The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on December 31, 1989.
The decade saw a dominance of conservatism and free market economics, and a socioeconomic change due to advances in technology and a worldwide move away from planned economies and towards laissez-faire capitalism compared to the 1970s. As economic deconstruction increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. The AIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 40.4 million people (). Global warming theory began to spread within the scientific and political community in the 1980s.
The final decade of the Cold War opened with the US-Soviet confrontation continuing largely without any interruption. Superpower tensions escalated rapidly as President Reagan scrapped the policy of détente and adopted a new, much more aggressive stance on the Soviet Union. The world came perilously close to nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but the second half of the decade saw a dramatic easing of superpower tensions and ultimately the total collapse of Soviet communism.
Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the Live Aid concert in 1985.
By 1986, nationalism was making a comeback in the Eastern Bloc, and the desire for democracy in socialist states, combined with economic recession, resulted in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, which reduced Communist Party power, legalized dissent and sanctioned limited forms of capitalism such as joint ventures with companies from capitalist countries. After tension for most of the decade, by 1988 relations between the communist and capitalist blocs had improved significantly and the Soviet Union was increasingly unwilling to defend its governments in satellite states.
The 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing the 1970s and 1990s, and arguably being the largest in human history. During the 1980s, the world population grew from 4.4 to 5.3 billion people. There were approximately 1.33 billion births and 480 million deaths. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually. The 1980s saw the advent of the ongoing practice of sex-selective abortion in China and India as ultrasound technology permitted parents to selectively abort baby girls.
The 1980s saw great advances in genetic and digital technology. After years of animal experimentation since 1985, the first genetic modification of 10 adult human beings took place in May 1989, a gene tagging experiment which led to the first true gene therapy implementation in September 1990. The first "designer babies", a pair of female twins, were created in a laboratory in late 1989 and born in July 1990 after being sex-selected via the controversial assisted reproductive technology procedure preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Gestational surrogacy was first performed in 1985 with the first birth in 1986, making it possible for a woman to become a biological mother without experiencing pregnancy for the first time in history.
The global internet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many other computer networks of both academic and commercial use such as USENET, Fidonet, and the Bulletin Board System. By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in most developed countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwards Tim Berners Lee formalized the concept of the World Wide Web by 1989. Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively.
Walkman (Japanese: ウォークマン, Hepburn: U~ōkuman), is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman started out as a portable cassette player and the brand was later extended to serve most of Sony's portable audio devices; since 2011 it consists exclusively of digital flash memory players. The current flagship product as of 2022 is the WM1ZM2 player.
Walkman cassette players were very popular during the 1980s, which led to "walkman" becoming an unofficial term for personal stereos of any producer or brand. 220 million cassette-type Walkmen were sold by the end of production in 2010; including digital Walkman devices such as DAT, MiniDisc, CD (originally Discman then renamed the CD Walkman) and memory-type media players, it has sold approximately 400 million at this time. The Walkman brand has also been applied to transistor radios, and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. (Full article...)
... that in the 1980s, "Sherman Bonner, The Human Thermometer" presented the weather on an Arkansas TV station?
... that Cathie Dunsford was unable to find many books about lesbianism in the 1970s, but by the 1980s had herself become a writer and anthologist of lesbian literature?
... that according to one reviewer, the problems that may have prompted the publication of Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life in the 1980s had "only gotten worse" by 2005?
Navratilova at the Eastbourne International, June 2011
Martina Navratilova (Czech: Martina Navrátilová[marˈcɪnanavˈraːcɪlovaː]ⓘ; néeŠubertová[ˈʃubɛrtovaː]; born October 18, 1956) is a Czech-American former professional tennis player. Widely considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, Navratilova won 18 major singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles, and 10 major mixed doubles titles, for a combined total of 59 major titles, the most in the Open Era. Alongside Chris Evert, her greatest rival, Navratilova dominated women's tennis for the first two-thirds of the 1980s.
Navratilova was ranked as the world No. 1 in singles for a total of 332 weeks (second only to Steffi Graf), and for a record 237 weeks in doubles, making her the only player in history to have held the top spot in both disciplines for over 200 weeks. She won 167 top-level singles titles and 177 doubles titles, both the Open Era records. She won a record six consecutive singles majors across 1983 and 1984 while simultaneously winning the Grand Slam in doubles. Navratilova claims the best professional season winning percentage, 98.8% in 1983 (going 86–1 for the season), and the longest all-surface winning streak of 74 straight match wins. She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including for nine consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the title a record nine times. Navratilova is one of the three tennis players, along with Margaret Court and Doris Hart, to have accomplished a career Grand Slam in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles, called the career "Boxed Set". She won her last major title, the mixed doubles crown at the 2006 US Open, shortly before her 50th birthday, and 32 years after her first major title in 1974. (Full article...)
Image 5Stage view of the Live Aid concert at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium in the United States in 1985. The concert was a major global international effort by musicians and activists to sponsor action to send aid to the people of Ethiopia who were suffering from a major famine. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 11The world map of military alliances in 1980: NATO & Western allies, Warsaw Pact & other Soviet allies, Non-aligned countries, China and Albania (communist countries, but not aligned with USSR), ××× Armed resistance (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 18The Grateful Dead in 1980. Left to right: Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh. Not pictured: Brent Mydland. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
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The Daicon III and IV Opening Animations are two 8 mm film anime short films that were produced for the 1981 Daicon III and 1983 Daicon IV Nihon SF Taikai conventions. They were produced by a group of amateur animators known as Daicon Film, who would later go on to form the animation studio Gainax. The films are known for their unusually high production values for amateur works and for including numerous references to otaku culture, as well as its unauthorized appropriations of the Playboy Bunny costume. Usage of the songs "Runaway" by Bill Conti (from the soundtrack to the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only) as well as "Twilight" and "Hold On Tight" by English rock band Electric Light Orchestra were also unauthorized.
Daicon III was made by Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga and Takami Akai and Daicon IV credits twelve people, including Yamaga as the director and Anno and Akai as animation supervisors. Despite the questionable legal status of the works, the production of Daicon III resulted in debts that were repaid by selling video tapes and 8 mm reels of the production, the profits of which went to the production of Daicon IV. In 2001, the anime magazine Animage ranked the Daicon animations as the 35th of the "Top 100" anime of all time. (Full article...)
The film was made in less than nine months, with production commencing in September 1986 so that the film could be released the following summer. The film was shot on location in New England and in the Bahamas and completed on the Universal lot. As with the first two films, Martha's Vineyard was the location of the fictional Amity Island for the opening scenes. Delays caused by the mechanical sharks and the weather led to concerns about whether the release date would be met. Many critics suggested that the rushed production compromised the quality of the film. The film was marketed with the now infamous tagline; "This time, it's personal." (Full article...)
Not wishing to feature the Nazis as the villains again, executive producer and story writer George Lucas decided to regard this film as a prequel. Three plot devices were rejected before Lucas wrote a film treatment that resembled the final storyline. As Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas's collaborator on Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned down the offer to write the script, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who had previously worked with Lucas on American Graffiti (1973), were hired as his replacements. (Full article...)
After the criticism that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) had received, Spielberg chose to make a more lighthearted film for the next installment, as well as bringing back several elements from Raiders of the Lost Ark. During the five years between The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, he and executive producer Lucas reviewed several scripts before accepting Jeffrey Boam's. Filming locations included Spain, Italy, West Germany, Jordan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Full article...)
Fanny and Alexander (Swedish: Fanny och Alexander) is a 1982 period drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The plot focuses on two siblings and their large family in Uppsala, Sweden during the first decade of the twentieth century. Following the death of the children's father (Allan Edwall), their mother (Ewa Fröling) remarries a prominent bishop (Jan Malmsjö) who becomes abusive towards Alexander for his vivid imagination.
Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander to be his final picture before retiring, and his script is semi-autobiographical. The characters Alexander, Fanny and stepfather Edvard are based on himself, his sister Margareta and his father Erik Bergman, respectively. Many of the scenes were filmed on location in Uppsala. The documentary film The Making of Fanny and Alexander was made simultaneously with the feature and chronicles its production. (Full article...)
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Begotten is a 1989 American experimentalsilenthorror film written, directed, and produced by E. Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsberg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Merhige's theatre company, Theatreofmaterial. Its unconventional narrative depicts the suicide of a godlike figure and the resulting births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey across a barren landscape. The film does not contain dialogue, with its visual style evoking early silent films.
Scrooged was filmed on a $32 million budget over three months in New York City and Hollywood from December 1987 to March 1988. Murray returned to acting for the film after taking a four-year hiatus following the success of Ghostbusters, which he found overwhelming, although he had a minor role in Little Shop of Horrors. Murray worked with Glazer and O'Donoghue on reworking the script before agreeing to join the project. The production was tumultuous, as Murray and Donner had different visions for the film. Murray described his time on the film as "misery", while Donner called Murray "superbly creative but occasionally difficult". Along with Murray's three brothers, Brian, John and Joel, Scrooged features numerous celebrity cameos. (Full article...)
Cameron devised the premise of the film from a fever dream he experienced during the release of his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), in Rome, and developed the concept in collaboration with Wisher. He sold the rights to the project to fellow New World Pictures alumna Hurd on the condition that she would produce the film only if he were to direct it; Hurd eventually secured a distribution deal with Orion Pictures, while executive producers John Daly and Derek Gibson of Hemdale Film Corporation were instrumental in setting up the film's financing and production. Originally approached by Orion for the role of Reese, Schwarzenegger agreed to play the title character after befriending Cameron. Filming, which took place mostly at night on location in Los Angeles, was delayed because of Schwarzenegger's commitments to Conan the Destroyer (1984), during which Cameron found time to work on the scripts for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Aliens (1986). The film's special effects, which included miniatures and stop-motion animation, were created by a team of artists led by Stan Winston and Gene Warren Jr. (Full article...)
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Inseminoid (titled Horror Planet in the United States) is a 1981 British science fictionhorror film directed by Norman J. Warren and starring Judy Geeson, Robin Clarke and Stephanie Beacham, along with Victoria Tennant in one of her early film roles. The plot concerns a team of archaeologists and scientists who are excavating the ruins of an ancient civilisation on a distant planet. One of the women in the team (Geeson) is impregnated by an alien creature and taken over by a mysterious intelligence, driving her to murder her colleagues one by one and feed on them.
Inseminoid was written by Nick and Gloria Maley, a married couple who had been part of the special effects team on Warren's earlier film Satan's Slave. Filmed between May and June 1980 on a budget of £1 million, half of which was supplied by the Shaw Brothers, it was shot mostly on location at Chislehurst Caves in Kent as well as on the island of Gozo in Malta, combined with a week's filming at Lee International Studios in London. Composer John Scott completed the film's electronic musical score over recording sessions that lasted many hours. (Full article...)
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Roar is a 1981 American adventurecomedy film written and directed by Noel Marshall, and produced by Marshall and Tippi Hedren. Its plot follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, tigers, and other big cats. When his family visits him, they are instead confronted by the group of animals. The film stars Marshall as Hank, his real-life wife Tippi Hedren as his wife Madeleine, with Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith and Marshall's sons John and Jerry Marshall in supporting roles.
In 1969, while Hedren was filming Satan's Harvest in Mozambique, she and Marshall had occasion to observe a pride of lions move into a recently vacated house, driven by increased poaching. They decided to make a film centered around that theme, with production starting when the first script was completed in 1970. They began bringing rescued big cats into their homes in California and living with them. Filming began in 1976; it was finished after five years. The film was fully completed after 11 years in production. (Full article...)
Walt Disney Pictures purchased the film rights for the story in 1981. Price and Seaman wrote two drafts of the script before Disney brought in executive producer Steven Spielberg and his production company, Amblin Entertainment. Zemeckis was brought on to direct, and Canadian animator Richard Williams was hired to supervise the animation sequences. Production was moved from Los Angeles to Elstree Studios in England to accommodate Williams and his group of animators. While filming, the production budget rapidly expanded, and the shooting schedule ran longer than expected. (Full article...)
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Moodu Pani (English: The Mist) is a 1980 Indian Tamil-language psychological thriller film written, directed and filmed by Balu Mahendra. Starring his then wife Shoba and Pratap, with N. Viswanathan, Gandhimathi, Mohan and Bhanu Chander in supporting roles, it is based on two novels: Idhuvum Oru Viduthalai Thaan (1978) by Rajendra Kumar, and The Collector (1963) by John Fowles. The film follows Chandru (Pratap), who has a strong hatred towards prostitutes and would kill any such woman he encounters. He falls in love with Rekha (Shoba) and believes marrying her will end his psychological distress.
Moodu Pani was the third directorial venture of Mahendra and his second in Tamil after Azhiyatha Kolangal (1979). It also marked Mohan's debut in Tamil cinema, and the last film Shoba acted in before her death. Principal photography took place between January and April 1980, mostly in Udupi, Bangalore and Ooty. The film's similarities to Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho (1960) have been widely discussed. The soundtrack was composed by Ilaiyaraaja, this being his 100th film, and his brother Gangai Amaran was the main lyricist. (Full article...)
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