Every single one of my teenage years took place in the 80’s. I know this is the time about which I am supposed to wax nostalgic. But I won’t. I’m absolutely sure that there are some pathetic souls who look longingly back on their high school years as the their peak years, their best years, after which all else is downhill. That is so sad. When I left my high school, and the little town it was in, I shook its dust from my tiny shoes and never looked back. I even refused to attend my 10-year class reunion, thinking that a mere decade was not enough time in which real change can occur. In me or others.

This year I turned 40, officially entering middle-age and marking my 20th anniversary of not being a teenager anymore. In that 20 years I: have been married for 17 of them, had two beautiful, infuriating children, started writing again, swallowed the bitter pill and attended my 20-year class reunion, but I still don’t think I’ve reached my peak. I feel that I still have way more to accomplish, more to offer the world.

So I’m not one of those crotchety, stuck-in-the-past, “you kids get off my lawn!” types. The world of the 80’s was no utopia: cold war, the constant threat of nuclear war, apartheid, famine, AIDS, Ronald Reagan. But there were certain elements of the 80’s that I miss. The wildness and experimentation in fashion–clothes, hair, make-up, anything and everything goes. The music, oh the music. My iPod is just stuffed with music from the Eighties or with artists that got their starts in the 80’s. And not Top 40 stuff either, it’s New Wave, punk, or electronica. Artists that changed the aural landscape of music.

Something else I miss–the movies about teenagers. I was thankfully too young to be subjected to the “Porky’s” franchise but I was of an age to truly enjoy and relate to all the John Hughes movies. If you couldn’t relate exactly to one of his characters, at least you could relate to all the free-floating angst. Some movies were about the brand-new feelings and experiences that all teenagers have to go through, but which they all feel are unique unto themselves. “No one has ever felt this way before!” On a side note, I will have to try very hard not to laugh when I hear this kind of drama from my kids. It’s not the raw and new feelings that are so amusing, it is the absolute certainty that no one else in the history of humanity has ever felt thusly. Sixteen Candles springs to mind.

Some movies were subversive fun, all about refusing to submit and conform yourself to someone else’s goals and expectations. Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are both lovely examples.

We have bought a lot of these movies on DVD, and they hold up very well. Some of the movies I liked back then, seen first through naive and uncritical eyes, haven’t retained their charm. Dirty Dancing, oh the shame. I loved that movie so much that I cut off a pair of Levi’s just like Baby’s and wore them with white Keds. I think I watched it with my mom. And Footloose. I went to see this little gem with my friend Sheila and we loved it!!! Unalloyed adoration! We saw it at the dinky little one-screen movie theater that was then tucked into a corner at Ne-Mar Shopping Center in Claremore. Afterwards, we danced around like mad idiots, probably causing many shoppers to laugh their asses off at us. Did I mention that we were dancing on the covered sidewalks of Ne-Mar Shopping Center in Claremore, Oklahoma? Just want you to get the full effect.

And I won’t even go into Red Dawn.

We had our share of gross-out or overtly sexual or slasher movies. The aforementioned Porky’s is one such sterling example. Not to mention Nightmare on Elm Street. I actually lost sleep over that one. Curses on you, Wes Craven! So I’m not saying that all the teenage movies from the Eighties were more culturally worthy than the ones made in the 90’s or this decade.

And I’m not some conservative anti-everything curmudgeon who bemoans the coarsening of our culture. I just don’t think that recycling the same movie plots over and over is very fun. One plot I find particularly annoying is the ugly/nerdy/smart unpopular/miserably unhappy girl is magically transformed through the power of fashion and lipgloss into the prom queen. Along the way she has a magical awakening to the awesomeness of the high school Big Man on Campus, the one she either previously dismissed or secretly desired.

Over and over again we are presented with the smart but somehow socially unacceptable, unworthy of love girl who only becomes a fully realized, completely worthy person when she is turned into a beautiful, sexy girl. The nerd-girl, smart-girl cannot be celebrated for her brain power alone. Her talents are secondary or worthless in the face of her non-adherence to accepted beauty norms. She cannot be celebrated for her independence of spirit, she can only be feted when she conforms and sublimates herself to love! Only in the connection to a sought-after male is she deemed worthy.

There are three movies which point out the problem from different perspectives. There is one scene in The Breakfast Club which I find problematic. Ally Sheedy’s interesting, wholly subversive character is transformed with a headband and an eye pencil into a completely ordinary, socially-acceptable girl, whereupon she catches the fancy of the Big Man on Campus-in-residence. I always identified with Ally-before, not Ally-after.

Never Been Kissed is, of course, a more recent movie in the magic-makeover vein. While I generally enjoy this movie, I find the end to be both edifying and frustrating. At the prom scene, Drew Barrymore’s character, Josie Grossy, who is no longer gross, finds that she cannot make herself conform to the expectations of the popular crowd and forcefully rejects the kind of kids who used to reject her. The frustrating part is that when she finally receives her “first real kiss” from Sam, she is the transformed Josie still. She is no longer the slightly frumpy, mousy grown-up Josie from the beginning.

And finally, the Revenge of the Nerds movies. The nerds triumph over their rivals in all their nerdy glory! The nerds do not need to conform to societal norms to achieve success. My big problem is not the dearth of similarly triumphant lady nerds, but the fact that the nerds still crave and “win” hot girls. We see that the nerdy girls are no prize.

Why can’t the nerdy/smart girls triumph in all their nerdy, brainy, awkward glory? I am, and always have been, a nerdy girl. I didn’t have to transform myself into a living Barbie doll to find love, or success. Somebody, somewhere give us a Revenge of the Nerd-Girls movie!

Addendum: The movies listed are by no means all of my most favorites or my most hateds. Feel free to use the comments as an open forum. Tell us what you did and/or did not like about the 80’s or its pop culture. And share with us your most favorite and most hated movies from the Eighties!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Junk Drawer, Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.