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Tag: 80s pop culture

  • MTV Makes Its Lack of Music Official

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    Although MTV’s “content” focus has been reality TV and other adjacent schlock for many years now, those who remember it as the place to go for new music and groundbreaking videos by artists who once invested the time, effort and money into making them have been saddened to learn of the official loss of the “M” in MTV (formerly Music Television, but now, one supposes, just “Television”). That is to say, the music has been booted in an authoritative capacity, with Paramount, MTV’s parent company (and itself presently “A Skydance Corporation”), opting to jettison five of MTV’s “offshoot” channels—the ones that actually play videos—in the UK: MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live. While this doesn’t include the “plain” version of the channel in the US, where MTV was birthed, it still signals a larger indication of just how far the channel has fallen from its proverbial heyday.

    When it hit the airwaves for the first time on August 1, 1981 (at 12:01 a.m.), the inaugural video was The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” A pointed statement to make as the world was on the brink of an entirely new kind of “modernism” when it came to pop culture. The music video was beyond radio, TV and film—mixing all of those elements to form an entirely new—and ultimately far more powerful and influential—entity. An entity that would shape the next few generations. Not just their style and taste, but the way in which they “absorbed” media. Because if parents thought attention spans of the youth were “short” then, they could never have imagined what was coming with the likes of TikTok, ultimate mind flayer. But before that total bastardization of what it would mean to “consume content,” MTV laid the groundwork. Seeing a void to be filled for a generation that was clearly hankering for something like this (but didn’t yet know how to put it into words), there were already one hundred and sixteen music videos to be broadcast in the first day of the channel’s airing.

    And that was just the beginning. Because two years later, in 1983, a veritable dam had opened, unleashing the music video prowess that seemed innate to both Madonna and Michael Jackson. For both 1958-born pop music icons (still billed, to this day, as the Queen and King of Pop) would have some dominating videos on MTV in ‘83. Of course, it was Jackson’s year for churning out the “blockbuster” videos of the Thriller album: “Billie Jean,” “Beat It” and, the biggest of all, “Thriller.”

    Even so, Madonna’s output in ‘83 was not to be discounted, with “Everybody” (filmed in December of ‘82) and “Burning Up” in rotation frequently enough to dispel the average listener’s initial belief that Madonna was a Black artist. A misconception that was probably a compliment to her, but, at the same time, M was aware that being white would better serve her money-making/commercial possibilities. By 1984, Madonna’s self-titled debut, released the year prior, was really starting to gain traction thanks to the next duo of music videos from Madonna released that year: “Lucky Star” and “Borderline.”

    However, it was during the final months of 1984 that Madonna would truly become a household name thanks to the part MTV played in promoting the eponymous lead single from her sophomore record, Like A Virgin. Even before the video was out or the song was an official single release, Madonna decided to debut “Like A Virgin” in a big way during the First Annual MTV Video Music Awards. It was on that night of September 14, 1984 that the long-bubbling symbiosis between Madonna and MTV was crystallized. And forever etched into the public consciousness thanks to Madonna descending from the top of a giant, three-tiered wedding cake all dressed in white as she ironically sang about how she was made to feel “shiny and new” and “like a virgin, touched for the very first time” thanks to her new love. And her new love, ultimately, was MTV. Though it wasn’t always a love that cut both ways. Something Madonna addressed in honor of the network’s tenth anniversary in 1991, when she made a special tribute video during which she said the following (while dressed in her Greta Garbo-chic hair, makeup and attire and filmed in black and white), shot in a manner that makes abrupt cuts to her next “non sequitur” (but ultimately all related) train of thought:

    “I’m here because I wanted to talk to you about…us. And all that we’ve been through. I wanted to talk about me and you. I remember when we first met. You didn’t know who you were yet. I didn’t know who I was. We grew up together. So ten years, what’s the big deal, huh? I’m not one of those people that wears clothes just because somebody gave it to me for free. Although I do like this diamond. Are diamonds really a ten-year anniversary present? You think you can make me forget everything just by giving me this? You expect me to come running back to you every time you give me a present? When will you understand that I am a person and not a thing? That I deserve to be treated like a person and not a thing! I turn my back—for one minute—and you find somebody else. You’ve been hanging out with tramps with cheap clothes and bad songs to sing. I’ve got a tattoo on my behind too, you think you’re gonna see it? I know why you spend time with her: because she’s not threatening… She doesn’t make you laugh, she doesn’t make you cry… I won’t even go into the men you’ve been hanging around with… You’ve never had more fun with anyone else—and you know it.”

    That was and is still the truth when it comes to MTV and its most iconic moments. For even the Britney Spears ones are rooted in “Madonna-ness” (most especially the 2003 VMAs). But, more than that, the speech would touch on a number of apropos and foreshadowing points regarding the direction MTV had taken in its then still germinal period. It was like a harbinger of how the network would continue to mutate as the 90s went on. For, only a year after Madonna’s immortalized “love letter,” the network would premiere its first reality show (for some, arguably, the first “proper” reality show), The Real World, in 1992. Granted, before that, House of Style was one of MTV’s earliest deviations from focusing on music as it decided that taking to “the streets” to give the hoi polloi a snapshot of the latest fashion trends, as well as the lives of supermodels (still an ever-burgeoning concept that OG House of Style host Cindy Crawford helped solidify), was just as important as playing music videos.

    Of course, by the time the late 90s rolled around, the original “premise” of MTV was all but gone, with “content” taking over instead (though that isn’t to say some of said programming wasn’t actually brilliant [see: Daria]). Which is why Say What? started airing in 1998—because it was a show designed to do what MTV had originally been “all about”: playing music videos. The fact that the network had to make such a concerted effort to “block out time” (usually no more than an hour) to do what their unofficial mission statement had originally been was, well, not a good sign…to say the least. And then came a slew of other shows in the spirit of Say What?: 12 Angry Viewers, MTV Live, Artist’s Cut, and Total Request. It was the latter, in its Total Request Live format, that would signal the third phase of MTV and its influence on a new generation. To be sure, many tween and teenage millennials would spend their after-school hours watching TRL while “doing homework.” And yes, it was during this era when Britney Spears became the reigning queen of the network, serving as the twenty-first century edition of Madonna with her own indelible visuals, including “…Baby One More Time,” “Oops!…I Did It Again” and “Toxic.”

    Reality-type shows centered on the “hottest” musicians of the day also extended into programming like Punk’d and Making the Video (Britney was a staple on both). And even the VMAs continued to offer up a steady stream of “iconic” moments up to a certain year (the Taylor and Kanye incident of 2009 being of particular note)—but probably the last major “moment” was Beyoncé doing her baby bump reveal after singing “Love On Top” at the 2011 VMAs. The lack of “memorable MTV” instances wasn’t necessarily because the network stagnated. No, instead, it just kept getting worse. But, perhaps even more than that, it had lost its core audience. Generations that no longer cared about such things (e.g., music, style, what’s “relevant” in pop culture) as they once did, having grown into the very kind of person Avril Lavigne had warned about in “Sk8r Boi” (“She sits at home/Feeding the baby, she’s all alone”). More damaging still, those generations had joined the likes of Gen Z in getting their music and pop culture fix from other internet and app-centric outlets. Even for all of MTV’s best efforts to pivot itself toward being just as available via the internet, it didn’t have the same clout.

    Then came the first truly gut-punching portent of full-tilt doom: the deletion of the entire online archive of MTV News. That meant years and years of music journalism flushed into the proverbial abyss in the wake of layoffs and the shuttering of MTV News altogether. Ever since, the descent into total oblivion for MTV has been all but guaranteed. And sure, maybe it will keep the lights on, so to speak, with some of its “tentpole” offerings (like the VMAs and, in Britain, Geordie Shore), but there’s no denying that MTV will never again be the vibrant, cutting-edge network that molded culture and public taste as it once did. Yet that isn’t entirely its own fault. Indeed, perhaps it’s best to quote Madonna paraphrasing Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond when she said in the abovementioned speech, “I am big. It’s the videos that got small.” And oh, how they have—whittled down to barely thirty seconds of “content” on a petite smartphone (that oxymoron of a word).  

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

    Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

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    Although some could argue that Ronald Reagan’s oppressive regime in the 1980s is part of what fueled better pop culture than the schlock of the moment, one thing that could never be improved was Donald Trump. A man who did become part of the pop cultural lexicon of that era despite being a New York-confined Patrick Bateman type. For whatever reason (apart from The Art of the Deal), he managed to infiltrate the mainstream consciousness—more than likely because, in those days, it was the height of “aspirational” to be rich. Not that it still isn’t, it’s just more “cloaked” behind “earnest,” “let’s save the planet” messaging.

    Trump, obviously, never gave a fuck about that. And still doesn’t. Nor did he ever care about reading, though he did feign being very taken with the “excellent” Tom Wolfe during both men’s heyday. “Excellent” was the word he used to describe the quintessential 80s author in a 1987 interview with Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden when asked what books he was reading. But, of course, 1) he wasn’t actually reading any and 2) Trump couldn’t resist the urge to ultimately say, “I’m reading my own book because I think it’s so fantastic, Tom.” That book was the blatantly ghostwritten The Art of the Deal, released, incidentally, in the month that followed The Bonfire of the Vanities landing on bookshelves everywhere. Indeed, that was the main reason Trump was on the show.

    Oddly, Trump’s book (an oxymoron, to be sure) was the thing that made him become a household name in America, as opposed to just being limited to the niche jurisdiction of New York City and certain parts of New Jersey. As for his abovementioned interview, some have speculated that Bret Easton Ellis used this bizarre moment for Bateman/American Psycho inspiration. For it does smack of Bateman saying whatever the fuck comes to his mind just to see if anyone’s actually paying attention (e.g., saying he’s into “murders and executions mostly” instead of “mergers and acquisitions”). A moment where, in one instant Trump is declaring he’s well-versed in all literature Wolfe but hasn’t yet read The Bonfire of the Vanities, and, in the next, claiming to be reading Wolfe’s “last book.” Which would have been, what else, The Bonfire of the Vanities. He certainly wasn’t talking about From Bauhaus to Our House. And yet, even when caught in a lie, Trump always counted on touting generalities with confidence as a means to deflect from his total lack of knowledgeability.

    So it is that he keeps repeating such generalities as, “He’s a great author, he’s done a beautiful job” and “The man has done a very, very good job.” Finally, realizing that there might be some people out there not falling for his bullshit, he relies on the excuse, “I really can’t hear with this earphone by the way.” (Or, as Mariah would put it, “I can’t read suddenly.”) Trump, in this and so many other ways, has brought back the “art” of the flagrant lie-con that was popularized by some of the 80s’ most notorious swindlers, like David Bloom and Jim Bakker. Everyone wanting to adhere to the “fake it till you make it” philosophy so beloved by the U.S., and which it was essentially founded upon. A “philosophy” that Trump has taken “to heart” his entire life. Except for the fact that, as Tony Schwartz, the true writer of The Art of the Deal, eventually said, Trump doesn’t actually have a heart. More specifically, “Trump is not only willing to lie, but he doesn’t get bothered by it, doesn’t feel guilty about it, isn’t preoccupied by it. There’s an emptiness inside Trump. There’s an absence of a soul. There’s an absence of a heart.”

    And it can be argued that this absence began to extend to the collective of America in a more noticeable way than ever during the Decade of Excess. Uncoincidentally, it was the decade when neoliberalism came back into fashion in a manner as never seen before, courtesy of the “laissez-faire” policies of Reagan and, in the UK, Margaret Thatcher. With such an emphasis on “me first” and “getting ahead at any cost,” it was no wonder that a man like Trump, emblematic of the Wall Street monstrosity that would come to be embodied by Gordon Gekko, was so “revered.” His “lifestyle” coveted. Of course, it was harder then to debunk myths, like the idea that anything about Trump was “self-made.”

    In the backdrop (or foreground, depending on who you ask) of Trump and Reagan representing the worst of the 80s, there were, needless to say, so many amazing things about that decade: the birth of MTV, and with it, a new generation of visual artists (including the 1958 Trinity, Madonna Prince and Michael Jackson), Square Pegs, Golden Girls, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, They Live, E.T., Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Footloose (a whole rash of dancing movies, really), any John Hughes movie, the eradication of smallpox, the aerobics craze and Jane Fonda’s Workout, Pac-Man (and the rise of video games in general, culminating in the release of Game Boy in 1989), the early days of the internet and personal computers, the first female vice presidential candidate (Geraldine Ferraro), the fall of the Berlin Wall… So many great, memorable things that should outshine the ickier moments today—like the rampant homophobia in response to AIDS, the Challenger explosion, Irangate, the Chernobyl disaster, New Coke, the rise of the yuppie, the death of vinyl (though it would have the last laugh) and George H.W. Bush managing to win the 1988 election so as to take more “Reaganomics” policies into the 90s.

    And now, Trump wants to bring all the worst of the decade back. The homophobia, the religious overtones (complete with satanic panic), rampant misogyny, the worship of money, the rollback of environmental regulations and, maybe most affronting of all, Hulk Hogan. The latter, like Trump, experienced his own heyday in the 80s, when interest in pro wrestling and the WWE reached an all-time crescendo. And, also like Trump, Hogan has a reputation for, let’s say, embellishing (read: fabricating) his lore. Because he found his success by being an over-the-top wrestler, Hogan never seemed inclined to shed his performative persona. As a result, many will remain forever haunted by Hogan at the RNC a.k.a. Trump rally ripping his shirt off to reveal a Trump/Vance tank top as he screamed, “Let Trumpamania [unclear why he wouldn’t just say ‘Trump Mania,’ but anyway] run wild brother! Let Trumpamania rule again!”

    As many pointed out, it was like seeing the plot of Idiocracy fully realized. A trajectory that can now be rightfully pinned on the “ideals” of the 80s. For while it was the best of times, it was also the worst of times—and those are coming back with a vengeance if Trump manages to win the presidency yet again. On the plus side though, it seems that CDs are making a comeback to align with this potential return to the Decade of Greed.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Totally Killer Shows How “Wild” the 80s Were, And How Much the Decade Fucked With the Heads of the Marginalized

    Totally Killer Shows How “Wild” the 80s Were, And How Much the Decade Fucked With the Heads of the Marginalized

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    As far as gimmicky horror movies go, there’s been no shortage since Scream reanimated the genre in 1996. And, in the decades since its initial release, Kevin Williamson effectively gave permission to writers everywhere to be as meta as possible with horror (/comedy horror). Which is why we now have shows such as The Other Black Girl literally calling out in the dialogue how it’s just like the premise of Get Out (and yes, it pretty much is). In Totally Killer, our sort-of final girl, Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka), also has no trouble calling out the cinematic similarities of the plot she’s living through. Specifically, its similarities to Back to the Future and the aforementioned Scream. Mainly the former because Jamie accidentally ends up traveling back to the 80s (October 27, 1987, to be exact) after her best friend, Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), invents a time machine based on her mother Lauren’s (Kimberly Huie) abandoned scrawlings from a high school notebook. 

    The apparatus used? A photobooth at the abandoned Vernon carnival grounds where the high school science fair is going to be held. When Jamie approaches the desolate, creepy place (called Billy’s Boardwalk) to find Amelia, she can’t help but ask why the principal would want to hold the fair here. Amelia responds matter-of-factly, “Principal Summers got it for free. You know, to help bring people back in. This used to be the place to hang in Vernon, but now it’s just another stop on the murder tour.” And, speaking of the murder tour, it’s a real thing that’s actually run by Chris Dubusage (Jonathan Potts), the self-styled “expert” on the Sweet Sixteen murders that happened in 1987 (basically, he’s sort of the Gale Weathers [Courteney Cox] of the movie). The murders that have made Jamie’s mom, Pam (Julie Bowen), hyper-paranoid and very helicopter parent-y (that’s right, she deliberately smacks of Sidney Prescott [Neve Campbell]). Which is why, when Jamie says she wants to go to a concert with Amelia on Halloween and Pam proceeds to get all protective and foreboding about it, Jamie snaps back, “So I can’t go to a concert because your friends were murdered thirty-five years ago?” Jamie keeps up the harshness by adding, “I sort of wish you guys would just get over it.” 

    But, obviously, there are many things that both Pam and Jamie’s dad, Blake (Lochlyn Munro), haven’t gotten over since 1987. For Blake, it’s an ongoing contempt for Chris Dubusage and his exploitative ways. For Pam, it isn’t just that her friends were murdered, but also a high-key obsession with Molly Ringwald—hence, dressing as Claire Standish from The Breakfast Club for Halloween. This is no coincidence, as Jamie soon finds out. For her mom’s friend group in high school is referred to as “the Mollys” because they all like to dress in different iterations of her movie characters. This being somewhat ironic considering that Ringwald never played a “popular girl” (save for Claire), favoring instead the underdog characters from the “wrong side of the tracks” (this phrase being literal in Pretty in Pink). Perhaps it was ultimately a sign of Pam’s humanity beneath all the mean girl bravado, what with her role as the leader of the group dictating that Heather (Anna Diaz), Tiffany (Liana Liberato) and Marisa (Stephi Chin-Salvo) should also dress like the “ain’t she sweet” teen queen of the 80s (even though Tiffany is the only redhead). But before unearthing any of that humanity, Jamie is shocked to find out the kind of person her mother was as a teenager after her unexpected bout with time travel. The one caused by being chased into the photo booth by the revived killer (who has already stabbed Jamie’s mom by this point). 

    When the killer accidentally stabs at the glass plate where the date is displayed, it manages to create the extra metal conduction Amelia was missing to make the time machine work. So it is that Jamie returns to October 27, 1987 (consider it her version of Marty McFly’s November 5, 1955), the date preset by Amelia, who wanted to help Jamie catch the killer from the start so that her mother won’t be murdered in the present. On the other side of time, Jamie is relieved to have evaded the killer, but that relief is gone the instant she realizes (to the initially faint tune of Bananarama’s “Venus”) that she is very much back in 1987. 

    And, of course, that makes things rife for comedy…which happens to be director Nahnatchka Khan’s specialty (lest anyone forget, she wrote and directed Don’t Trust the B- – – – in Apartment 23…where, incidentally, Kiernan Shipka cameo’d as herself in an episode). Tackling the script by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D’Angelo, Khan visually plays up the shock on Jamie’s part. Not just at having time traveled, but how “problematic” things are in 1987, including the sight of a man wearing an “FBI (Federal Booby Inspector)” shirt at the carnival. When Jamie chastises him for wearing it, his girlfriend notes, “I like your shirt.” Just another indication that the collective mind hadn’t yet been reprogrammed to understand the insidious presence of misogyny in every facet of culture. 

    Jamie is further appalled when, after asking a woman with two kids what year it is, she offers to give her a ride back to school…where she’s supposed to be at this time of day. Jamie replies, “I can’t get in a car with you, you’re a total stranger. You could be a serial killer.” The woman laughs and says, “Would a serial killer wear Gloria Vanderbilt?” Thus, Jamie rides in the smoke-filled station wagon (another amplification of how different things were back then because a mother was willing to freely suffocate her children with secondhand smoke) to the school. Where she’s met with even more anathema interactions that don’t jibe with her Gen Z perspective. Starting with her sighting of the Vernon “mascot” on the side of the school: a “Red Devil” a.k.a. Native American. She remarks to herself, “And there’s the racism. Knew that was coming.” But with the bad, Jamie takes the good—for instance, a total lack of concern with security on the part of the admin lady she approaches at the front desk with a fake story about being an exchange student from Prince Edward Island. When the woman cuts her off and asks her what grade she’s in so she can give her a catch-all schedule, Jamie asks incredulously, “You don’t need to verify anything?” The woman scoffs, “What is this, Fort Knox?” 

    Later on, when Jamie needs to figure out what class Amelia’s mom is in, she also approaches the admin lady with the same view she would in the present, figuring that such information can’t be given out because it’s private. But no, the admin lady readily tells her that Lauren is in Earth Science and gets back to reading her romance novel. In disbelief, Jamie notes to herself, “Flying on a plane right now must be insane.”

    It is the “insanity” of the 80s overall that Khan and the writers highlight as much as an appreciation for Halloween, Back to the Future and Scream. However, even more significant than that is the racial element that eventually makes itself known by the time the killer is revealed. For the culprit behind the three murders (Pam’s murder thirty-five years later serves as the additional plot twist) turns out to be a person of color whose girlfriend died as a direct result of the Mollys’ bullying. Save for Pam, who wasn’t there on the night in question, and therefore wasn’t targeted by the murderer in 1987.

    That the killer chooses to dress in a quintessential 80s douchebag mask (one that’s kind of reminiscent of a Donald Trump face) is also telling of “the other” during that decade trying especially hard to fit in with the rest of the white mold held up as an “exemplar” of “how to be.” Not to mention how telling it is that Marisa and Heather so gladly go along with emulating Ringwald because that’s what the white leader of their clique wants to do.

    What’s more, the fact that the killer was constantly bullied and ostracized himself heightens the message that things weren’t really “better” “back in the day.” They were simply more convenient for the white majority that didn’t have to “watch itself” as much as it does now (that it’s becoming a minority). 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Pee-wee’s Big Capitulation: As “Weird” As Pee-wee Was, He Was Still A Material Boy of the 80s

    Pee-wee’s Big Capitulation: As “Weird” As Pee-wee Was, He Was Still A Material Boy of the 80s

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    Perhaps it’s difficult to imagine a world in which “weird” isn’t a sellable commodity. It certainly wasn’t an effortless sell in the Reagan 80s. Not until a then little-known persona by the name of Pee-wee Herman released a movie called Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The year was 1985, and the director was also then little-known Tim Burton. A man who would, in addition to Pee-wee, go on to make “weird” “his thing.” And in the 80s, it seemed no one (at least not at the executive level) was yet fully aware of the kind of profitability that could signal. Until the surprise hit of Summer 1985 was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (released the same year as Back to the Future and The Goonies, each with their own product placement machinations). It was to mark Burton’s first feature-length film, and one that he was given the opportunity to direct because Paul Reubens liked what he saw in Burton’s first two short films, Vincent and Frankenweenie. 

    As it turned out, there was no better man for the job, with the surreal, offbeat tone of the narrative (which takes a page from Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief [obviously with a more comedic slant]) perfectly suited to Burton’s already well-established style, complete with musical accompaniments from Danny Elfman. Needless to say, it was a style that would serve a plot like this for the better. Because the more over-the-top and bizarre it was, the easier it became to ignore a lack of “realism” and get invested in the loss of this man-boy’s bike. To feel his pain…and his joy when the red cruiser is at last found again.

    His obsession with it, some might argue, is purely sentimental. And after all, he’s sure to tell his nemesis, Francis (Mark Holton), “I wouldn’t sell my bike for all the money in the world.” This after Francis tries to buy it off him because his father said he could have anything he wanted for his birthday. Pee-wee is the first to burst the rich kid’s bubble, giving him a lesson on how some things aren’t for sale. And yet, more than an emotional attachment to the bike, it’s obvious that he values it because of the status it gives him because it’s so sought-after. It’s about the way it makes him feel. So, for as absurd as the movie might come across, there’s nothing more rooted in realism than that. Perhaps few films of the 80s are able to better embody the importance an object can have to a person. Become a very extension of that person (presaging how phones would do the same thing). Which doesn’t seem coincidental considering the decade it was released. 

    At a time of ramped-up consumerism, “synergy” was becoming an increasing buzz word in the realm of advertising. And in the 80s, cross-promotional items from movies were the name of the game. From Rambo lunchboxes to Slimer from Ghostbusters-themed Hi-C packaging (bless your resilient little guts if you imbibed the “Ecto Cooler”), the only thing better than tie-in products, for corporations anyway, was getting their wares placed in the film itself. With 1982’s E.T., Hershey’s set the trend for the pervasive product placement viewers would barely notice anymore after so many hours spent absorbing media in that fashion. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure would prove no exception to the 80s movie rule. Starting with the Murray bicycle itself, Pee-wee’s odyssey is as much a consumerist one as it is a quest to unearth his bike. 

    The ease with which companies got in bed with movies was, in part, spurred by Reagan’s deregulation policies, which themselves were the brainchild of big business and a collective of nefarious think tanks that banded together in the 1970s to present theories about how newly-enacted environmental and consumer protection laws were serving as nothing more than senseless red tape to slow down economic progress and give more fuel to stagflation. With everything suddenly in favor of “servicing the corporation,” there appeared to be no calling into question the “ethics” of presenting these products so flagrantly. And, after all, weren’t the movies just doing viewers a solid by reflecting the America they lived in right back to them? An endless parade of adverts all shouting the same thing, “Buy me!” Or, to use a subliminal message from They Live, “Obey.” Obey what, exactly? Society, capitalism and the status quo. 

    What’s more, Reubens and Burton are adept in the language of how to make someone appear left out for not having the “right” product. Or at least a product of a similar vein to the “hottest thing.” So it is that, just after Pee-wee’s bike is stolen, he’s forced to wander the strip mall street on foot, like some sort of peasant, while everyone else around him is on a bike. Even the motorized toys. Thus, he’s now been cut down to size, made “lesser than”—when only twenty minutes ago, he was the peacocking bike rider trying to outperform the tricks of the kids around him riding on less cumbersome wheels. The underlying message: you are what you own. Property is the thing—this being why it’s such a standout moment to see that one of the crowning additions to Pee-wee’s bike is an engraved plate that reads, “Property of Pee-wee Herman.” And what’s more essential to capitalistic adherence than owning property? Property that becomes so easy to confuse with “characteristics” of ourselves. So it is that Pee-wee’s identity is as entrenched in the bike as it is in making random, off-color laughing sounds. His refusal to accept any substitutes also speaks to the concept of brand loyalty. Nothing else will compare to or ever be as good as the bike Pee-wee had before. He wants what he wants, and nothing else will do. 

    In 80s America, this type of mentality was at an apex, with “nothing but the best” philosophies at play as a means to further distinguish Western capitalism from Soviet communism (and yes, the Soviets do get accused by Pee-wee of stealing his bike). Pee-wee, for as “different” as he is, still falls prey to that pervasive mentality. The vestiges of which continue to endure to this apocalyptic day. For, as the Pee-wee’s Big Adventure-influenced movie, Barbie, puts it, “Ideas live forever.” And capitalistic ones are all but impossible to deprogram people of. This, in part, is why Pee-wee Herman cannot exactly lay genuine claim to a phrase like, “I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.” For, in the end, he capitulates to not only being a slave to an object—his bike—but also to giving in to a monogamous relationship with Dottie. Because, the truth is, even the biggest “weirdos” just want stability and nice things. Surrendering to the warmth (becoming much more literal every day) provided by material trappings.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Wham!—The Music Duo and the Documentary—Reminds That Pop Music Was Never Frivolous

    Wham!—The Music Duo and the Documentary—Reminds That Pop Music Was Never Frivolous

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    It’s easy to write Wham! off, even to this day, as another “embarrassing” 80s pop group. Their preppy, often neon attire, combined with Hair As Personality stylings also add to the present-day listener’s inability to take them seriously. And yet, even in their time and place—when they “made sense”—they were still regarded by critics as froth. Or, worse still, chaff. But that didn’t stop fans and casual radio listeners alike from turning up the volume whenever one of the duo’s songs came on. As they frequently did once the band finally “made it big.” And, compared to other British bands (The Beatles included), Wham! had a relatively “seamless” transition from high school boys to twenty-something megastars.

    Maybe part of what made it feel so “natural” was that George Michael—born Georgios Panayiotou—and Andrew Ridgeley were friends for such a long time and shared the same dream of becoming musicians for equally as long, that it became unfathomable to think that life could turn out any other way. Director Chris Smith (known for other standout documentaries including Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond and Fyre) homes in on that friendship throughout Wham!, and how there would never have been a Wham! without that boyhood bond. Indeed, Michael himself is featured in the documentary stating, “I genuinely believe that there’s something predestined about it. I mean, the path might have been totally different had I sat down next to someone else that day.” That day being when George, age eleven, met Andrew, age twelve at Bushey Meads School in 1975. It became quickly apparent that their bond would be forged by music, with the voice of Ridgeley (for Smith goes the Asif Kapadia route in opting for voices and archival footage in lieu of talking heads for the documentary) remarking, “Essentially, Yog [Ridgeley’s affectionate nickname for George] and I saw things exactly the same way. Musically, we were joined at the hip.” A hip-joining that led them to start a ska band called The Executive that eventually “imploded,” leaving George and Andrew in the ruins—thus, demarcating them as the only two who were genuinely serious about “doing music” “as a career.”

    By 1981, the formation of that career was taking shape in the form of going to Beat Route (get it?—a play on beetroot) in London’s West End. It was there that nightclub culture informed the sound and lyrical content of Wham!’s work. As Ridgeley notes, “The songwriting was dictated by our circumstances, the environment around us.” Not just one dominated by escaping onto the dance floor, but one dominated by recession, unemployment and the unshakeable onset of Thatcherism. So yes, even a band as “light” as Wham! was expressing the pain of life as a young man in Britain. A life that seemed to offer no future other than the factory line or the dole line. That, too, was the uniqueness of Wham!—it was so distinctly laddish. So geared toward ruffians and a “neo” kind of Teddy Boy. The very prototype that John Lennon imitated when he was first starting to navigate his musical identity. Like The Beatles, Wham!, for all its “male motifs” appeal, would end up attracting primarily women as fans. With Michael in particular becoming a “pinup,” despite his resistance toward such a label as it meant having to further bury his sexuality in the sand. This occurring early on in Wham!’s career, after Michael decided to come out to Shirlie Kemp (one of the “backup girls” in the band/Ridgeley’s girlfriend-turned-ex) and Ridgeley while staying a few extra days in Ibiza after shooting the video for “Club Tropicana.” Because of course Ibiza would facilitate that epiphany, that sense of freeness to finally admit to others who you are. Alas, Shirlie and Ridgeley advised Michael against coming out publicly because they were both more concerned about his oppressive father’s horrifying reaction than anyone or anything else. It was with that bum advice that Michael sealed off a key part of himself for decades to come.

    For those who might have thought “Careless Whisper” was accordingly about some secret, forbidden love gone wrong, Wham! clears it up as being, quite simply, one of the first songs the duo recorded as Wham! As a matter of fact, the mention of “Careless Whisper” is interwoven throughout Wham!, almost like a recurring talisman…the way it has been in so many people’s lives. It was one of those songs that, just as A. B. Quintanilla writing Selena’s “Como La Flor,” kept building up over years of thinking about it. Michael confirms as much in Wham!, recounting, “We put it together very slowly, at home or on the bus, just add a little day by day.” Nonetheless, it wasn’t “really ready” until 1984, though Michael was struck with inspiration for the lyrics at just seventeen years old, while riding the bus to his job as an usher at a movie theater (thus, the verse, “Something in your eyes/Calls to mind a silver screen/And all its sad goodbyes”). Again, he was only seventeen when he wrote it. A song of such power and maturity. A song that would make all saxophone solos after it pale in comparison. A song that would set Ridgeley up for life as a result of receiving half the royalties.

    But for all the flak Ridgeley gets about “riding coattails,” it has to be said that he was the main reason Wham! existed at all (or George Michael The Performer, for that matter). Were it not for his persistent harassment of a label cofounder for Innervision Records called Mark Dean, Wham! probably never would have gotten a record deal (even if it turned out to be a really shitty one, in terms of any sort of financial gain for the band’s success). Dean lived down the street from Ridgeley’s parents, and Ridgeley would phone Dean’s mom asking if her son had listened to the demo tape he put in their letterbox yet. When he finally did, Dean was impressed enough despite the lo-fi quality of it to sign the group to the label.

    It’s here that Ridgeley stating, “There was only one thing that I ever wanted to do: be in a band with Yog” comes to mind. Because perhaps that’s why, once Ridgeley’s dream was fulfilled, it was all downhill from there (for his music career, at least). Complete with his raucous, party animal reputation that resulted in the tabloid nicknames “Animal Andy” and Randy Andy.” But it was a tabloid frenzy that suited Michael well, for it meant no one could call attention to his own seemingly total lack of a sexual appetite…for women, that is. Even if the telltale clues were always there, plain as day. Just look at a double entendre-y lyric such as, “I choose to cruise.” Not to mention the entire contents of “Nothing Looks the Same in the Light,” a song Michael wrote about the first time he realized he wanted to stay in bed with a man for the night.

    Not being able to be honest about who he was caused an undeniable depression. It was likely for this reason that Michael retreated further into the protection of Wham!’s “effervescent” and “exuberant” aura. Fun and “escapism” being the core tenets of what Wham! was all about. It’s possible Michael was afraid to lose a protective shield like that (even though many probably thought Ridgeley needed Wham! more than Michael). For, unlike most bands that start out at a certain age, therefore represent/are forever associated with that certain age, Wham! knew from the outset that it was ultimately a finite project. That there was, inevitably, an expiration date on what they represented—fun, froth and frivolity—once they aged out of the very demographic they were appealing to. The same thing technically happened to The Beatles after 1965 (once Beatlemania had crested), but they chose to reanimate into a “Part Deux” of themselves, replete with psychedelia and Eastern-influenced lyrics and rhythms.

    Wham! was never going to bother with a Part Deux of themselves, which is why it was so important to them to “make it big” in their teens/early twenties. “Youth” was their brand. And, in contrast to The Beatles, they weren’t shy about their affinity for pop (The Beatles, instead, wanted to be categorically “rock n’ roll”). As both Michael and Ridgeley exhibited, pop was never froth, not fundamentally. In that sense, one might say they were doing “purposeful pop” long before Katy Perry decided to on Witness. Because, in defiance of most Brits, Michael and Ridgeley weren’t snobbish about the genre. Indeed, willfully chose it (they “chose life,” if you will) over something like the ska and punk genres that dominated their sound when they were in The Executive.

    A pop song could say so much more than any treatise or political speech. And “Wham Rap!” did just that, with an opening that goes, “Wham! bam!/I am! a man!/Job or no job,/You can’t tell me that I’m not./Do! you!/Enjoy what you do?/If not, just stop!/Don’t stay there and rot!” It was advice, in the end, that would apply to the dissolution of Wham! But that doesn’t come until the end of the documentary. In the meantime, the criticism they endure for shifting from “socially aware” content to something like “Club Tropicana”—which marked the true essence of the band—is addressed. Reviews from the British press were merciless, including assessments such as, “The work is futile, the thought is shallow…” Yet there was nothing futile, shallow or thoughtless about Michael and Ridgeley catering to what their own peers wanted. Knowing full well what would make hearts and pulses alike flutter. As Michael explained to one interviewer back in the day, “I think what’s happening in England is that there’s a large escapist element creeping back into music now. Three or four years ago with the punk thing, people were shouting. Now, they’re not ashamed of being young, unemployed. They’d rather just go to a disco or a club and forget about it.” Wham!, in that regard, was anything but frivolous, even if they were catering to those who wanted to be frivolous.

    Having a keen social awareness of their time and place, Wham! embodied the 80s not just for their vibrantly-colored sportswear and hairstyles that required a blow dryer, but because they knew beneath the so-called froth of it all was a dark, unpleasant reality—neoliberalism held up as a god, racism, AIDS, war, famine. So why not just escape for the four-minute length of a pop song? Why not just have a good time while you could, whenever you could grab it? Something only a pop song is capable of furnishing on a socialistic level. Nothing about that is frivolous, yet pop music continues to be lambasted for having no value when, in truth, it remains one of the few pure modern comforts we have in a world of cold, hard reality.

    To many, Wham! will never be a band “of substance.” Or, if it is, then only if the duo is being sardonically pontificated upon by yuppies like Patrick Bateman (indeed, how did Bret Easton Ellis choose not to include a discourse on Make It Big from Bateman at some point in American Psycho?). But to those who understand that the presence of pop music in our culture is the best way to check its pulse (and if it even still has one), Wham! was a symbol of one of the most vital times in music, reflecting the youth back to itself before it was forced into the kind of situation “Wham Rap!” and “Young Guns” warned about.

    With a run time of about one hour and thirty minutes, the Wham! documentary feels as short-lived as the band’s five-ish years of recording together. And likewise, it’s just as impactful despite its shortness.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Monetize (And Monetize And Monetize) Your Talent: Air Explores the Birth of a New American Dream: Passive Income

    Monetize (And Monetize And Monetize) Your Talent: Air Explores the Birth of a New American Dream: Passive Income

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    If Air seeks to emphasize one thing, it’s that you should always leverage your talent to secure the utmost profit. That’s certainly what Michael Jordan did back in 1984 as a rookie who made an unthinkable negotiation with Nike. One that would, for the first time in history, allow an athlete like Jordan to earn a percentage of every pair of Air Jordans sold. After all, it was his name on the sneakers, his name spurring all the sales. So why shouldn’t he get his cut? This question is present throughout the narrative thread of Air, which revolves entirely around the lead-up to making this landmark deal. Marking Ben Affleck’s fifth directorial effort following Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo and Live By Night, Air is a much more blatant nod to the “American dream.” You know, the one that pertains solely to bowing down to capitalism a.k.a. “getting this money.” Ironically, it’s also distributed by Amazon, which Nike no longer sells their shoes through in a bid to “elevate consumer experiences through more direct, personal relationships.”

    Sort of the way Jordan wanted to elevate the consumer experience of his adoring fans by giving them “a piece of himself” through a shoe. Fittingly enough, both Nike and Michael Jordan are quintessential American dream stories, with the latter being a shoestring operation (pun intended) co-founded in 1964 by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight (Affleck) and his coach, Bill Bowerman (though Alex Convery, the writer of Air, doesn’t bother to mention his name). It was Knight who sold the company’s (then known as Blue Ribbon Sports) first shoe offerings (made by Onitsuka Tiger, a brand that, for whatever reason, agreed to let Knight be the U.S.’ exclusive distributor) out of the back of his car at track meets most of the time. Steadily, Blue Ribbon Sports kept making a name for itself as a leader in distributing Japanese running shoes. But it was in 1971 that Bowerman fucked around with his own innovation by using his wife’s waffle iron to create a different kind of rubber sole for the benefit of runners. One that was lightweight, therefore conducive to increasing speed. This was also the year the company rebranded to Nike and was bequeathed with its signature swoosh logo by graphic designer Carolyn Davidson. With the “Moon Shoe” and the “Waffle Trainer” released in 1972 and 1974 respectively, Nike sales exploded into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

    Jordan’s Cinderella story comes across as having slightly fewer hiccups in his rise to prominence, the main one being his slight by the varsity high school team when he was a sophomore at Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina. Written off as too short for varsity, Jordan waited patiently to grow four more inches and asserted himself as the star of Laney’s JV team. After getting his spot on varsity, it didn’t take long for a number of colleges to offer him a scholarship. He settled on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, quickly distinguishing himself on the basketball team there and having no trouble eventually catching the eye of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, rejoining his true love onscreen), Nike’s then basketball talent scout (at a time when such “lax” job roles were still in existence). Convinced of Jordan’s status as a once-in-a-generation talent, he begs and pleads with Knight to use the entire basketball budget to offer Jordan an endorsement deal.

    Alas, although named after the Greek goddess who personifies victory, Nike was anything but victorious in being a basketball shoe contender with the likes of Converse and Adidas as 1984 commenced. After all, the company had been built on running shoes. That had always been their bread and butter. Nonetheless, Vaccaro still can’t figure out why basketball players are so averse to putting their faith in Nike. But, as Howard White (Chris Tucker), the VP of Nike’s Basketball Athlete Relations tells Sonny, “Nike is a damn jogging company. Black people don’t jog. You ain’t gonna catch no Black person running twenty-six miles for no damn reason. Man, the cops probably pull you over thinkin’ you done stole something.” Which isn’t far off considering the need for shirts like, “Don’t Shoot, It’s Just Cardio” (tragically inspired by the death of Ahmaud Arbery).

    Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), the VP of Marketing for Basketball, is more naively optimistic during a meeting in which he says, “Mr. Orwell was right. 1984 has been a tough year. Our sales are down, our growth is down. But this company is about who we really are when we are down for the count.” That said, Strasser and Knight both insist they have a strict 250K budget to attract three players. Sonny tells Strasser he doesn’t want to sign three players, he wants to sign just one: Jordan. He paints Strasser the innovative-for-its-time picture, “We build a shoe line just around him. We tap into something deeper, into the player’s identity.” This being something that would become the subsequent norm with endorsement deals, not just from sports players, but every kind of celebrity.

    To this end, it’s of no small significance that Air opens with Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” a song that derides famous ilk (namely, rock stars) who get money for doing no “real” work, like those who have to fritter their hours away in a minimum wage job at an appliance store (the site where Mark Knopfler overheard a man making derisive comments about the people he was seeing on MTV and then turned the rant into “Money For Nothing”). Jordan, too, might be seen that way by some, at least for making millions (billions?) for doing nothing other than allowing a shoe with his name and silhouette on it to be sold. And as “Money For Nothing” plays, Affleck gets us into the mindset of what the 80s were all about: consumer culture melding with pop culture. For it was in the 80s that the potential for endorsement deals, fueled by Reaganomics’ love of neoliberalism on steroids, were fully realized and taken advantage of.

    Sonny, seeing something entirely American in Jordan, crystallizes his feelings about him to Phil by insisting that he is “the most competitive guy I’ve ever seen. He is a fucking killer.” And that means he’s going to kill for Nike, profit-wise. As Sonny chases down a meeting with Jordan, who has made his disdain for the company abundantly clear (especially as he “loves” Adidas), it’s through his mother, Deloris (Viola Davis, who, although Jordan had no involvement in the production of the film, was offered as a suggestion by him to play the part), that Sonny finds his “in” with Michael. Much to the consternation of Michael’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), who distinctly warns Sonny not to contact the family.

    But Sonny has no interest in following rules, if that hadn’t already been made evident. And when he finally does land the pitch meeting with Jordan, he’s sure to tell him and his parents that Michael’s trajectory is “an American story, and that’s why Americans are gonna love it.” He then adds, as a coup de grâce in terms of flattery, “A shoe is just a shoe…until somebody steps into it [words Deloris will remind him of later when bargaining for Michael’s cut of the profits]. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.” And that, in the end, is how Jordan makes four hundred million dollars a year in passive income from a shoe.

    Even if it was an initial struggle for Deloris to lock down that income. Indeed, when Sonny tells her that Nike will never go for her and Michael’s demand and that the business is simply unfair in that regard, Deloris replies, “I agree that the business is unfair. It’s unfair to my son, it’s unfair to people like you. But every once in a while, someone comes along that’s so extraordinary, that it forces those reluctant to part with some of [their] wealth [to do so]. Not out of charity, but out of greed, because they are so very special. And even more rare, that person demands to be treated according to their worth, because they understand what they are worth.”

    With such an ardent speech about getting money, getting paid, it highlights that, more than just being a movie about how capitalism allows companies to exploit those making the most money for them, Air is about how capitalism indoctrinates the human brain so much as to make it believe that everything has to be about money. That the greatest art of all is not the art or skill itself, but how to get the most one possibly can for it. So it is that Bruce Springsteen’s always cringe-y hit, “Born in the U.S.A.,” plays while viewers are given epilogues to each person’s financially profitable fate. Funnily enough, Strasser had specifically mentioned to Vaccaro earlier in the film that one of the songs most beloved by Republicans (Reagan himself famously cited it for his presidential “cause”) is not about the hallowed notion of the American dream at all. In fact, as he tells Sonny, he was listening to it on his way to work most mornings (it had just come out during the year Air takes place), and he was all “fired up about American freedom…but this morning, I really focused on the words. And it is not about freedom. Like, not in any way. It’s about a guy who comes home from Vietnam, can’t find a job and I’m just belting it out enthusiastically.”

    There’s something to that analogy in looking for the deeper, perhaps unwitting meaning to Air. It isn’t really about the beauty of the American dream, but how ugly and petty it makes everyone pursuing it for the sake of as many pieces of paper as possible.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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