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 Macintosh, later rebranded as the Macintosh 128K, is the original Macintoshpersonal computer, from Apple. It is the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer with a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse. It was pivotal in establishing desktop publishing as a general office function. The motherboard, a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monochrome monitor, and a floppy drive are in a beige case with integrated carrying handle; it has a keyboard and single-button mouse.
The Macintosh was introduced by a television commercial titled "1984" during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and directed by Ridley Scott. Sales were strong at its initial release on January 24, 1984, at $2,495 (equivalent to $7,300 in 2023), and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K. The computer's model number is M0001. (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 in the 1980s, NBC was given several hundred million dollars' worth of incentives to stay at 30 Rockefeller Plaza?
Image 4The 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 14The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the beginning of German reunification (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 15The 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)
Image 21Stage 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)
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...)
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...)
Producer Martin Bregman acquired the film rights to the book in 1976 and hired Stone, also a Vietnam veteran, to co-write the screenplay with Kovic, who would be played by Al Pacino. When Stone optioned the book in 1978, the film adaptation became mired in development hell after Pacino and Bregman left, which resulted in him and Kovic putting the film on hold. After the release of Platoon, the project was revived at Universal Pictures, with Stone attached to direct. Shot on locations in the Philippines, Texas and Inglewood, California, principal photography took place from October 1988 to December, lasting 65 days of filming. The film went over its initial $14 million production budget and ended up costing $17.8 million after reshoots. (Full article...)
The starting point for the script was the ensemble cast of friends and previous collaborators Jarmusch had conceived characters for, while the tripartite formal structure of the film was inspired by his study of literary forms. Cinematographer Robby Müller and musician John Lurie were among the many contributors who had been involved in earlier Jarmusch projects and returned to work on the film. Mystery Train's US$2.8 million budget (financed by Japanese conglomerate JVC) was considerable compared to what the director had enjoyed before, and allowed him the freedom to rehearse many unscripted background scenes. It was the first of Jarmusch's feature films since Permanent Vacation to depart from his trademark black-and-white photography, though the use of color was tightly controlled to conform with the director's intuitive sense of the film's aesthetic.[according to whom?] (Full article...)
Walt Disney planned to put the story in a proposed package film containing Andersen's stories, but scrapped the project. In 1985, while working on The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Clements and Musker decided to adapt the fairy tale and proposed it to Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who initially declined due to its similarities to a proposed sequel to the 1984 film Splash, but ultimately approved of it. Ashman became involved and brought in Menken. With supervision from Katzenberg, they made a Broadway-style structure with musical numbers as the staff was working on Oliver & Company (1988). Katzenberg warned that the film would earn less since it appealed to female viewers, but he eventually became convinced that it would be Disney's first blockbuster hit. (Full article...)
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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...)
The film was first completed in 1975 as a live-action/animated film, in which only the main characters were animated and the rest were portrayed by live actors, but the film's release was pushed back, and later postponed indefinitely. Warner Bros. claimed that this version of the film was unsatisfactory; concerns about the backlash against Coonskin were also cited. (Full article...)
Jaws 3-D (titled Jaws III in its 2-D form) is a 1983 American horror film directed by Joe Alves and starring Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale and Louis Gossett Jr. It is the second sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws and the third installment in the Jaws franchise. The film follows the Brody children from the previous films to SeaWorld, a Florida marine park with underwater tunnels and lagoons. As the park prepares for opening, a young great white shark infiltrates the park from the sea, seemingly attacking and killing the park's employees. Once the shark is captured, it becomes apparent that a second, much larger shark also entered the park and was the real culprit.
The film made use of 3D during the revived interest in the technology in the 1980s, amongst other horror films such as Friday the 13th Part III and Amityville 3-D. Cinema audiences could wear disposable cardboard polarized 3D glasses to create the illusion that elements penetrate the screen. Several shots and sequences were designed to utilize the effect, such as the shark's destruction. Since 3D was ineffective in home viewing until the advent of 3D televisions in the late 2000s, the alternative title Jaws III is used for television broadcasts and home media. Jaws 3-D amassed commercial success but received overwhelmingly negative reviews, and was followed by Jaws: The Revenge in 1987, which retroactively ignores this film. (Full article...)
Inchon's plot includes both military action and human drama. Characters face danger and are involved in various personal and dramatic situations. The film concludes with the American victory over North Korean forces in the Battle of Inchon, which is considered to have saved South Korea. Produced on $46 million with filming taking place in South Korea, California, Italy, Ireland and Japan, it encountered many problems during production, including a typhoon and the death of a cast member. Both the Unification movement and the United States military provided personnel as extras during the filming. (Full article...)
Gerolmo began writing the script in 1986 after researching the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. He and producer Frederick Zollo presented it to Orion Pictures, and the studio hired Parker to direct. The writer and director had disputes over the script, and Orion allowed Parker to make uncredited rewrites. The film was shot in a number of locations in Mississippi and Alabama, with principal photography from March to May 1988. (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...)
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