January 1, 1980 was the psychological end of an era that started in the 1960s with Martin Luther King and died a long faded-out death in the 1970s; it was moribund by 1977 when I graduated High School but the turn of the decade somehow made it “official”: the counterculture, or whatever you wanna call it, is NOT in the ascendant, and all of its ideas may well be dead.
ETA: and yeah I know that not everything associated with Martin Luther King took place after the dawn of the 60s.
MLK wasn’t really part of the “counterculture”. And undoubtedly the death of “counterculture” was a wonderful event.
Cynical? If anything, the 90s were “cynical”, and the 80s were more optimistic, kiddo.
Well I wasn’t around than obviously for most of the time but people here and elsewhere generally think of the '90s nostalgically and most '90s shows and books I’ve seen are optimistic. As for the '80s that’s when cyberpunk fiction and heavy metal music got popular.
I’ve always thought that as far as music, the 80s were a lot happier than the 90s. In the 80s (especially the late 80s) you had a lot of happy teen pop singers like Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and Rick Astley. Also Madonna and Michael Jackson made a lot more happy sounding music.
In the 90s the music was a lot more depressing, with music by artists like Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow. The type of music put out by Madonna and Michael Jackson also became a lot less happy and upbeat.
The mystery to me is why this is the case, since in terms of what was actually happening in the world, I think the late 1990s was probably the best time humanity has had, and things were looking optimistic for the world as a whole.
I’m not sure this optimistic/not optimistic argument holds true, at least in the case of entertainment. In both decades there were both extremely upbeat and counterculture-y less upbeat music such as metal in the late 80s or grunge in the late 90s. As far as the actual state of the nation I’d say the 90s were a far more optimistic time for many of reasons already stated.
I’d say the 80s were known for a period of expanding globalization, and the 90s for the period of expanding personal technology such as the internet and cell phones.
He wrote glowingly about Marx and Hegel and marched against the establishment in protests arranged by a homosexual pacifist Marxist during the '60s. If he had been running for president instead of Obama (given that he were the same age), he’d have been crucified by Fox.
You know, I find Beck and Rockwell’s commentary on him much more consistent than his adoption as part of the American smorgasbord. I’d like to see that tried with Paul Robeson.
I’m 30 and I remember lots of music trends from the '90s. Early-to-mid '90s had a mad sixties revival thing going on, the Doors were trendy etc. Metal was also huge as it had been in the '80s. Britpop, Grunge, College Rock, Europop, Rave, boy/girl bands, were all huge, here at least and at the cusp of the millennium nu-metal became very popular. The '90s saw the last gasp of adult-oriented pop/rock as a Top 40 staple. In the realm of more muso fare, alt-country seemed to explode in the latter years of the '90s too, although I don’t know if it really made a dent, especially in the singles charts.
Oh yeah and Alanis Morissette was the monster that straddled the middle of the decade.
I lived through both and you’ve got that flat backwards.
I don’t agree with everything Dr. King did but his actions as a civil rights activist is undoubtedly heroic regardless of one’s politics. And unlike a lot of “counterculture” people he wasn’t advocating violence or considering American society fundamentally corrupt and evil.
I guess I’m just thinking of Reagan’s whole, “it’s morning in America” speech, and how everyone was so prosperous, and the “greed is good” crap. People seemed a wee more jaded in the 90s.
Actually, if you think about it, cynicism was more a 60s/70s thing.
The 80s managed to be both cynical and happy at the same time which from a certain angle seems like optimism. The attitude was more like “I know everything and everyone is a stupid joke, including myself … but at least I can laugh at it” whereas the 90s the part after the ellipsis would be " … and I’m damn pissed off at it."
The '80s were all about the Cold War; no overhyped prosperity could overshadow the fear of WWIII. By the '90s all that was over, and there was prosperity, and it seemed more real and widespread than '80s prosperity, even after the dot-com bubble burst. Much more optimistic time.
80’s: American Psycho
90’s: American Pie
Geography lessons:
'80s - Central America, Afghanistan, Lebanon, South Africa
'90s - Kuwait, Somalia, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia
I think it’s still a little too recent to summarize the way the 20’s and 30’s are. I think that hairstyles and popular bands won’t ever make much difference in the grand scheme of things- I couldn’t name one specific band from the 1900-1930, but I know they had radio and swing happened somewhere in there. Same for haircuts.
The same could really be said for wars, economics, presidents, waxing and waning political fortunes. They come and go, and while they seem very important at the time, usually they don’t have a very lasting effect, unless they bring about some major sea change. I think it remains to be seen if capitalism will be proven ‘successful’ when compared to communism, so even the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War will have to be judged at a future date.
Music especially is such a subjective area, it all depends on personal tastes and exposures. For instance, I didn’t see that anyone mentioned country music anywhere, but I would wager that it probably beat out most other types of music in terms of airplay, growth and overall sales, especially when compared to Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. If in 30-50 years Nirvana made grunge influential enough on current music to warrant it’s ownership of the 90’s as “The Grunge Years” then it will deserve the honor. I wouldn’t hold my breath however.
If I had to write the textbook blurb about the 80’s, 90’s (and 00’s), for students to assimilate in 2200 this would be it:
Turn of the 21st Century- “E-Life”
1980’s: The birth* of personal electronics-mostly computers and electronic entertainment. People start having multipurpose machines with abundant computational power which they can use in a variety of ways. The idea that technology doesn’t just do menial tasks or increase efficiency, but is something to be desired for pure fun and entertainment.
1990’s:
I think it’s still a little too recent to summarize the way the 20’s and 30’s are. I think that hairstyles and popular bands won’t ever make much difference in the grand scheme of things- I couldn’t name one specific band from the 1900-1930, but I know they had radio and swing happened somewhere in there. Same for haircuts.
The same could really be said for wars, economics, presidents, waxing and waning political fortunes. They come and go, and while they seem very important at the time, usually they don’t have a very lasting effect, unless they bring about some major sea change. I think it remains to be seen if capitalism will be proven ‘successful’ when compared to communism, so even the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War will have to be judged at a future date.
Music especially is such a subjective area, it all depends on personal tastes and exposures. For instance, I didn’t see that anyone mentioned country music anywhere, but I would wager that it probably beat out most other types of music in terms of airplay, growth and overall sales, especially when compared to Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. If in 30-50 years Nirvana made grunge influential enough on current music to warrant it’s ownership of the 90’s as “The Grunge Years” then it will deserve the honor. I wouldn’t hold my breath however.
If I had to guess and write the textbook blurb about the 80’s, 90’s (and 00’s), for students to assimilate in 2200 this would be it:
Future Textbook
But in the same way I couldn’t name one popular radio program from the 1940’s, one band from the 1910’s, or understand why the Spanish-American War had to be fought, I don’t think those things about this time period will matter much either.
Everything else will be so much historical factoids and series of dates. Yeah people wore some clothes; certain things were in vogue at one point and not at another; there were wars over here, wars over there; some birds and pigs got sick; a political group rose to power, then fell from power, then rose again, etc. Try to think about something that will be meaningful and pertinent to people 50, 80, 250 years from now, and I think it will all come back to “People got technology”.
But they didn’t “get” technology. 
The 80s had pastel styles and “upbeat” music, not because it was optimistic but because it was cynical. It didn’t matter what you did, so you might as well have fun, because you for damn sure weren’t going to change the world.
People in the 1980s would have been astounded that America and the world in the 2010s is still muddling along. We expected a lot more radical change. Space colonies AND people living in a scorched nuclear/ecological wasteland.
I remember as a kid thinking that I’d be 34 in the year 2000, and not being able to imagine living in the future that way. Turns people in 2000 (and now 2012) live pretty much the same way they did in 1976 when I was 10 years old, just with more internet and everything is a lot cheaper. Compare that to the radical changes in the 25 years between 1935 and 1960. “Back to the Future” came out in 1985, and the big joke of the move is how radically different everything was in 1955, even though the 1955 in the movie is a cartoon 1955. A kid from 1985 traveling to 2015 would be amazed at how much continuity there’s been in the last 30 years.