At Hollywood and Fine, Marshall Fine dubs the plethora of recent ’80s-set films the revenge of Gen-X. “What does it mean to set a movie in the ’80s? We know what movies set in the ’50s mean: innocence and ignorance, a time of conformity and repression. It was the Eisenhower era, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the rise of suburbia and mass media. Set a movie in the ’60s and it means something else entirely: turmoil, upheaval, awakening. The rise of youth culture, civil rights, Vietnam, counterculture…What I see in movies about the ’80s, written and directed by people who were kids and teens during that period, is a certain disapproval of how their parents’ generation – the baby boom that lit the fuse on the ’60s – squandered their opportunity. Rather than build on the ideas of the civil rights and anti-war movements, they focused on themselves: on getting that great car, that great house, those designer clothes, that outrageous windfall profit.”
Bret Easton Ellis reviews the films made from his books at the AV Club.
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