THE EIGHTIES MAINSTREAM -THE FINAL FRONTIER











































On WYST's look back on a great era:
The eighties is a much decried era with it’s associations of strikes war and greed but if you look back with an open mind you will see that it was the last decade when the mainstream was good. The last decade when committee and sterility did not rule the waves.

TV had prime time quality like Cracker, Prime Suspect and Inspector Morse all shown on commercial TV and watched by huge audiences.

The mainstream cinema experience was about marketing yet the product available was fun and stands the test of time, there was originality in the shape of movies such as Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future

Films such as Gandhi, Amadeus and Raging Bull were of real quality that reached the masses and met critical approval.

The emergence of talent such as Eddie Murphy, Mickey Rourke and Harrison Ford along with mainstream performers who where not just selected for their generic smoothness.

Comedy in the eighties was both boundary pushing and comfortable but most of all people were able to be challenged by The Young Ones, and The Meaning of life but also able to enjoy Only Fools and Horses together. Fools and horses was at its peak in the eighties and everyone (literally) watched it.

Viewing Top of the Pops meant seeing diverse acts like Cameo, Human League and The Cure. Music began to be more accessible and going to clubs was exciting fun and went hand in hand with going to see live bands. It was okay to listen to The Clash, Michael Jackson and Kate Bush as boundaries were broken. Two Tone, Hip Hop and post Punk were all fresh and seemed less cynical than fabricated trends since.

Martin Amis, Brett Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney were some of the authors that injected some oomph into the world of books and Comic books produced the three greatest works of the genre in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen.

Even that most mainstream of media, Advertisements were filled with humour and originality.

The eighties is generally associated with shoulder pads, yuppies and Thatcher however for a decade the mainstream was genuinely able to exist with a quality and originality that is sadly missing nowadays. In order to find the same qualities you have to dig deep, back then you could just open your eyes and ears and find it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSNQt-4HmLY

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