1980s decade essay

1980s decade essay

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Denim crazes of the 1980s

Pop music was magnified to new extremes of melodrama by the microchip technology of synthesisers; shoulders were widened by fashion designers under the influence of Dallas; barrow boys turned up the volume of the City trading floor to create a din about noughts; and ingenious new hair products peacocked our mullets upwards and outwards, each a backcombed monument to an era conjured from thin air.

No wonder we achingly hark back to its frantic mix. Anything could happen, including all-out nuclear war, and that gave even the frilly stuff an edge. In contrast the s seemed to package themselves as they went along.

In the decade of advertising and branding, a sucker really was born every minute. We were also encouraged by a clever advertising construct called Sid to buy shares in utilities, having already bought and stone-clad our own council houses.

It was an era of spend, spend, spend with new credit cards noisily swiped through those countertop machines while shiny compact discs hypnotised music lovers into repurchasing their record collections. I know, I was there. I started the decade as a teenager under the unisex influence of the New Romantic bands and ended it as a music journalist writing about those who had replaced them in time for the late-Eighties Acid House panic.

I was self-employed and ate boil-in-the-bag ready-meals in a one-room London fl at on a street where the poll tax was cheaper at one end than the other because it bisected two boroughs: one Labour expensive , one Tory inexpensive.

I straddled one great divide among many in that decade of division and extremes: fashion tribes; newspaper bingo wars; football hooligans; apartheid; and the Berlin Wall. More large items filled with air. His country had just elected an actor as president. This at a time when UK pop music had never been so camp, with its Weimar cabaret influence and the militantly hardcore gay anthem Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood topping the charts.

The Right could be just as loony but at least Thatcher was as honest as the synth duos who stood a huge tape machine on stage on Top Of The Pops to show that they were miming.

She explicitly promoted capitalism. I doubt that Hansard contains a single mention of that c-word by David Cameron. Oh, it was a golden era for satire.

Where there was beige, the s brought colour. Where there was pale ale, they brought fizz. And where there was certainty, they brought mutually assured destruction. The music was better in the s, the world was safer in the s and the trains ran more efficiently in the s.

But the s managed to be the best of times and the worst of times Play slideshow. Things we love and hate about the 80s.

Free Essay: This report is to inform you on the decade of the s. People's jobs​, income, ideas, opinions changed so much from to Fewer. On the flip side we have those who suggest this decade was as one historian put it, " an era of greed, corruption, and decline for the United States." Many people.

In , the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the decade and an age of an oppression overseas. America cheered for the freedom of her brothers and sisters in Germany. One highlight. The culture transformed and allowed the decade to be read as an experience of cultural products between culture and economy. Through the conspicuous consumption of the decade, the s encouraged a cultural shift towards complete commodification what is this and interaction with the market.

This decade group of ten years is sometimes called the "Greed decade" in English speaking countries. Unlike the s and s , this is when the word yuppie was used to describe "young urban professionals" — young adults who lived in cities and started to get good jobs.

Dealing with the stock market, the coming up of new inventions, all the way to the types of music people listened to. Many Americans had fun throughout the s with materialistic, glamorous, and technological life styles; therefore there were different economical problems that Americans. This report is to inform you on the decade of the s.

Essay on 1980s

Many people will remember the 's as a decade that renewed America's sense of optimism and created a new confidence in its future as well as its leaders. This decade is perceived by many to have been marked by prosperity with the creation of millions of new jobs and a much-needed build up of strength in our military. On the flip side we have those who suggest this decade was as one historian put it, " an era of greed, corruption, and decline for the United States. If there is one thing that can be agreed upon in this debate it's that this decade cannot be discussed without referring to former President Ronald Reagan. In a sense, he was the decade of the 80's for the U. Whether people speak positively or negatively about this time period it's almost certain this mans name will arise in the debate.

American in the 1980's Essay

Pop music was magnified to new extremes of melodrama by the microchip technology of synthesisers; shoulders were widened by fashion designers under the influence of Dallas; barrow boys turned up the volume of the City trading floor to create a din about noughts; and ingenious new hair products peacocked our mullets upwards and outwards, each a backcombed monument to an era conjured from thin air. No wonder we achingly hark back to its frantic mix. Anything could happen, including all-out nuclear war, and that gave even the frilly stuff an edge. In contrast the s seemed to package themselves as they went along. In the decade of advertising and branding, a sucker really was born every minute. We were also encouraged by a clever advertising construct called Sid to buy shares in utilities, having already bought and stone-clad our own council houses. It was an era of spend, spend, spend with new credit cards noisily swiped through those countertop machines while shiny compact discs hypnotised music lovers into repurchasing their record collections. I know, I was there. I started the decade as a teenager under the unisex influence of the New Romantic bands and ended it as a music journalist writing about those who had replaced them in time for the late-Eighties Acid House panic.

In fact it was during this decade that some popular things came to be.

Americans enjoyed many fundamental changes in their standard of living in the s. One major transformation was the new, expanded role of television.

59d. Life in the 1980s

Through a series of essays, films, and other resources, this website takes you back … to the s. The decade of Thatcher's Conservative government, an opposition in flux and the foundation of the Social Democratic Party. Neoliberalism, privatisation, strikes, protests and closures. Winners and losers in a world of change. Was it a time of diversity, or a decade of estrangement? What did people campaign for and how did society change in the s? Popular culture: Synth pop, denim crazes, and keeping fit. And a frustrating strange cube to play with. As well as reading about the s, you can see what the decade looked like too. Tune in to a series of short films from our Moving Image Archive for an authentic window into the decade. The Library has well over 2. Find out what is available on this site and at the Library.

The 1980s: the golden decade when everything was bigger, brasher and more extreme

This was s denim. It was as over-bleached and processed as hair styled in a big blonde mullet. It was lined with colourful comic-strip fabrics to accompany yellow lipstick and fluorescent pink socks. It was distressed to be layered with oversized shirts and jumpers. It was hacked, torn, drawn on, and pierced. It became retro cool when stripped off in a launderette.

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