MOVE OVER 80s, ‘BEFORE-COVID’ IS ABOUT TO TAKE THE TOP SPOT IN AMERICA’S REMINISCENCE PSYCHE
To those who came of age in the 1980s, there has always been a deep fondness for the decade, in large part thanks to the great pop culture chroniclers of the time. The time before Covid is poised to join and surpass that breakfast club.
The 1980s has held an esteemed place in the hearts and minds of those who grew up during the decade, not in small part because the chroniclers of that particular era were so good at creating memories based on how that period of American history was represented for those coming of age. Narrators like John Hughes, John Landis, Tom Wolfe, Brett Easton Ellis, bands like U2, Springsteen, and others, including the British New-Wave invasion, were adept at creating art that reflected not only the abundant opportunities in America at the time (the Reagan Revolution, the exploding markets, the seeming victory of democracy over communism [“Mister Gorbachev, tear down that wall”]), but also the angst that accompanied a capitalist explosion to a youth whose parents were finding themselves in charge of a country they had helped create, post WWII, whether they were ready for it or not.
The force that makes nostalgia about the 80s so widespread and incredibly optimistic and uplifting was that the decade* not only represented a time where opportunities for equality, advancement, and living the American Dream were suddenly (it seemed sudden, after decades of war and civil unrest in the country) real, attainable, and egalitarian. Wall Street and consumer spending was our new way forward from a past of domestic and global upheaval, revolution (sexual, drug, and other) and inequality; and the music, film and literature of the time supported it wholly, complete with soundtrack, available on K-Tel Records in 8-track, vinyl, or tape.
Of course, there was plenty of the typical teenage angst that comes with any massive change of environment (look no further than Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Less Than Zero, Bright Lights, Big City), especially when presented against the backdrop of an adult power structure breaking previous boundaries and capitalizing on all the permissions that the Me Generation had provided just a few years prior. But it was exactly those hurdles (both parents working outside the home, the concentration on material matters, globalization) that put all the kids of the 80s in the same boat — rich, poor, or somewhere in between. And while the adults had seemingly traded in one form of hedonism from the 60s and 70s for a more acceptable version focused on the almighty buck, it was that youths’ collective camaraderie that allowed everyone to point in the same direction, which does wonders to foster a lasting movement.
But now, as we start to pull away from the starting line of the new normal as delineated by a devastating global health and economic pandemic, there is developing another 80s-type nostalgia boom, except this time it won’t be confined to a decade or even a generation, it will be defined by pre- and post-Covid-19.
Regardless of where you stand on how Covid will affect the United States for the next 20 years (because no matter what anyone says, we have zero idea what that will look like), one thing is certain: The memories we have of everything prior to February 2020, will now be tinged with the hue of a better time, not unlike the kids of the 80s felt looking back at their time in the teenage sun. Suddenly, just seeing movies and TV shows that were filmed and released prior to 2020 will take on the patina of elevated importance. Watching scenes with a cast of hundreds will immediately provide a jolt to the senses, if not consciously then subconsciously. Before-Covid (B.C.) will become something that current and future generations will learn to look at with fond reverence, deserved or not.
The nostalgia that kids of the 80s (and those who have fallen in love with the art of the time, which are legion) have been blessed (burdened?) with for 30-plus years will come to include everything that happened pre Covid-19. Already footage of packed sporting events brings a longing tear to some eyes. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighter fame wrote a stirring tribute to live music (complete with an iconic 80s reference to Max Headroom). If you were lucky enough to have attended memorable concerts and sporting events before Covid, those times will begin to gain in importance in your mind going forward. Sure, the leagues will restart and the stands will again begin to fill in a few years, but the circumstances will never be the same. We’ll no longer share public space intimately and pervasively, or even go to public restrooms the way we used to (which also means decreasing our time in public) — that is over forever (and if you don’t know why, you should learn). The waves of Covid that will continue to appear and re-appear over the next many years will give us all whiplash, with competing interests screaming about their rights for this and that, creating a very tumultuous time in our nation, which will only further drive nostalgia for all things pre-Covid. Yes, even Michael Bay movies.
And while all previous eras have relied on great narrators and storytellers to shape our remembrances and feelings about the past, before-Covid will employ the most intimate of raconteurs, the ones who know you best, the ones who have spent decades chronicling all the things (that seemed) awesome about your life. They know you like no one else and they have been prodigious documentarians, there during your wildest nights, your most amazing days, and everything in between. And that narrator is you. You have been collecting nostalgia with your social media posts, your sharing of images and feelings with friends and family from parties, gatherings, and trips. You have watched movies, read books, and lived a life that was Covid-free, until now. And all of that, that huge collection of memories, memorabilia, and other flotsam and jetsam, will now be elevated to a status that would make even the most rabid nostalgist blush.
Even the most mundane act from before-Covid is now going to take on all the romanticism of an 80s Michael Douglas movie.
Currently, the taste and zeitgeist makers of our new times are relying heavily on nods to a time long past (a whopping three months as of this writing) as they create content for a society wracked with uncertainty, fear, and yes, death. Look no further than the television commercials already inundating the airwaves today — the soaring strings and somber voices talking about hardship and struggle and how we’ll all get through this together (“get through this” implies coming out the other side to a time we left behind — a noble, yet impossible, goal). This cannot help but drive a bulwark of nostalgia that will only pick up steam as we go through the ebbs and flows of a country on varying and seemingly unending lockdowns, quarantines, hardships, and stress.
It will be these narratives that will romanticize (because let’s be honest, not everything before-Covid was exactly rosy) our lives before Covid that will help propel us forward — to give us hope that we can get back to the way things used to be. Of course that cannot happen, not actually and not figuratively, but the human mind has a job to do and that’s to not let us lose hope, especially when it comes to how we want to remember our past and how that influences how we want to envision our future. As the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, “Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.” And if that doesn’t describe how we’re all going to be trying to think of past-as-future, then Great Scott I have a flux-capacitor to sell you.
It’s a feeling the kids of the 80s have held onto for lo these 30 years — the remembrances of a country with an appetite for greatness, accomplishment and yes, freedom (a word that today has been co-opted to support whatever crise-du-moment we happen to be engaged in). This latest run on nostalgia won’t be confined to any particular age group going forward (in fact, the teenagers and youth of these times may sadly, or luckily, be excluded from these feelings since they will have spent so little time having lived pre-Covid life as an adult, with all the freedom of experience that used to provide) — it will wash over everyone old enough to have celebrated or witnessed milestones in their lives before Covid. Simple things like birthday parties, school or church gatherings, even business meetings and mundane travel, will all be subjected to the glossy sheen of before-Covid nostalgia. And that’s alright, because, unlike the saying goes, you can look back even though you’re not going that way. Looking back at a time passed with longing and desire can help us move toward a better world, especially when our current world is so bleak and unfamiliar.
Ironically, the paid chroniclers of our times may not even desire to delineate a line between pre- and post-Covid in their content. There are not many people, if any, who prefer the way our life is today versus four months ago. So when it comes time to start shooting the latest Chuck Lorre sitcom or produce any feature film or write any novel, will the creators choose a reality that involves death, social distancing, and masks? How many people will want their hero to be wearing a mask they made with their mom’s sewing machine? Can our heroes give their stirring soliloquies standing at least six feet away from their intended audience, who is also social distancing? It’s going to look weird, and uncomfortable, and give us a sick feeling — kind of like our life today. But that’s the thing — that’s what will supercharge this nostalgia for the time before-Covid. The paid auteurs have barely begun to warm up their laptops to chronicle the new reality, but the nostalgia train, supported by our own chronicling of life before-Covid, has left the station and is quickly picking up steam.
John Hughes’ movies, by far the most recognized and prolific of the 80s youth pop chronicles, are “fairy tales rendered from experience, rather than blunt records of life. They capture, with a winning mixture of optimism and melancholy, with a generosity of spirit tempered by a punitive sense of right and wrong, something essential in the experience of youth,” wrote NY Times movie critic A.O. Scott, a few days after Hughes’ passing in 2009. And while it may be tempting to dismiss the nostalgia that we are going to be feeling about life before Covid-19 as something unreal and fairy-tale-like, it’s also worth remembering that just like the John Candy character Del Griffith observed in Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles, if we don’t know where we’re going, we can’t know we’re going the wrong way. And right now, no one knows where we’re going — so nostalgia for another time, any time, is right on script.
THE END
*(From paragraph 2) The author has always believed that for the purposes of chronicling culture, every decade practically runs from the third year of the decade to the second year of the next decade, since no decade stops looking like the past decade and like the next one on January 1st, Next Decade. When we think of any decade in terms of pop culture, we can include three what he terms “hangover years” from the previous decade. For instance, movies and books released in 1992 were almost all conceived, and many times even produced or created, in the 80s, with all the attendant 80s mores, costumes, and cultural touchstones.
