The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was a
decade that began January 1, 1980, and ended 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 became well known to 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 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an
8-bitthird-generationhome video game console produced by
Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the Family Computer (FC), commonly referred to as Famicom. It was redesigned to become the NES, which was released in American test markets on October 18, 1985, and was soon fully launched in North America and other regions.
After developing several successful
arcade games in the early 1980s such as Donkey Kong (1981), Nintendo planned to create a home video game console. Rejecting more complex proposals, the Nintendo president
Hiroshi Yamauchi called for a simple, cheap console with games stored on
cartridges. The
controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable
Game & Watch games. Nintendo released several add-ons, such as the
NES Zapperlight gun for
shooting games like Duck Hunt. (Full article...)
... that in the 1980s, floor stands were offered to computer users to turn their horizontal desktops into towers?
... that in the 1980s,
NBC was given several hundred million dollars' worth of incentives to stay at 30 Rockefeller Plaza?
... 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?
Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud; May 21, 1952) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as
B. A. Baracus in the 1980s television series The A-Team and as
boxerClubber Lang in the 1982 film Rocky III. He is also known for his distinctive hairstyle inspired by
Mandinka warriors in West Africa, his copious gold jewelry, his tough-guy persona and his
catchphrase "I pity the fool!", first uttered as Clubber Lang in Rocky III, then turned into a
trademark used in slogans or titles, like the reality show I Pity the Fool in 2006. (Full article...)
Image 13The
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 18The 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 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)
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...)
Following publication of the novel, Hjortsberg began developing the screenplay for a film adaptation, but found that no major studio was willing to produce his script. The project resurfaced in 1985, when producer
Elliott Kastner brought the book to Parker's attention. Parker began work on a new script and in doing so made several changes from Hjortsberg's novel. He also met with
Mario Kassar and
Andrew G. Vajna, who agreed to finance the $18 million production through their
independent film studio
Carolco Pictures. Filming took place on location in
New York and New Orleans, with
principal photography lasting from March 1986 to June of that year. (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...)
Stone made the film as a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, a stockbroker during the
Great Depression. The character of Gekko is said to be a composite of several people, including
Dennis Levine,
Ivan Boesky,
Carl Icahn,
Asher Edelman,
Michael Milken, and Stone himself. The character of Sir Lawrence Wildman, meanwhile, was modelled on British financier and corporate raider
Sir James Goldsmith. Originally, the studio wanted
Warren Beatty to play Gekko, but he was not interested; Stone, meanwhile, wanted
Richard Gere, but Gere passed on the role. (Full article...)
Gale and Zemeckis conceived the idea for Back to the Future in 1980. They were desperate for a successful film after numerous collaborative failures, but the project was rejected more than forty times by various studios because it was not considered raunchy enough to compete with the successful comedies of the era. A development deal was secured with
Universal Pictures following Zemeckis's success directing Romancing the Stone (1984). Fox was the first choice to portray Marty but was unavailable;
Eric Stoltz was cast instead. Shortly after
principal photography began in November 1984, Zemeckis determined Stoltz was not right for the part and made the concessions necessary to hire Fox, including re-filming scenes already shot with Stoltz and adding $4million to the budget. Back to the Future was filmed in and around California and on sets at
Universal Studios, and concluded the following April. (Full article...)
Image 6
When Harry Met Sally... is a 1989 American
romanticcomedy-drama film directed by
Rob Reiner from a screenplay by
Nora Ephron. It stars
Billy Crystal and
Meg Ryan as Harry and Sally, respectively. The story follows the title characters from the time they meet in Chicago and share a drive to New York City through twelve years of chance encounters in New York. The film addresses the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?"
Ideas for the film began when Reiner and
Penny Marshall divorced. An interview Ephron conducted with Reiner provided the basis for Harry. Sally was based on Ephron and some of her friends. Crystal came on board and made his own contributions to the screenplay. Ephron supplied the structure of the film with much of the dialogue based on the real-life friendship between Reiner and Crystal. The soundtrack consists of standards from
Harry Connick Jr., with a
big band and
orchestra arranged by
Marc Shaiman. For his work on the soundtrack, Connick won his first
Grammy Award for
Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance. (Full article...)
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...)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was released in Japan on 11 March 1984. The film received critical acclaim, with praise being directed at the story, themes, characters and animation. It is the
second-highest-ranked Japanese
anime in a survey published by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2007. Though it was made before
Studio Ghibli was founded, it is often considered a Ghibli work, and is usually released as part of
DVD and
Blu-ray collections of Ghibli work. (Full article...)
The film's title is taken from a short story in
Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights, although the film's plot is mostly original. It does, however, contain a scene adapted from the Fleming short story "The Property of a Lady" (included in 1967 and later editions of Octopussy and The Living Daylights). The events of the short story "Octopussy" form part of the title character's background and are recounted by her in the film. (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...)
Image 12
L.A. Takedown, also called L.A. Crimewave and Made in L.A., is a 1989 American
crimeaction film written and directed by
Michael Mann. Originally filmed as a
pilot for an
NBC television series, the project was reworked and aired as a stand-alone
TV film after the series was not picked up. The film was later released on VHS and, in
Region 2, on DVD.
Americana is a 1981 American
drama film starring, produced, edited and directed by
David Carradine. The screenplay and story, written by Richard Carr, was based on a portion of the 1947 novel, The Perfect Round, by
Henry Morton Robinson. The novel's setting was originally post-
World War II, but the screenplay involved the post-war experiences of a
Vietnam War veteran, obsessed with restoring an abandoned
carousel.
In 1981, the film won The People's Choice Award at the
Director's Fortnight at the
Cannes Film Festival.[disputed –
discuss] Financing the film himself, Carradine shot most of the footage for the film, which was co-produced by Skip Sherwood, in 1973 with a band of 26 people, mostly his family and friends, over the course of 18 days. Problems with financing and distribution kept the film from being released until 1983. The film was well received by audiences, but met with primarily negative criticism. (Full article...)
Harold Becker and
David Lean were originally to direct before Spielberg came on board, initially as a producer for Lean. Spielberg was attracted to directing the film because of a personal connection to Lean's films and World War II topics. He considers it to be his most profound work on "the loss of innocence". The film received positive reviews, with praise towards Bale's performance, the cinematography, the visuals, Williams's score and Spielberg's direction. However, the film was not initially a commercial success, earning only $22 million at the US box office, although it eventually more than recouped its budget through revenues in foreign markets, home video, and television. (Full article...)
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