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.
The channel originally aired
music videos and related programming as guided by television personalities known as
video jockeys, or VJs. MTV, as one of the American cable channels available in other countries has since gained a massive
cult following. This was one of the factors in cable programming's rise to fame and American corporations dominating the television economy in the 1990s. In the years since its inception, it significantly toned down its focus on music in favor of original reality programming for teenagers and young adults. (Full article...)
... that in the 1980s, New York City's St. Regis Hotel was said to have hosted every U.S. president since its opening?
... 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?
Robert John Arthur Halford (born 25 August 1951) is an English singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead vocalist of the
heavy metal band
Judas Priest, which was formed in 1969 and has received accolades such as the 2010
Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. He has been noted for his powerful and wide ranging operatic vocal style and trademark leather-and-studs image, both of which have become iconic in heavy metal. He has also been involved with several side projects, including
Fight,
Two, and
Halford.
Halford is often regarded as one of the greatest metal frontmen and singers of all time.
AllMusic said of Halford, "There have been few vocalists in the history of heavy metal whose singing style has been as influential and instantly recognizable... able to effortlessly alternate between a throaty
growl and an ear-splitting
falsetto." He was ranked at No. 33 on the list of greatest voices in rock by
Planet Rock listeners in 2009. He has also been nicknamed "
Metal God" by fans. He was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Judas Priest in 2022, via the Award for Musical Excellence. (Full article...)
The following are images from various 1980s-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Stage 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 6The 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 11The
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)
These are
Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
Image 1
The Care Bears Movie is a 1985
animatedmusicalfantasy film directed by
Arna Selznick from a screenplay by
Peter Sauder. It was the second feature film from the Canadian animation studio
Nelvana after the 1983 film Rock & Rule, in addition to being one of the first films based directly on a toy line and the first based on Care Bears. It introduced the
Care Bears characters and their companions, the
Care Bear Cousins. The voice cast includes
Mickey Rooney,
Georgia Engel,
Jackie Burroughs and
Cree Summer. In the film, an orphanage owner (
Mickey Rooney) tells a story about the Care Bears, who live in a cloud-filled land called Care-a-Lot. While traveling across Earth, the Bears help two lonely children named Kim and Jason, who lost their parents in a car accident, and also save Nicholas, a young magician's apprentice, from an evil spirit's influence. Deep within a place called the Forest of Feelings, Kim, Jason and their friends soon meet another group of creatures known as the Care Bear Cousins.
American Greetings, the owners of the Care Bears characters, began development of a feature film adaptation in 1981. Later on, the card company chose Nelvana to produce it and granted them rights to the characters, in addition to financing the film along with cereal manufacturer
General Mills and television syndicator
LBS Communications. Nelvana's founders were producers, with fellow employee
Arna Selznick directing the film. Production lasted eight months, with a production budget of at least $2 million, and took place in Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Carole King and
John Sebastian contributed several songs for the film. Though major American film studios passed on the project, newly established independent distributor
The Samuel Goldwyn Company acquired the distribution rights to the film and soon spent a record $24 million promoting it. (Full article...)
After the financial backing from
Tsui Hark became problematic following the release of Woo's film A Better Tomorrow 2, Woo had to find backing through Chow Yun-fat's and Danny Lee's financing companies. Woo went into filming The Killer with a rough draft whose plot was influenced by the films Le Samouraï, Mean Streets and Narazumono. Woo wanted to make a film about honour, friendship and the relationship of two seemingly opposite people. After finishing filming, Woo referred to The Killer as a tribute to directors
Jean-Pierre Melville and
Martin Scorsese. (Full article...)
The screenplay of Blue Velvet had been passed around multiple times in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with several major studios declining it due to its strong sexual and violent content. After the failure of his 1984 film Dune, Lynch made attempts at developing a more "personal story", somewhat characteristic of the
surrealist style displayed in his first film Eraserhead (1977). The independent studio
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, owned at the time by Italian film producer
Dino De Laurentiis, agreed to finance and produce the film. (Full article...)
Image 4
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...)
The story is a tale of redemption for paroled convict Jake and his
blood brother Elwood, who set out on "a mission from God" to prevent the foreclosure of the
Roman Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. To do so, they must reunite their R&B band and organize a performance to earn the $5,000 needed to pay the orphanage's
property tax bill. Along the way, they are targeted by a homicidal "mystery woman",
neo-Nazis, and a
country and western band—all while being relentlessly pursued by the police. (Full article...)
It premiered on the
CBC in 1984 and was later broadcast on American Playhouse in 1985. The film received mixed reception from critics. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was featured in the eighth-season finale episode of the comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1997. (Full article...)
Image 7
Wings of Desire (
German: Der Himmel über Berlin, pronounced[deːɐ̯ˈhɪml̩ˈʔyːbɐbɛɐ̯ˈliːn]ⓘ;
lit.'The Heaven/Sky over Berlin') is a 1987
romantic fantasy film written by
Wim Wenders,
Peter Handke and
Richard Reitinger, and directed by Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal
angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by
Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely
trapeze artist, played by
Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.
Inspired by art depicting angels visible around
West Berlin, at the time encircled by the
Berlin Wall, Wenders and author Peter Handke conceived of the story and continued to develop the screenplay throughout the
French and
German co-production. The film was shot by
Henri Alekan in both colour and a sepia-toned black-and-white, the latter being used to represent the world as seen by the angels. The cast includes
Otto Sander,
Curt Bois and
Peter Falk. (Full article...)
Kids Can Say No!, stylized as Kids Can Say No, is a 1985
Britishshorteducational film produced and directed by Jessica Skippon and written by Anita Bennett. It is intended to teach children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be
sexually abused, how to escape such situations, and how to get help if they are abused. In the film, Australian celebrity
Rolf Harris is in a park with a group of four children and tells them about proper and improper
physical intimacy, which he calls "yes" and "no" feelings. The film has four
role-playing scenes in which children encounter
paedophiles, with Harris and the children discussing each scene.
Harris said that he came up with the idea for the film on a 1982 Canadian tour when he saw
Vancouver's
Green Thumb Theatre production of Feeling Yes, Feeling No, a play about
child sexual abuse. Kids Can Say No!, released in October 1985 on
VHS in the United Kingdom, was the first British
children's film about sexual abuse and was purchased by police forces, educational institutions, and libraries across Europe. Upon the film's release, The Times obtained opinions from four sexual-abuse experts, who unanimously opposed using Kids Can Say No! or any other film to teach children about the subject. The
Australian Broadcasting Corporation received a positive response to its 1988 broadcast of Kids Can Say No! and therefore broadcast it a second time that year. Harris and Skippon collaborated on the 1986 sequel Beyond the Scare, which advises teachers about what to do if a child discloses abuse. Showings of Kids Can Say No! eventually decreased as VHS became less popular in favour of
DVD-Video in the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s. (Full article...)
Image 10
White Dog is a 1982 American
dramahorror film, which
Samuel Fuller directed from a screenplay he and
Curtis Hanson had dramatized, which, in turn, they based on
Romain Gary's 1970 novel of the
same title. The film depicts the struggle of a dog trainer named Keys (
Paul Winfield), who is
black, trying to retrain a stray dog found by a young actress (
Kristy McNichol), that is a "white dog"—a dog trained to make vicious attacks upon, and to kill, any black person. Fuller uses the film as a platform to deliver a message against racism as it examines the question of whether racism is a treatable problem or an incurable condition.
The film's theatrical release was suppressed for a week in the United States by
Paramount Pictures out of concern over negative press after rumors began circulating that the film was racist. Prior to the date, it was released internationally in France in July 1982. Its first official American home video release came in December 2008 when
The Criterion Collection released the original uncut film to DVD. (Full article...)
Goldman began writing the script in 1971, deriving inspiration from his encounters with
dysfunctional couples. He spent several years trying to secure a major film studio to produce it before taking it to
20th Century Fox. Parker learned of the script as he was developing Fame (1980), and he later worked with Goldman to rewrite it. After an unsuccessful pre-production development at Fox, Parker moved the project to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which provided a budget of $12 million.
Principal photography lasted 62 days, in the period from January to April 1981, on location in Marin County. (Full article...)
Principal photography took place in
Mumbai and various locations in
Ooty. The film features a score and soundtrack composed by
Raamlaxman, while
Asad Bhopali wrote the lyrics. Maine Pyar Kiya considered to be one of the most iconic and loved films of the Khan and became a cult favorite from its songs, dialogues, and chemistry of the Khan and Bhagyashree. The film also established the careers of the supporting cast including Mohnish Bahl and Laxmikant Berde. (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...)
Set in rural
Yorkshire during the summer of 1920, the film follows a destitute
World War I veteran employed to carry out restoration work on a Medieval mural discovered in a rural church while coming to terms with the after-effects of the war. (Full article...)
Image 15
Nostos: The Return (
Italian: Nostos: Il ritorno) is a 1989 Italian
adventuredrama film directed by
Franco Piavoli, starring
Luigi Mezzanotte [
it] and
Branca De Camargo. Drawing from
Homer's Odyssey, the film depicts
Odysseus' homeward journey across the
Mediterranean Sea following the
Trojan War, and his struggles against natural obstacles and inner torments. The film relies on visual storytelling and the portrayal of nature; dialogue is minimal, without subtitles, and spoken in an imaginary Mediterranean language. Nostos: The Return explores themes of homecoming, the memory of war, time, and man's relationship with nature.
Piavoli began to make films in the 1950s, but Nostos: The Return was his first
feature-length fiction film. Envisioning it as "symphonic" as opposed to "theatrical" cinema, Piavoli was in control of most of the creative process and a cast with little film experience. The processes of preparing, filming, and editing the project each took one year to complete. (Full article...)
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