The 1980s: Culture, Fashion, Movies, and More
By the end of Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency, America’s dreams of the 1960s had been beaten down by inflation, big government spending and a rising crime rate in the 1970s, leading many Americans to embrace a new social, economic and political conservatism during the 1980s.
Reaganomics and the New Right
The New Right movement was driven by Yuppies or Young Urban Professionals and disappointed liberals known as Reagan Democrats, which in turn swept Ronald Reagan into office in a landslide victory. Many historians link the rise of the New Right in part due to the erupting growth of the Sunbelt in the Southeast, Southwest and California, when scores of disillusioned Americans fled northern and midwestern cities to escape aging infrastructures, overcrowding, pollution and crime.
By 1982, the United States was living through its worst economic recession since the Great Depression, witnessing some nine million unemployed Americans by November of that same year. After Reagan took office on January 20th, 1981, he set about making good on his promise to extract the federal government out of Americans’ lives and wallets, implementing massive industrial deregulation initiatives, reductions in government spending and across-the-board tax cuts for individuals and corporations alike.
Known as Reaganomics, the president’s trickle-down, supply-side economic policies fired the American economy, making the decade a prosperous one for most Americans, at the same time tripling the national debt during Reagan’s two terms in office. Despite such a massive increase in national debt, Reagan left office in 1989 with the highest approval rating of any president since FDR.
1980s Movies and Music
Pop culture thrived in the 1980s, with television shows like “thirtysomething” and movies like “The Big Chill” and “Bright Lights, Big City,” which portrayed a generation of otherwise successful young Americans who suffered from anxiety and self-doubt. At the movies theaters, blockbusters like “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Return of the Jedi,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Beverly Hills Cop” took in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Teen movies thrived as well, including “The Breakfast Club,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Pretty in Pink.”
By the end of the 1980s, 60 percent of American households had cable TV, making shows like MTV an American staple as it aired music videos by artists such as Duran Duran, Culture Club, Madonna and Michael Jackson. At the same time, heavy metal acts like Metallica and Guns N’ Roses gave expression to the sense of malaise pandemic among many young Americans, particularly young men, making the 1980s a time to remember for Gen Xers and Baby Boomers everywhere.