So I’ve just finished watching St Elmo’s Fire on divx, something like 18 odd years after seeing it at a friends house on video (which is just soooo 80’s in itself). Back then I was but a wee lad in my late teens and the oh-so grown up lives of the characters in their very “mature” early 20’s seemed so desirable and sophisticated. I remember thinking then that these people were the height of cool and I wanted to be just liked them when I became a grown up 20 year old.
Looking at the film you can see how it really captures the essence of 80’s culture. For one thing there isn’t a single buff male in the whole film. It seems almost odd now, but back then muscles weren’t chic, it was all about hair and glam! And the brat pack had that stuff to excess. The movie is also very cheesey almost to the point of being kitch, but really that’s kind of what the 80’s was, just one long decade of over-the-top cheesiness! I mean, look at the TV shows and music that came out of that era; Don Johnson in Miami Vice, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, The A-Team! I could go on and on… (but it’s midnight so I won’t). It was all about looking good, and not making things too complicated. I almost laughed at the end of the film when Leslie (Ally Sheedy) has her ex-boyfriend on one arm (Judd Nelson), and her ex-fuckbuddy on the other (Andrew McCarthy), and she says she wants to be alone for a while and can they all be friends (please). Then two guys look at each and make a bit of joke, and everythings fine, noooo problem! I was really surprised they didn’t hug each other, say ‘I love you man’, and then compare bedroom notes! But really that’s what the 80’s was; shallow serious stuff and neat endings with really nice hair everywhere!
Well since then we went through the 90’s which was a retro return to the 70’s with long hair and grunge rock music making it big again (though I think anyone living in Holland probably missed all that as I think they were busy with listening to Andre Hazes and Marco Borsato instead). Glam gave way to scruffy, and rough looking became the new in-style. Movies changed and cheesey serious plots with nice happy endings gave way to brutal reality-like shows, which ended leaving you at a low point just like real life was. Remember Seven with Brad Pitt and Gweneth Paltrow (before they got married)? Then we crossed the millenium timeline in a blaze of drunken glory, and low and behold, it looks like the 80’s again, but with some subtle differences. Stylish glam hair is back, but it’s all about sculpture now, not fluffiness. 80’s music is back, but this time around it’s a lot faster; probably due to a combination of better computers and better drugs. And television show makers can’t even write real life stuff, real enough any more, so now they show real people in real life! Why bother writing a show about people breaking up, when you can take real people and put them on island, and break them up on television! What’s better than the real thing?!
So not to sound like an old guy or anything, but kind of already seeing two decades come back around in vogue and be labelled ‘retro’, I wonder where it’s all going? There was an innocence about the 80’s that seems to be lost in this decade we live in now. Or maybe that’s because I was innocent in the 80’s, but I’m not innocent anymore, that it seems that way. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it, but television shows and movies prove that I’m not completely off the mark here. Each decade we seem to get more frantic about pushing the edge of everything that I sometimes wonder, are we going to burn ourselves all out? By that I mean will we eventually get to the point where we become so numb to the lives of others because an individuals life is just one more television drama; just entertainment?
I like to think that won’t happen; that some kind of civilised conscience will keep us decent and nice, and civilised. But then, I am a child of the 80’s in a lot of ways, so I like nice neat happy endings and good hair. As do we all deep down inside!
Padwanna!
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