I don't know if everyone can read this Christ and Pop Culture article. I hope everyone who wants to can (I send them a token amount of money every month for support, and I know I can read some articles that aren't widely available, or are time-embargoed:
I know some people have compared now to the 1980s: a president who is very aged, where there are questions about his continuing competence, and where he's deeply unpopular with a large chunk of the populace. (I don't know if it's just me being older, or now working in a career where I wind up being somewhat harmed by some of the whims of the president and his supporters, or if Reagan really was less bad, or what, but it feels worse now than it did then).
I will say it feels to me like full on nuclear war is less likely now than in the 80s; partly it feels to me that there's more a desire for those in upper government to want to save their own skins, partly maybe some of them are way more friendly with Russia than Reagan was with the USSR.
But other things feel worse and more precarious to me.
In the 1980s, that was the very beginning of the era where people were thinking "gee, maybe homophobic or ableist slurs shouldn't be used"
Oh, they still WERE - calling something they disliked "gay" was a standard thing young men did.
But I also remember the 1970s, and getting called the "r slur" and other things in school, and openly mocked and bullied and excluded, and by the end of the 80s it did seem like some adults woke up to "hey, maybe that's not good for our kids' development or mental health" and I admit starting in the early 2000s it did look like maybe we were going to kick bullying, and slurs, to the curb.
But nope! They came roaring back, and now some people GLEEFULLY say them, like "back in the Obama days this wasn't ALLOWED but now I can do it again" while the people saying them NEVER think of the feelings of the people they are saying them to or about.
That's what gets me - our circle of ethical concern (To use a concept that Aldo Leopold, among others, discussed) seemed to be expanding; it has shrunk again, and at the extremes there are people basically saying "if they're not my blood relatives, screw 'em, if they're starving in a ditch and I have extra food, they deserve to starve" and I do not like that. And it does seem there's more gleeful violation of hospitality and kindness norms now. And it's the "gleeful" part that bothers me - it's not someone doing it ignorantly or literally without thinking; it's premeditated and the person feels GOOD about saying something cruel to a child or a woman or a person different from them in some way.
Now is the time of monsters, I guess.
Except really, every time was.
But I think of other things from the 1980s. I've recently been rewatching a few Golden Girls episodes - Hallmark reruns them late in the evening- and I'm struck by a lot of things in the show. While some of the humor, yeah, has aged, still, in many ways it's a KINDER sitcom than many of the era. And there are the themes of feminism and ageism-is-bad and a certain level of tolerance (it was one of the first shows having gay characters who were shown fairly sympathetically*)
(*yes I know Jody on "Soap" but I never really watched that show)
And it was probably the first instance of "found family" being a major trope in a sitcom - three widows and a divorcee, sharing a home together, supporting each other through health scares and relationship issues and frustrations with the world.
It was also funny. I still find it funny. And some bits of it have become cultural things. I have said some variant of the "Picture it: Sicily, 1922...." before I launch into a story from my youth. And I got a huge and unexpected laugh out of one of my church lady friends* when she started going on and on in circles about something pointless at lunch one day, and I looked at her, and in my best Dorothy Zbornak, said "Shady Pines, Ma! Shady Pines!"
(*I think it struck her so funny because I normally do not DO that sort of thing, I don't have a reputation as having a snarky side)
And yes, it's becoming a bit of a comfort show, just like Murder, She Wrote (which I have written about before- in the second half of that linked post). Another show that started in the 80s.
And also another show, like Golden Girls, that I watched with my parents (or at least my mom, I don't remember now if my dad liked Golden Girls).
Both of them shows with a woman or women as the protagonist, back when that was less common.
And similar in the sense that there were certain virtues upheld in both shows: in Golden Girls, it was support of one another, tolerance, and helping. Murder She Wrote was that you can't get away with doing harm to others, and that intelligence (especially Jessica Fletcher's) will win the day. And also, she was firm but kind- she was definitely proper** but she also spoke out against what was wrong
(**though upon a mature rewatch I realize there may have been more implied in her relationship with Seth Hazlett than simple platonic friendship, something I didn't realize as a late teen. Then again: they were both adults and presumably consenting, so it's none of my business).
I also think about - and may write about, later,when I have more time (I really need to be doing some grading) the things I'm thinking now as "the safe things from my tweendom." That thought was triggered the other day when one of my students - born probably 30 years after the original cartoon was on tv here - showed up to class in a "classic" Smurf t-shirt (it even had the Peyo signature on the image on the back of the shirt) and I realized that certain cartoons/toy lines that I was on the verge of being "too old for" as a tween, are now things I remember fondly as an adult, partly because of the glow of those few years, between childhood and teenagerhood, where I felt like I might eventually figure it all out, but also that there were good things to enjoy in the last days of being a kid:
Smurfs
Garfield
Strawberry Shortcake (in her Raggedy Ann style original form)
The original My Little Ponies
Care Bears
And with the exception of maybe Garfield (but he had his softer side, and it's implied that maybe he "hates" Mondays because it means Jon goes out to work and he doesn't see him all day for the rest of the week), all of these are "properties" where the characters care about each other and are kind to each other, and literally in some cases the "villains"/antagonists are won over and converted by the power of kindness and friendship.
I still have a few Smurfs. And I bought a vintage Garfield off Etsy when I couldn't find my old one at my mom's house. And I have the small Grumpy Bear I carry with me when I travel, and I have much MLP merch. And recently, I saw a vintage-style Strawberry Shortcake shirt at Michael's and *almost* bought one (I think they were out of my size, though)
And finally - because it's "Christ and Pop Culture," there are of course references to faith. The author quotes an essay by Kristin Saatzer, who said “Even in the cruelest years, God is faithful. We bow in thanks, not only for the victories but for His steadfast presence in the in-between. God was here. God is here. And God will be faithful still.”
Yes. This is true. But sometimes it's distressingly easy to lose sight of it. Though maybe, if I watch and laugh at what Dorothy and Rose and Blanche and Sophia are up to, or hug my Grumpy Bear a little, I can be reminded...
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