Brief Thoughts on Cultural Decline

The Eighties were a Relative Renaissance

Three days ago, a friend on Facebook (who is just a few years older than I) posted thoughts contrasting “the Eighties” (roughly 1981 through 1991, in my view) to now. My comment follows his post, quoted here:

“Last evening I was talking about the Eighties with two 18-year-olds. They were very interested in everything I recalled, and why I think it was culturally the peak decade in my life.

It turns out that they said among their friends, they all are obsessed with the Eighties and wish they lived then instead now — including not having the internet and all the technology. They firmly believe that the internet and social media, in particular, has caused enormous societal harm and especially on kids. They said it creates an impersonal, disingenuous, fake reality and divides people.

They knew Eighties movies and music surprisingly well.

They hope ‘things will get better’ in their lifetime but aren’t optimistic.

The girl was even named Reagan, for the president. So I guess her parents (my age, I learned) think the same way.”

My comment (very slightly edited):

I've written extensively about the culture of that time period recently. I enjoy many and diverse movies, music, etc. from that era (and many eras before it). Everything I like produced or established after around 1993 is obscure. I remember those years as a child. They were fundamentally the same in terms of the culture's underpinning philosophy ... yet they were different, politically and (more importantly) culturally. There were even a few more halfway decent "Great Books" professors, most of whom are no longer in academia. The last two films with original screenplays I would call favorites were released in 1990 (a "Hollywood" movie) and 1995 (an "independent"). I could probably list at least a handful from every decade before that, and my favorite film is only two years older than I. I watched the culture decline as a consumer and, later, as someone trying to produce/write/etc. (I have stories to tell from set and locations, pre-production meetings, etc.) Some of the most troglodytic of hard rock bands (by the standards of that period) used modes, classical allusions, meter shifts, and key changes that would likely confound just about anyone with a following today; the more skillful and profound metal artists were more musical and cultured than that. Steve Martin updated Cyrano de Bergerac; whether Roxanne is good or not, I don't see that happening today. Sting wrote a rondo (a Renaissance/baroque-era song structure), and The Police put it into the top slot on the Billboard “Hot 100” for eight weeks. I could come up with many more examples. There are consequences to this cultural decline, and I see them all over this country.

Postscript: For those interested, the 1990 film is Pump Up the Volume. The 1995 film is Before Sunrise. Musical references include KISS’s Music from “the Elder”, Black Sabbath’s The Eternal Idol (title, album cover, and song inspired by Rodin, with allusions to at least one other nineteenth century artist); and Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime (I am trying to confirm the choir in “Suite Sister Mary” is singing parts of La Traviata and the Dies Irae). My favorite film is Rocky, released the same year as KISS’s Destroyer (half a decade before the Eighties but entirely relevant to this discussion). Producer/arranger/co-writer Bob Ezrin had much to do with what refined musicality there is on Destroyer and Music from “the Elder”, most likely including the reference to Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata Number 8 in C Minor”, but not all of it. (Billy Joel also borrowed the same relatively obscure piece for the chorus of “This Night”.)

When I was younger, there were many more non- “super” heroes to be found (in “real life” and cultural life). This is what we’re becoming. I do what I can to change that, but there’s only so much one individual can do.

Post-postscript: KISS drummer Eric Carr (née Paul Caravello, 1950 to 1991) was a hero who saved the life of a bandmate after a horrific act of arson in a nightclub on the New York/Connecticut state line in the early 1970s. He would have been seventy-three yesterday.