their turn arguing with him.

and in his own way, he pretty much always won. the hippie kids, then neighbors, even edith would invariably win the logical argument or have the most poignant closing remark, but archie always got to sit in his chair and insist he was right anyway.


i used to hate watching that show because my grandparents were EXACTLY like edith & archie. some of the episodes could have been verbatim playbacks from arguments i remember from visits there. i didn't understand it was supposed to be funny or make a statement, it was just, "why would anyone find one of our unpleasant family visits entertaining?" but i suppose that scene played itself out in many households across the country and it's entertaining when you see it happening to someone else.

[Hugin]

3. I've been having an intense feeling of Deja Vu lately.

This may explain it. :/

Thanks for posting, marmar.

[thelordofhell]

5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show wasn't even close to being a top grossing film in 1975

This moron looked at current Box Office figures and thinks the RHPS made all its money in 1975. The film was a flop.....it took a cult following and 35 years of midnight showings to make 140 million dollars.

I know he's a progressive, but maybe he needs to do a little research before he throws out movies that he's basing a summation of morals of the 70's on.

:wtf:

[NICO9000]

7. Glad somebody else is mentioning this

It definitely was a flop first time around. I saw it on a double bill in '76 with "Phantom of the Paradise," one of my fave films of that era. I was immediately hooked into Rocky Horror and bought the stage soundtrack the next week. The error just shows how these publishers seem to no longer employ editors or fact checkers. Sad.

Anyway, I'll read this book when it gets remaindered in a year or so. I learned my lesson buying political books when they first come out. They seem to have a short shelf life (pun intended), then end up in the remainder bins pretty fast.

[starroute]

9. Back to the Future didn't exactly eulogize the 50s

It presented them as naive, strait-laced, low-tech and in need of a good shot of rock 'n' roll to shake things up and get them moving. Yeah, there was a bit of nostalgic glow about it -- but I never caught any hint of actually wanting to get stuck there.

I won't argue that things took a hard right turn under Reagan, but contrasting the (very brief) upsurge of hippie/liberal themes on tv for a few years in the early 70s with the never-all-that-monolithic media of the 80s, seems disingenuous.

Here are 20 out of the first 25 films (excluding those dated 1980) from an online list of top films of the 80s. Granted these aren't the top-grossing films -- but except for Die Hard, I can't see much I'd label as explicitly conservative.


http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/movie-pages/movie_80s.html

2. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial - (1982, Steven Spielberg) (Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace)
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark - (1981, Steven Spielberg) (Harrison Ford, Paul Freeman)
4. Amadeus - (1984, Milos Forman) (F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce)
5. Platoon - (1986, Oliver Stone) (Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen)
6. Cinema Paradiso - (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore) (Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio)
7. Once Upon a Time in America - (1984, Sergio Leone) (Robert DeNiro, James Woods)
8. Blade Runner - (1982, Ridley Scott) (Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer)
9. Ran - (1985, Akira Kurosawa) (Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao)
10. Do the Right Thing - (1989, Spike Lee) (Spike Lee, John Turturro)
11. Blue Velvet - (1986, David Lynch) (Kyle MacLachlin, Dennis Hopper)
15. Full Metal Jacket - (1987, Stanley Kubrick) (Mathew Modine, Adam Baldwin)
16. Brazil - (1985, Terry Gilliam) (Jonathan Pryce, Robert DeNiro)
18. Das Boot - (1981, Wolfgang Peterson) (Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer)
19. Tootsie - (1982, Sydney Pollack) (Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange)
20. The Untouchables - (1987, Brian De Palma) (Kevin Costner, Sean Connery)
21. The Terminator - (1984, James Cameron) (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton)
22. Die Hard - (1988, John McTiernan) (Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman)
23. The Last Emperor - (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci) (John Lone, Joan Chen)
24. Gandhi - (1982, Richard Attenborough) (Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen)
25. Raising Arizona - (1987, Joel Coen) (Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter)