As one who was there, I'd argue it was a time that was fairly optimistic (there's some truth to the whole John Hughes movie archetype), but not without some shades of darkness as well. Some of that's reflected in The Breakfast Club come to think of it: wealth disparities (Claire, the rich kid), blue-collar uncertainties (Andrew), future pysch case (Allison), genius (Brian), and budding criminal (John).
The country had come out of Vietnam, the Oil Crises of the 1970s, Watergate, and a lot of distrust over the CIA, FBI, and COINTELPRO (some things never change). The Challenger explosion (January, 1986) and Chernobyl disaster (April, 1986) both suggested profound limits to technology.
There was the threat of nuclear war, the Soviets were The Enemy (or was it Eastasia?), Japan was eating everyone's lunch, and the rustbelt was really starting to show its weaknesses.
At the same time, oil (eventually) got cheap again, the economy began was was a 20 year sustained period of growth, with two minor burps (the 1989 stock market crash, and the early 1990s recession). The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell, both almost completely unimaginable even just a few years earlier.
You had your bubbly pop, but there was also the punk movement. Bands like Timbuk3 put out cynical songs like "Futures So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades":
The uptempo performance is often mistake for optimism, the lyrics say otherwise, as Pat MacDonald clarified in an interview. From Wikipedia:
Pat somewhat clarified the meaning by stating that it was, contrary to popular belief, a "grim" outlook. While not saying so directly, he hinted at the idea that the bright future was in fact due to impending nuclear holocaust. The "job waiting" after graduation signified the demand for nuclear scientists to facilitate such events. Pat drew upon the multitude of past predictions which transcend several cultures that foreshadow the world ending in the 1980s, along with the nuclear tension at the height of the cold war to compile the song.
Dire Straits, "Money for Nothing" also reflected on the contrast between moving refrigerators vs. "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup" (it was a different age) "got his own jet airplane". Probably moving into the Mission and ruining the neighborhood as well.
And the computer animations were state-of-the-art.
There was a sense of possible future problems (energy, oil, we were just starting to hear about CO2), but nothing imminent (other than nuclear annihilation). I'd say that's probably the biggest change now: the global economy has been dragging for 10-15 years now, and there's a distinct sense that the trajectory has changed.
The country had come out of Vietnam, the Oil Crises of the 1970s, Watergate, and a lot of distrust over the CIA, FBI, and COINTELPRO (some things never change). The Challenger explosion (January, 1986) and Chernobyl disaster (April, 1986) both suggested profound limits to technology.
There was the threat of nuclear war, the Soviets were The Enemy (or was it Eastasia?), Japan was eating everyone's lunch, and the rustbelt was really starting to show its weaknesses.
At the same time, oil (eventually) got cheap again, the economy began was was a 20 year sustained period of growth, with two minor burps (the 1989 stock market crash, and the early 1990s recession). The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell, both almost completely unimaginable even just a few years earlier.
You had your bubbly pop, but there was also the punk movement. Bands like Timbuk3 put out cynical songs like "Futures So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades":
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0
The uptempo performance is often mistake for optimism, the lyrics say otherwise, as Pat MacDonald clarified in an interview. From Wikipedia:
Pat somewhat clarified the meaning by stating that it was, contrary to popular belief, a "grim" outlook. While not saying so directly, he hinted at the idea that the bright future was in fact due to impending nuclear holocaust. The "job waiting" after graduation signified the demand for nuclear scientists to facilitate such events. Pat drew upon the multitude of past predictions which transcend several cultures that foreshadow the world ending in the 1980s, along with the nuclear tension at the height of the cold war to compile the song.
Dire Straits, "Money for Nothing" also reflected on the contrast between moving refrigerators vs. "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup" (it was a different age) "got his own jet airplane". Probably moving into the Mission and ruining the neighborhood as well.
And the computer animations were state-of-the-art.
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag
There was a sense of possible future problems (energy, oil, we were just starting to hear about CO2), but nothing imminent (other than nuclear annihilation). I'd say that's probably the biggest change now: the global economy has been dragging for 10-15 years now, and there's a distinct sense that the trajectory has changed.