The 80s formed my pop sensibilities. Which in turn, formed my personality.
My music came from the radio (Q107, which, when name-checked in
St. Elmo's Fire, was THE Top-40 station to listen to in DC and now is a Christian radio syndicate) or, as the 80s wore on, from MTV.
If I wasn't in the rec room playing D&D or in the family room playing video games on the Commodore 64, I was riding my dirt bike to the creek or playing pickup football in the vacant field down the way.
A latchkey kid from a broken home, when my brother and I would visit my dad on weekends, if he had his girlfriend over, he'd hand us a roll of quarters and we'd go down to the arcade called Warp Factor 5. I remember both the sit-down cabinet for Star Wars and standing on milk crates to be able to play BattleZone.
My favorite movies either had light sabers, Brat Packers, or children of divorced parents - all stories told through the eyes of children.
And the common theme to all of them was that they took place in a world largely devoid of parents: E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me, Flight of the Navigator, The Lost Boys, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Ferris Bueller, Elliot and Gertie, Gordie and Chris Chambers, Mikey and Mouth - all of their antagonists were the grown-ups. Brand's big moment in Goonies is when he chooses childhood. The big bad in The Lost Boys isn't David (Kiefer Sutherland) but Max, the grown-up. Even in Star Wars, Luke's biggest enemy is
.
The only adults in Stand By Me are antagonists: parents and the junkyard owner. The police (adults) couldn't be bothered to find Ray Brower's body. Gordie's parents are emotionally cold to him. Teddy's father physically abuses him. Chris' father is the reason he's expected to grow up to be a failure (and his teacher betrays him). The faceless train is a mortal threat to children - it killed Ray Brower and it tries to kill the kids. SImilarly, parents are the enemy in The Breakfast Club. They are either distant, incompetent, overbearing, or abusive.
Gen-X nostalgia is, to my thinking, uniquely nostalgic. Nostalgic in the most literal sense of the word - the pain of home. It hearkens back to a time filled with economic uncertainty, existential dread at the height of the Cold War, and shifting social mores as divorce became more prevalent, second wave feminism crested, and societal panics took center stage.
There was generational war waged on all levels. The common refrain was that adults (and adulthood by extension) were the enemy. MTV's tagline for years was "I want my MTV" - the idea being that kids should demand that parents call up the burgeoning cable companies to demand MTV be carried. "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", a truly great video, begins with Cyndi Lauper fighting with her dad, played by Captain Lou Albano. Family Ties central premise was the tension between Baby Boomer Steven and Elise and their son Alex, who had rebelled by becoming a Reaganite. Congress, the ultimate representation of "The Man," was holding hearings on things like heavy metal music, video games, and (yes) Dungeons & Dragons.
(And I do listen to the newer ones sometimes. I think my three favorite songs, if forced to pick, are 1979, 1987, and 2005 -- oh poop, 2005 isn't particularly new anymore!!!)
