But Wargames and Night of the Comet didn’t come out in the 70s or 90s! Don’t you see? It’s all so simple!
Ah yes, but inspite of the mass conspiracy to stiffle its eternal and cosmic importance, you must take great care not to leave out the ‘Rosetta Stone’ that ties it all together. Thy name be…
Howard the Duck.
Why not the 70s? … There were things from the 70s, such as roller skating that came into vogue. But it crossed over into the 80s (as a child I remember skating to mid-80s Madonna songs) Others who were teenagers in the 70s remember disco and roller-skating.
I didn’t know, as a child, Madonna was from Detroit. Some of those songs were very heavy, sexual even for a child. But there was a refreshing innocence to them. Why do so many ads have ‘pop 80s songs in their commercials’. I remember the movie Heavy Weights about kids who go to fat camp. It was a 90s movie that prominently featured 70s songs - not 80s songs. Why? Was it because of the director’s nostalgia.
Thinking of that movie and what it means for summer, being who you are, regardless of weight or age,
There was a carefree feeling to some 70s songs. Some were slapstick, in-your-face. The 80s songs were deeper, had a energetic, optimistic, space-age feel. Maybe it was that the 70s were all about we’re getting back on our feet (after Vietnam, Watergate - which, remember most kids only had a vague memory of) and the 80s were about riding the wave (during the cold war, which, again, many in my generation only knew peripherally).
What do you remember about the 80s? Was it the music. And for those that lived through the 70s and 80s. How was it different?
This may be the most philosophically unstable thread I’ve ever read.
Of course, it wasn’t made in the 80s, so I suppose that’s to be expected.
So it wasn’t really “stable” then, was it?
What do I remember? Mostly cartoons-Jem, She-Ra, the Snorks, He-Man, Voltran, that sort of thing.
I also remember hearing about the Berlin Wall, Challenger, Reagan and Bush, etc.
And let’s not forget teeny pop and boy bands: NKOTB, Debbie Gibson, etc. And hair bands.
Otherwise, it wasn’t really any different so much from any other decades-they all had their fads.
Maybe your most stable decade is your second? (To paraphrase Baird Searles a bit.)
I do too! But I also remember cartoons from today. I remember watching Cartoon Network with my younger cousins. They’ve lost their charm but they’ve become, shall I say, more witty. Are you thinking what I’m thinking (I know… but I couldn’t come up with any example off the top of my head from Spongebob Square Pants or CatDog) On SDMB someone even made a reference to the Anamaniacs recently.
In the 90s I learned the importance of exercise from Heavyweights a coming of age film. In the 00s kids learn the importance of exercise from Lazytown… which I associate more with dreams, fantasy… the Disney show Adventures in Wonderland. Now those shows are/were charming!!
So that’s one example. When I watched Lazytown part of my association of it was from the 90s show Alice in Wonderland (I know it’s from a Victorian England chilidren’s book) But just the brightness of it. There was an Alice in Wonderland episode on how you shouldn’t be superstitious. It was innocent.
Lazytown was made in the 2000s but it’s like right of the 90s!
But Howard the Duck didn’t play the Atari. Actually, he might have. I’ve never seen any of those movies. During the 80s I was doing the single parent/working/student thing and didn’t catch many movies.
On a more serious note, the child who is wiser/smarter than the adults around him/her is a stock character, whether they play Atari or not. A real kid Home Alone, will not take out the burglars. Now I bet HE played the Atari at some point in his movie.
I will say that the more information that a kid can get without it having to filter through a local adult, the more likely it is that, in any kid/adult pairing, the kid can surpass the adult in knowing any given topic.
(After leaving, getting a breath of fresh, cold air) How can you watch the film American Graffiti and not know who George Lucas was… well, if you watched it in 1973. The moviegoers in `73 had a different perspective from after Lucas made Star Wars.
Wow. American Graffiti and Star Wars. The 50, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 00s. But that’s a topic for another debate.
Hey, I’m still waiting for a topic for this debate!
I’m a fan of both movies, and you’re not making any sense at all.
sigh I am making sense.
Someone from my generation saw American Graffiti after they saw Star Wars. Someone from the generation before me saw Star Wars after they saw American Graffiti. Two different perspectives. The 70s and the 80s. Actually, the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 00s… for those who know that the Star War films span 1977 - 2005 and that American Graffiti was made in 1973 but set in 1962.
Who here knows what American Graffiti means to them? Who here is a fan of Star Wars? You had a time in the United States. It was a time of innocence. Look. You don’t have films like American Graffiti today, you have Grand Theft Auto and XXX and Gone in 60s Seconds. Yeah, and George Lucas made American Graffiti 2 and it bombed. You want to know why there’s not going to be an American Graffiti 3, it’s because of the times we are living in.
And I’m getting irritated at the level of nitpicking and chiding.
Going skating was retro. Now, I think, they call it ironic.
Indiana Jones is coming back. Well, I will be looking to see what the kids born after 2000… think about it.
Ah, but what about the role of Tony Danza? Unless his influence is incorporated, your theory is doomed to incoherence.
You do not seem to have persuaded any other posters of that claim.
In reverse order:
There will not be an American Grafitti 3 because sequels tend to be schlock and only very formulaic sequels that are based on factors other than plot or character development (usually explosions or fights) appeal to enough audience to make a profit. (There are a very few exceptions.)
Gone in 60 Seconds is from 2000, Grand Theft Auto was from 1977 (all the similar titles since then have been video games). xXx was at least released after 2000, (but still six years ago), but it is a slapstick goof. On the other hand, in the last year we have had Enchanted and the flawed Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Even Juno has a certain “innocence” about it–certainly more than the fantasized nostalgia that passes for innocence in American Grafitti.
As to the innocence of society, you are you are displaying a rather odd claim. You seem to be asserting that a movie released in the same month as the first resignation of a U.S. President under fire for corruption, the climax of a multi-year fiasco over Watergate, the summer the U.S. disengaged from a foreign nation in the second most divisive conflict in which the country ever engaged (until Iraq), and the winding down of the period of frequent riots in the cities following an intense effort to secure civil rights for a substantial portion of the citizenry that challenged most of the ideals of “fairness” to which the nation purportedly subscribed actually occurred in a time of innocence.
You really need to look up Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire (released at the end of your halcyon decade, in 1989).
My guess is that you are simply engaging in some naive nostalgia of your own that is based on an unawareness of the continuity of strife, conflict, and changing mores that has been a consistent aspect of society.
The 1980s stable? Personal computers, MTV, Iran-Contra, cell phones, 1986 tax “reform,” Republican controlled Senate, herpes simplex, AIDS epidemic, threats of Ebola and Hanta outbreaks, rapid expansion of cable TV, collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Yeah, There was an age of stability.
Then you need to come up with a coherent statement that can actually be discussed in some fashion rather than odd allusions to old movies followed by incomprehensible claims regarding society that no one but you can even decipher.
Tell 'em you’re not gonna take it!
…or would that be a 60’s reference?
Sez you.
What I’m getting here is that the 80s were somehow the “magical”, most stable and perfect decade, and your evidence are video games and sci-fi movies.
There is no thing such as a “time of innocence”, at least not defined by a certain decade. People have ALWAYS been talking about the “good ol’ days”, but such days have never existed.
That’s for sure. In fact, teen pregnancies are going down. What does that mean? More teens are using birth control, that’s what it means.
I couldn’t believe how the media were saying, after Sept. 11, 2001, that “We’ve lost our innocence,” or “Everything has changed.” What nonsense. They tried to blow up the WTC way back in 1993–it’s just that in 2001, they got lucky and were successful. (They also wanted to blow up LAX, but got caught at the Canadian border.)
The only things that really changed after 9/11/01 were that the administration now had an excuse to invade Iraq, airports became an even bigger pain in the ass, and the Guantanamo base suddenly got a reason to exist. Oh, and torture, too.
Oh, yeah, that is better. Thanks. WWI was indeed an old-fashioned family feud fought by nations that suddenly weren’t quite so old-fashioned, either technologically or socially.