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: 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.