1980s Movies

I enjoyed all three of the movies we watched in class. The first movie we watched was The Breakfast Club. This movie paved the way for all movies about teenagers from this point on. It finally portrayed teenagers as real people, unlike movies in the past. It was well received at the time because of this new portrayal of teenagers. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is also a movie about teenagers. This movie portrayed any high school student's ideal day off. In a way, every student wants to be like Ferris Bueller, even though he is not the best role model. Finally, we watched the Vietnam War movie Platoon. Platoon gave a different interpretation of the Vietnam War. Apocalypse Now from the 1970s portrayed the Vietnam War as being fought by a bunch of kids who only cared about drugs and that did not want to be there. But, Platoon gives the impression that the kids fighting in the war were truly impacted by what they saw. This portrayal is controversial, but is brand new to the Vietnam War genre.

1980s TV

The shows we watched from the 1980s were pretty different from the shows that we watched from previous decades. The Cosby Show was fun to watch and I enjoyed it. The situation in the episode seemed realistic and I actually laughed at the jokes. Americans at the time were probably more open to seeing an all African-American family portrayed in a positive way on TV. Americans were becoming more open to this idea, and The Cosby Show played that out perfectly. Full House was the other sitcom we watched. I also enjoyed Full House, but I did not think it was as funny as The Cosby Show. The show addressed that the mother figure died, unlike in The Brady Bunch, which never addressed why both parents were remarried. People in the 80s were more open to overtly talking about a situation like that. We also watched an episode of Miami Vice. I did not really like this episode. I found it a little hard to follow and some of the stuff that happened seemed kind of random. I guess people of the 80s wanted to see cops shoot their guns and beat people up, which is different from the TV of the past. Finally, we watched The A-Team. I liked this show least of all. From the half hour we watched of it, I was not that impressed. I did not understand the plot fully and I still do not really know what the show is about, but Mr. T was cool.

80s Music 2

The music of the 1980s reflects the events of the decade. A song like Material Girl exemplifies the mentality of the people of the 80s. People spent a lot of money during this decade and were very interested in material things. The songs on the playlist by U2 both talk about deeper topics. Pride talks about pride for one's country, which is a big theme of the 80s, especially with the USA and the USSR and the threat of nuclear war. Sunday Bloody Sunday is of a past event that ended in fighting and blood. This speaks to what may happen if a country sets off a nuclear weapon. Songs such as Like a Virgin and Talk Dirty to Me are more sexually explicit than songs of previous decades, and builds off of the themes set in the 1970s disco era. People are just as open to hearing about and talking about sex as they were in the 70s

80s Music 1

There are some aspects of the music of the 1980s which is different from the music of the 1970s. The main thing I noticed is that the songs seem to have a much cleaner production, mostly in the rock genre. The rock of the 1970s, like punk, seemed more interested in making noise. The focus on punk was more on the sound and the instruments. But bands like Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses focus more on the whole package of the song, from the lyrics to the instruments to the sound. I enjoyed both the rock and pop of this decade. A lot of the songs are timeless and I enjoyed listening to them. A lot of the songs touch upon subjects that are sung about today, like sex. The pop songs of the 80s were less explicit than the pop songs of today, though. Rock seems to be less popular today, so it is nice to listen to some of the classic rock of the 80s. I did not enjoy the country music on the playlist. This is more of a personal preference because country is my least favorite genre of music, even today's songs.