It was the best of times, it was the worst of times……….. That’s rather (like the author of this Guardian article states) how I see the 1980s. I spent my teenage years growing up in that stark politicised era of Thatcherism. Saturation of popular culture (tacky, chewing gum for the eye pre-packaged glossy telly) was at its peak in the 1980s… from Dallas to The A-Team to Dynasty to T J Hooker… it was hideously brilliant.. my Saturday evenings were consumed with viewing top quality dross with possible long-term implications for my functioning brain. But I was mesmerized. I didn’t go to the cinema much as a teenager (well, until I was 16 or so) but remember fondly, during my mid-teens. the Ghostbuster films, John Hughes’s homage to teenage angst, the X-rated films (oh the dear days of X-rated classification) which were surreptitiously whispered about in school along with the bragging about who snuck into to see one of these shockers…But one film stands out and that’s Top Gun possibly due to going on a date and seeing that film, neither the film nor the date worked out…………..
And the big hair, the rock ballads, rah-rah skirts, spiky New Romantic hair, Goth-Gothic intermission, Ska-Two Tone, winkelpickers, more is less when it came to make-up, psychedelic vinyl records (none of this DVD malarky), Betamax, VHS, Max Headroom, The Tube (oh, yes, Friday nights I looked forward to watching Jools and Paula), the early days when Brookside was good, A Very British Coup (they repeated that recently on cable), late teens; every student pin-up Betty Blue (sexist and the erotica overrated)…and so on….
Getting blindingly drunk on cheap whisky after LPYS meetings, feeling cool going to school next day with bad hangover, feeling that first rush of excitement of protesting/demonstrating, repressed the memory of Red Wedge, too young to attend Miners’ Strike events but not for Wapping, NUS….dem left to SSIN to SWSS, losing my voting card on Blackpool Pier circa 1987, throwing up in the back of a minibus over the week’s supply of papers for a certain Trot group (I would like to apologise for that indiscretion as I was suffering from travel sickness and unfortunately said Trot group, who will remain nameless though had a tendency to be militant, had their newspapers next to me…and well, my sectarian stomach got rather ill…), more demos, protests, activism…teenage loony bin trip, Oh the spirit of youth and the 1980s…. ‘We hate Tories and we hate Tories’…. Anti-apartheid, CND, unemployment, recession, YOPs, YTS, the savage raw deep, deep, ever so deep scar that Thatcherism left on the collective psyche of the working class…..
Yes my teens started detesting the Tories end with being an activist protesting against the Tories. With bad hairstyles, frilly shirts, pencil skirts, baggy jeans, ‘Frankie Says Relax’, high heels, boots, big hair, shaved hair, The Smiths, The Jam, The The, EBTG, Fine Young Cannibals, The Specials, Selector, Taylor Dane, Duran Duran, Communist Manifesto, Revolution Betrayed, Is the Future Female…..
I have good and bad memories of that formative decade, it was the best, it was the worst. In hindsight it is easy to get all nostalgic.
