CCA 72 Popular Culture in the 80’sDate Day

• Cultural Fact: A sad day in our history was January 28, 1986, when space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after liftoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida killing all seven astronauts, including school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

• This day in History• Class work• Homework

AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE IN THE EIGHTIES

• The 1980s became the Me! Me! Me! generation of status seekers.   During the 1980s, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire.  Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky icons of a the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous.  If you've got it, flaunt it and You can have it all! were watchwords.

Reaganomics and the American Class Structure

"The economic distance between rich and poor, between well paid and poorly paid, is higher today than at any time in the lifetimes of all but our most senior citizens, the veterans of the Great Depression."

Televisual Celebration of Wealth in 1980s America: Dynasty, Dallas, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

The Rise of the "Yuppie"

What’s a Yuppie ?

• Informal for (y)oung (U)rban (P)rofessional, or Yup. turned into yuppie in the 1980's. A term used to describe someone who is young, possibly just out of college, and who has a high-paying job and an affluent lifestyle. Can now be used to describe any rich person who is not modest about their financial status. Yuppiedom (yuppie-dum)is a term used to describe an involvement in being a yuppie.

• Yuppie-I'm going to go drive my ferrari to the seafood place for a $500 lobster.

Binge buying and credit became a way of life and 'Shop Til you Drop' was the watchword.  Labels were everything, even (or especially) for our children.  Tom Wolfe dubbed the baby-boomers as the 'splurge generation.'  Video games, aerobics, minivans, camcorders, and talk shows became part of our lives.   The decade began with double-digit inflation,

Promotional Photograph for Dynasty

Screen Source Presents 20 Most Popular TV Shows in the Eighties

Background information on Dallas (1978-1991)

                                                                       

“Greed is Good”

• the film has come to be seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas's character memorably declaring that "greed, for lack of a better word, is good". It has also proven influential in inspiring people to work on Wall Street

Blue-Collar Workers' Declining Standard of Living

Problems of the Inner City

1. influx of immigrants and ethnic polarization

2. inner-city unemployment and crime

3. skyrocketing incarceration rates for African-American and Latino men

Not everyone got rich

• Reagan declared a war on drugs, Kermit didn't find it easy to be green, hospital costs rose, we lost many, many of our finest talents to AIDS which before the decade ended spread to black and Hispanic women, and  unemployment rose.

Families changed drastically during these years.  The 80s continued the trends of the 60s and 70s - more divorces, more unmarried's living together, more single parent families.  The two-earner family was even more common than in previous decades, more women earned college and advanced degrees, married, and had fewer children.