Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

I think it’s time for me to make peace with the 1980s.

For years I have silently despised the fixation certain people have with that decade. I rolled my eyes whenever I heard a music station run a marathon of ’80s hits, and I usually turned the channel whenever one of the John Hughes films popular in that era appeared on television.

I’ve always regarded the obsession with the ’80s as fundamentally juvenile, a desperate attempt on the part of people who never grew up to live in the past. I always thought about the cultural junk of the decade: the bad hair-metal bands, the pastel-filled music videos, the ridiculous stream of body-switching movies.

However, I realize now that I need to get over it.

There’s nothing wrong with being a "child of the ’80s," nothing immoral or perverse about looking back upon that decade with fondness. Instead of scorning the decade, the wise thing to do is to look at some of the positive aspects of the 1980s and try to replicate those aspects in the present day.

There was a sense of boundless optimism about the 1980s, a belief that willpower and smarts were all that was necessary to make dreams come true. This was a vision articulated by President Reagan and widely accepted by the American people.

Restoring that sense of Reagan-era optimism is not out of the realm of possibility. Even as America remains divided by war, one can still envision a scenario in which believing in tomorrow instead of bemoaning yesterday once again defines the American spirit. After all, the optimism of the Reagan era was born just a few years after the national pessimism of 1974-1976.

In the 1980s, there seemed to be a national cultural effort to move beyond the racial tensions of the 1950, 1960s and 1970s. While the 1990s witnessed a return of racial balkanization, it can be argued that the cultural push for racial harmony and equality has once again resumed in the 2000s, a fairly positive development.

In the 1980s, there was a national dialogue about the importance of religion in American life. Reagan’s election was obviously influenced by those who felt that the country had fallen away from faith, and the culture-war controversies of the era still have tremendous relevance today. There is still a lack of national clarity about the role of religion in American government; only through continued dialogue will we find a conclusive answer.

I can no longer scorn those who admire the ’80s. In fact, those who look to that era in the hope of finding the answers to present-day questions have far more insight and perception than I do.

The ’80s admirers aren’t really that much different from those who are fond of previous eras of momentous change in American history. I wouldn’t look down on a Civil War buff or a Civil Rights movement historian, so why would I disregard someone knowledgeable about the politics and culture of the 1980s?

So much of what occurred in that era still influences us today. Perhaps if I had followed the lead of the ’80s buffs instead of scorning them, I’d be a hell of a lot wiser than I am now.

I was wrong, very wrong, to dismiss those who admire the 1980s. I used to think that such admiration was backward. However, those who admire that era are in reality far more forward-thinking than they’re given credit for.

In fact, they deserve praise for picking the right era to admire. It’s not like they’re fascinated with, say, the 1990s. Talk about a vapid decade…