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What were he biggest and hottest jobs of the 80s?
And if the 80s had a mood or theme what would it or they be?
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Hottest jobs? Well, the usual... a lawyer, a stock trader or possibly even a vice cop in Miami.
There were several 80's themes, I'll cover most of them with this.
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What were he biggest and hottest jobs of the 80s?
And if the 80s had a mood or theme what would it or they be?
Yeah, it was pretty much:
"Greed is Good"."Business School is Great".
"You should be a stock trader".
"The little guy deserves to get hosed".
It was all about selfishness, and free-market Capitalism, and anything you do to get rich is OK, no matter how many people get hurt along the way.
And cocaine... lots and lots of cocaine.
But it was also the decade of the "teen movie" (The Breakfast Club, the Lost Boys, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc.). And Glasnost. And most of the action movies set up the bad guy as a corporate "greed is good" guy who got his comeuppance at the end, so there was definitely a social outcry against such greed. It was just that, in politics and in business, greed won.
I'm really beginning to enjoy the quotes I'm getting about Superman vs. Batman from my friends.
The next review I've received: "It was a joyless movie that made no sense."
I should start a Rotten Tomatoes page...
Other than people too rich to work, and Fortune 500 CEOs, investment bankers like Patrick Bateman were the top of the food chain financially. Mostly people who moved the money made the money. The computer revolution had climbed into a steeper curve so computer programmers did very well, but not as well as Systems Analysts. Doctors probably peaked in the 80s before everything got sucked up into the HMOs.
The mood was set by a series of PSAs telling us not to drink and drive or do drugs. In the movies, all the bad guys were Columbian drug lords. Cinematically speaking, 1984 was our 1939. Many popular movies were about the underdog being beaten down by the Man (controlling parents, rich kids, or the upper class). Most of them ended with the underdog winning through some kind of performance art.
Glasnost. Youth. Cocaine. Madonna. John Hughes. Reagan. Money.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What were he biggest and hottest jobs of the 80s?
And if the 80s had a mood or theme what would it or they be?
Yeah, it was pretty much:
"Greed is Good".
"Business School is Great".
"You should be a stock trader".
"The little guy deserves to get hosed".It was all about selfishness, and free-market Capitalism, and anything you do to get rich is OK, no matter how many people get hurt along the way.
And cocaine... lots and lots of cocaine.But it was also the decade of the "teen movie" (The Breakfast Club, the Lost Boys, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc.). And Glasnost. And most of the action movies set up the bad guy as a corporate "greed is good" guy who got his comeuppance at the end, so there was definitely a social outcry against such greed. It was just that, in politics and in business, greed won.
I was composing mine while you put this up. Looks like we both came away with the same impressions. :)
Horrible hair. Seriously.
Neon spandex, everywhere!
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Awful SFX.
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Neon spandex, everywhere!
LOL.
I asked NobodysWife what SHE thought the "theme" of the 80's was, and her one-word reply was, "Color".
And she then proceeded with an amazing analysis of how that spread across the entire U.S. culture: In pre-1970's movies, all groups of teens you saw were homogenized. In the 80's, you finally saw groups of teens where every teen was an individual, with individual styles and tastes. As she put it, "In the 1980's there was no overwhelming, 'This is how you SHOULD look and dress'. It was overwhelmingly welcoming to experimental, unique styles."
She admitted that not all of them worked, but she couldn't think of another time in history where you were so encouraged to just BE yourself, and you didn't get beaten up for dressing differently from everyone else.
It was welcoming. It was inclusive. It was diverse.
But as Sissyl and Captain Yesterday point out, that was a two-edged sword...
...oh, some of the awful, awful 80's hair and fashions...
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Everything had to involve synthesizers.
I was in college off and on through the 80s, so I was playing a lot of D&D, drinking, skipping class, and dating various girls. I really don't know about the job side that much. But for me the defining things were the music; new wave and metal mostly (all kinds, not just hair bands), my favorite car that I ever owned, and did I mention D&D? And I miss the hair and fashions, especially what the girls wore. And I'm still friends with most of the ones I had then, as well. Though I was born in the early 60s, my favorite decade was the 80s.
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I saw it as 'change' and 'wanting to be different'. Lots of truly WEIRD and outrageous fashion decisions.. music decisions...
Bright colors, loud electronic music, huge hair... anything to get noticed and stand out from the herd. Things were starting to get new and improved... but to the point where we took it for granted.
Multiple channels, recording television, computers, technology... they were as much status symbols as anything else. Now days, the thrill of computers in your hand or rewinding television isn't as awe inspiring as it was back then.
The rest? Greed, money, drugs... that's pretty much every decade including this one.
Honestly, I've just started watching the Goldbergs... They hit more then miss about my life in the 80's.
I also see at as the beginning of the era of 'pop-culture'. 60's and 70's had major things like Elvis and the Beatles... but few movies and TV series and things of that nature really MATTERED. Star Trek and Doctor Who are about the only things that kept going past their decade... but the 80's? Everything was starting to get recorded, saved, and resold to the mass public. Things like Alf, Muppets, Knight Rider are still refrenced today as opposed to the things like Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo from previous decades.
Aliens is the poster child for this. It is a contender for best action movie ever, it has a good cast, decent plot, great visuals, etc etc etc. And the one jarring note in it is Ripley's hair.
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Is your mother an action star? :-)