The Dark Side of the 1980s
What makes a decade so weird? To me, the 1980s were the weirdest decade, but not for the reasons you may think.
Recently, I asked my Facebook friends to share what they thought made the 1980s such a weird decade. Most mentioned big hair, neon colors, weird fashion (shoulder pads and baggy pants, anyone?), and strange music. I mean these are not wrong answers. The music was quite bizarre, for sure. In fact, I disliked it so much, that I listened to 50’s and 60’s music throughout the entire decade. As a teenager. (I bet I was teased a lot about that, now that I reflect back.)
And many of my friends said that the decade was cool and that it is what you make of it. I do not disagree with this assessment, either. I think everything in life is what we make it!
However, there were some very distinct things about the decade that made it different from the others. Here are some of the things I was pondering when I made the bold statement that the 1980s was the weirdest decade in recent history.
1. Crime- According to an FBI report in 2016, crime rates in the United States were at the highest rate ever in the 80s. Think about that. Ever. Even now, with so many more people in the U.S., we have not met the crime rate of the 1980s, especially the violent crime rate.
2. Serial Killers-The 1980s had the highest amount of active serial killers in the U.S. (Check out this interesting article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45324622). There are many theories as to why there were more serial killers then, but likely it is because we did not have effective ways of capturing and prosecuting serial killers like we do now, and the term “serial killer” had just been coined. Prior to the 80s, we also did not use profiling techniques very widely or very effectively.
3. The Satanic Panic- This may be the weirdest part of the 80s, in my opinion. People were very concerned that their child would be snatched and taken off to a satanic cult, due to a number of things, including false accusations against numerous people (see the McMartin trial- where a daycare was accused of ritualistic abuse of children and outlandish, impossible things- like flying kids to Mexico and eating babies and then returning in time for their parents to pick them up. This was the most expensive trial in U.S. history at the time, costing taxpayers $15 million and spanning three years. The accused were exonerated of charges and it was determine that specific (unethical) techniques were used to coerce children into saying these things. It is quite terrible and terrifying, really. See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial). If you listened to heavy metal music, well, you were to be feared and possibly a dangerous, satanic individual. If you dressed in dark clothing or wore heavy metal band shorts, or had long hair- well you were judged. And to think, the ones who were doing all the actual crimes in the 1980s were not those who looked a certain way or listened to certain music. Maybe this was just our way, collectively as a society, to explain certain things.
4. Mass shootings- We may have more mass shootings today, but those “good old days” were not void of these tragedies. In fact, each year of the 1980s had more than one mass shooting, but we were likely to not hear much about it. The San Ysidora McDonald’s massacre (1984) was the deadliest shooting in history until recently. I was in high school when this happened, and I do not recall ever hearing about it. I think that is because we did not have the Internet or easy access to media coverage. We had one hour of news per day (generally speaking), not 24-hour news, so we did not know what was happening when it was happening. This was the last decade of that type of access to news; after this, we could pretty much have easy access to anything, any time. I guess that is a good thing, but I can see how it can be bad, too. Too much access is just overwhelming.
5. Urban Legends- I love learning about urban legends! In fact, anyone who knows me, probably knows how crazy I am about the origin of urban legends. Indeed, I once wrote an email to an urban legend expert who had written several books on the topic,and he wrote me back! I was so excited. I know, that is weird. Anyway, here are some of the urban legends we all thought were true in the 1980s (as kids, anyway; I am sure our parents knew better!): at Halloween, people were poisoning your candy (this was not true; only two cases of this were ever found to be true and it was parents trying to kill their own kids). Another one was that Mikey from the LIFE Cereal fame had died from drinking soda and eating Pop Rocks (not true- he is still alive and earning residuals on those commercials!). Another interesting one that stayed around from the earlier decades was that music played backwards was satanic (see satanic panic for why we probably thought this). And, who can forget the Bloody Mary in the mirror legend? If you did not do this at sleepovers, did you really live?
So, this is why I contend the 80s were crazy. I think there were some great things about the 1980s, too. I mean Wham! and the Stray cats existed. That is a good thing. We also had some super awesome movies (although the rating system was super weird. Have you seen Airplane! lately? That was rated PG!). The clothes and hair may have been a little over the top, but that entire decade was about over-the-top. And sometimes, over-the-top can be fun. Or terrifying. It is all what you make it.
What decade is YOUR favorite (or least favorite)? I look forward to hearing from you!
XOXO, Kimber (humming to the tune of “Careless Whisper”)
