The Apocalyptic Eighties, Continued

Summary: Today we will continue our contemplation of American Psycho, focusing on the film as well as the novel. We will also view clips of Wall Street. Other developments that we will examine are: changes in technology, the growing influence of corporations in American public life, inner city crime, and the AIDS crisis.

I. Introduction

A. Turning point in course: the recent past and the continuing present

B. Review of last time: Reaganism, moral conservatism, and popular cultural perspectives on the pursuit of wealth in 1980s America

C. Demographic changes that contribute to a sense of moral crisis:

1. changes in family and gender roles

2. increasing participation in alternative lifestyles

3. breakdown of traditional mores

4. increasingly visible divide between "haves" and "have nots"

D. Corporations, the media, and the "culture of images": Reagan and the mind-eye connection

II. Ronald Reagan, The Movie (Michael Rogin, 1987)

A. Changes in television in the 1980s

1. remote control

2. VCR

3. cable access

4. effects: MTV and the cultural fascination with images

B. Other related technological changes

C. Reagan as a movie star president and the White House media team as Hollywood-style producers: Bill Moyers, Illusions of News

D. Resulting sense of crisis in American public life: What becomes of personal agency, morality, and authentic community when corporate-controlled media is such a potent force in national public life?

III. The Waning of the Reagan Era

A. Prime-Time Serial Melodramas Give Way to Sitcoms like The Simpsons and Roseanne

B. Emergence of Rap and Hip Hop Culture

C. The Fall of the Yuppie and the Emergence of the "Yuppie Angst" Film: Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987)

IV. Conclusion

A. Reagan's legacy

1. spoke to anxieties about the lack of authentic morality and community ties

2. elected partly through the expert manipulation of traditional American symbols and images

a. Reagan on the ranch, with his family, embodying longstanding American values

b. but 1980s Americans understood that Reagan's appeal was media-orchestrated

B. Emerging postmodern sensibility and concomitant cultural anxieties

1. pleasure in images

2. but an understanding that even the most vivid and appealing images are at some variance with reality

3. longing for authentic attachments and commitments to a broader moral and civic community

1980s American culture did not engage in an unqualified celebration of materialism. Conservative cultural influences, many of which emerged in response to the cultural ferment of the sixties and seventies, had always been more complex, and many were on the wane by the late eighties. As cultural conservatism gave way, a range of popular forms arose to contemplate and critque the postwar American dream of family-centered consumer affluence.