There’s a cultural concept of the “long 19th century” that includes the Edwardian period (e.g. the Titanic) up until World War One, as it is felt that it is more culturally akin to the 19th century than what followed.
You can make an argument that the 80’s were defined in part by the Cold War and didn’t really end until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. Likewise, one can claim that the 90’s way of life (economy riding high, the US president’s bedroom policies deemed more important than his economic or defense policies, peace here and abroad and a general sense of calm with the Cold War behind us) ended on 9/11/2001.
I don’t think anybody is arguing about the difference between what is culturally “the 80s” and what is nominally “the 80s.” But, without further qualifiers, using a phrase like “the 80s” has a specific and obvious meaning. When you watch VH1’s “I Love the 80s” they don’t show you music from the late 70s and early 90s (like the Amy Grant song previously posted) that may be culturally associated with “the 80s.” They show you music from 1/1/80-12/31/89. People are really making this a lot more complicated that it needs to be.
Look, if you want to discuss the chronological boundaries of “80s culture,” have at it. But simply “the 80s” comprises the years that end in “8x”.
" decadeology is something you either understand or you don’t"
On the other hand, there are those who believe that decadeology is simply claptrap and that even those involved in this imagined science can’t agree on a definition.
Actually, that’s not necessary. We can retroactively decree that the year before 1 AD (or 1 CE if you’re PC) is named 0 AD. After all, it wasn’t called “1 BC” at the time any more or any less than it was called “0 AD”; and there is nothing holy about the stupid “BC” system. It doesn’t even have a very long pedigree: rather than going back to Dionysius Exiguus as sometimes asserted, actually the “BC” business only goes back to Archbishop Ussher, creator of the Biblical chronology which claimed that the universe was created in the autumn of 4004 BC. Since his understanding of mathematics was as bad as his understanding of geology and biology, we do not need to feel bound to keep using that annoying system.
Well I’m all for it, but we’d have to change all of the dates by 1 year.
Someone who was born in 30 BC, had a son in 1 BC and died in AD 30 at the age of 58 or 59 would be changed to being born in 29 BCE, having a son in the year 0, and dying in 30 CE.
Eh… now that I think about it, how many BCE dates do we know to the exact year? If they’re all guesses, then 1 year won’t matter.
[humorless pedant]
I believe your reasoning is species. The 1980s does not refer to the eighth decade of the 20th century. The 8th decade of the 20th century refers to the years 1971-1980 inclusive. The 1980s refers to the years in the 20th century that begin with 198 – that is 1980-1989. Only an Etruscan would claim otherwise.
[/humorless pedant]
The post is saying that the term “1980s” makes no sense except as the 10 years in the Common Era whose first three digits are 1-9-8. 1980s (or 1970s, 1990s, 1860s, etc) is not analogous to the 20th century, 21st century, and so forth, as the use of cardinal numbers for the former group and ordinal for the latter should make clear.
Oh, and there was a blanket slur against Etruscans in there too. All my posts have those. Sometimes I put them in white-on-white text just to be a jerk.
That’s sweet. I’ve had the same argument with one of my sisters (the crazy one). It was part of an omnibus dispute over when our family moved into the house where my father still lives. She insisted that we lived there for less than half of the 1970s–even after conceding that we moved there the year before our younger sister Sharon was born, and that Sharon was born in 1974, which obviously (to me) meant that we’d lived there for MORE than half of the 70s.
I just wanted to say YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY DECADE!
Maybe it’s the scotch, but I’m feeling defensive. It drives me nuts to see these people trying to shoehorn themselves into the eighties. Yeah, there was some groundbreaking things in the eighties, but there was a lot of stupid, embarrassing things too.
Oh yeah I agree. I wasn’t arguing I was actually born in the 80s, I was just saying that since I was born 2 weeks after they ended, I’d say I was technically alive in 1989 and thus can claim 4 decades and not just 3.
I fully acknowledge I don’t have any tangible connection to the 80s. At least no more so than I do to any other past time. After all even what happened at the beginning of the universe is still resonating into the present.
That’s true but I have noticed that say for the 1980 show, they generally focus on things from that year that are typical 80s stuff and leave out the stuff that feels like a hold over from the 70s.
That’s the only way you might have a case, and it’s going to depend on a few definitions. You were certainly conceived in the 80s, and born in the 90s. Depending on how everyone defines “I/you” and “alive,” you may have been alive in 1989, you may have not. So we get into the murky territory of “when does life begin” and “when do you begin” types of philosophical questions which don’t have, IMHO, a clear technical answer. If you really want to connect yourself to the 80s in a nitpicky technical way, you might be able to get away with calling yourself “a product of the 80s” in that you were conceived in the 80s, or some careful and cagey type of construction. It’s a bit deliberately misleading, but I’d argue correct in at least a technical sense.
No, that really isn’t it. Those who lived through the transition from 1963 to 1964 experienced an astonishing rapid shift in politics, culture, and mores that made everyone feel conscious of living in some new era, for which people had to grope for a name.
But, I was born so early in 1990 (January 16) that I was already alive in late 1989. So I would say I was a sentient being during 4 different decades, as opposed to only 3. ;)
Of course, we could argue children aren’t sentient until they form memories, but that’s kind of silly. If that were the case even someone born in 1987 might be considered a “90s baby”. I’d say if you have a developed neocortex you qualify as alive so that would mean by the third trimester you are “human” at the least.
Doesn’t mean I’m a real 80s kid of course. Just means that I am not a “90s baby” in the same way some kid born in 1998 is and that I had at least some minimal existence in four different decades.
If we’re talking about the “Nineties” as a popularly imagined cultural era I’d say they started around 1992-93 with the rise of gangsta rap, alternative culture and with the Internet’s gradual ascendancy into the mainstream. The events of 1989-91 concluded the neoliberal goals of the Eighties and made the capitalistic globalized world of the Nineties and subsequent decades possible.
Only on the SDMB could there be an argument about what “the 1980s” means.