With Watchmen , GI Joe , Transformers and now V , American pop culture seems stuck in a particular part of its past tense . Why are we so mesmerised with taking things from the 80 ’s and making them our own ?
write by David Grossman
Everyone pose nostalgic . What ’s odd is when an entire society wants to relive a specific moment in its history . Where we need to go says a good deal about us as a club . In the 70 ’s , the 1950 ’s of a sudden became expectant with Grease and Happy Days- it seemed like a friendly time when Americans could worry more about skip over over buses in motorcycles than crises in the Middle East . Here in the twenty-first Century , America has been dream of the 80 ’s . It ’s a course that ’s take on a very dissimilar tone then the 50 ’s hysteria . Rather than re - opine an idealistic version of the time period , we have taken the liberty of re - appropriating the time period of time ’s floor for ourselves . But why ?
Maybe because so many parts of the current decennium look familiar . civilization in the 80 ’s was , in general , base on the concept of dehumanization . It ’s no conjunction that electronica and synth first really became democratic during the 80’s- it ’s also when the calculator first started becoming at least somewhat commonplace . Machinery was becoming more of a ingredient in day - to - twenty-four hours lives and in some case , like prison cell phones , changing the way people interacted . Neuromancer captures the moment and its fear with its black organ clinics and razor popping out under fingernails , but William Gibson did n’t have to be that inventive to line what was happening . The spectacle of hairsbreadth metal , the androgyny of David Bowie and Prince , big shoulders- people were interested in looking and being more than , or at least different than , humans .
EnterV. The original and the new one version deal the same basic story- outlander trapping humanity under off-key pretense . It ’s a storey that ’s been told before , but never with the specificVuses . The aliens sought first to change human society by maligning the scientific community , and eventually destory closely all of it , reducing human race to slaves , cannon fodder and food . The visitant and the technology they use are undoubtedly evil , except when we use them : It ’s not hard to take this idea and expand it to a heavy theme- technology is evil , but only when it is out of our control . Outside forces will attempt to deceive , but we- as human beings , and specifically Americans- can use it properly .
While the new five has n’t focused on technology or a total shake-up of societal social organisation yet , it has attend at the grandness of optic deception . There are sleeper Vs , but they are n’t like Boomer in Battlestar Galactica , who had no idea of her dependable origin until afterwards on . They willingly lead astray humanity with their skillful looks and tranquil behaviour . In “ There Is No Normal Anymore , ” Anna shuffles through outfits in which to gift herself to dissimilar countries . This is n’t that dissimilar from sieve through pictures for the stark Facebook visibility shoot , the one that really brings your smile out . surely , Anna ’s also enshroud a outrageous reptilian peel , but the core principle is the same .
And this is why the 80 ’s keep come up in pop civilization . Unlike the 70 ’s and the 50 ’s , where nostalgia was primal , the 2000 ’s and 80 ’s have a vulgar robotic trammel . dehumanisation is back in vogue- we do n’t have synth , we have autotune . As long as we remain to mix our personalities with internet coding ( it await to be a long time ) , fib about the non - human becoming like us will continue to intrigue . And where better to take stories from then the ten where it all begin ?
Television
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