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 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.
"Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for the original animated series and live-action programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three"television networks. The genre's popularity had a broad peak from the mid-1960s through the mid-2000s; over time it declined, in the face of changing cultural norms, increased competition from formats available at all times, and heavier media regulations. In the final two decades of the genre's existence, Saturday-morning and Sunday-morning cartoons were primarily created and aired to meet regulations on children's television programming in the United States, or E/I. Minor television networks, in addition to the non-commercial PBS in some markets, continue to air animated programming on Saturday and Sunday while partially meeting those mandates.
In the United States, the generally accepted times for these and other children's programs to air on Saturday mornings were from 8:00 a.m. to approximately 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time Zone. Until the late 1970s, American networks also had a schedule of children's programming on Sunday mornings, though most programs at this time were repeats of Saturday-morning shows that were already out of production. In some markets, some shows were pre-empted in favor of syndicated or other types of local programming. Saturday-morning and Sunday-morning cartoons were largely discontinued in Canada by 2002. In the United States, The CW continued to air non-E/I cartoons as late as 2014; among the "Big Three" traditional major networks, the final non-E/I cartoon to date (Kim Possible) was last aired in 2006. Cable television networks have since then revived the practice of debuting their most popular animated programming on Saturday and Sunday mornings on a sporadic basis. (Full article...)
Oprah Gail Winfrey (/ˈoʊprə/; born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy. Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company. (Full article...)
Image 2Stage 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)
Image 5The 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 18The 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)
Sean Connery played the role of Bond for the seventh and final time, marking his return to the character twelve years after Diamonds Are Forever. The film's title is a reference to Connery's reported declaration in 1971 that he would "never again" play that role. As Connery was 52 at the time of filming, the script makes frequent reference to Bond as aging and past his prime – although ironically, Connery was three years younger than his replacement, Roger Moore. The storyline features Bond being reluctantly brought back into action to investigate the theft of two nuclear weapons by SPECTRE. Filming locations included France, Spain, the Bahamas and Elstree Studios in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
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Mouna Ragam (/maʊnərɑːɡəm/ transl. Silent Symphony) is a 1986 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by Mani Ratnam, and produced by G. Venkateswaran. The film stars Mohan and Revathi, with Karthik in a guest appearance. V. K. Ramasamy, Ra. Sankaran, Bhaskar, Kanchana, Vani, Kalaiselvi and Sonia play supporting roles. It narrates the life of Divya (Revathi), a free-spirited college girl who is forced into an arranged marriage with Chandrakumar (Mohan) by her father (Sankaran). But, she still lives in the memory of her past lover Manohar (Karthik). The story follows Divya's inner conflict between holding onto her past and coming to terms with the present.
The film's development began when Ratnam began writing a short story tiled "Divya" with no cinematic plans until he finished it. Since production on his directorial debut Pallavi Anu Pallavi (1983) was delayed, he took a break for a month and developed "Divya" into a film script, which would eventually be renamed Mouna Ragam. Although Ratnam began work on the script during Pallavi Anu Pallavi, it languished in development hell and ended up becoming his fifth film. Mouna Ragam was the first film produced by Venkateswaran's Sujatha Films, and was shot primarily in Madras, with additional filming taking place in Delhi and Agra. The music was composed by Ilaiyaraaja, with lyrics by Vaali. P. C. Sreeram was the cinematographer, and the art director was Thota Tharani. The film was edited by B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan. (Full article...)
Parker initially turned down an opportunity to direct, believing that the complex book could not be successfully adapted for a feature film. The project resurfaced in 1982 when A&M Films, a subsidiary of A&M Records, acquired the film rights and commissioned Sandy Kroopf and Jack Behr to write the screenplay. Upon reading the script, Parker returned as director, and the film continued development at Tri-Star Pictures. Principal photography began in May 1984 and concluded in August of that year. Filming took place on locations in Philadelphia and Santa Clara, California. The film is notable for being the first to be partially shot with the Skycam, a computer-controlled camera system created by Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown. The score was composed by Peter Gabriel. (Full article...)
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...)
An expensive film to produce, Granpa is hand-illustrated with coloured pencil, imitating Burningham's style in the book. It was directed by Dianne Jackson, who had previously adapted The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (1978), a wordless picture book, as an exceptionally successful family-oriented animated film (1982). Howard Blake, who wrote the music for The Snowman, wrote the music and the script for Granpa, which is referred to as an "animated children's opera". The voices of Granpa and Emily are by Peter Ustinov and Emily Osborne. (Full article...)
Walt Disney Pictures purchased the film rights for the story in 1981. Price and Seaman wrote two drafts of the script before Disney brought in executive producer Steven Spielberg and his production company, Amblin Entertainment. Zemeckis was brought on to direct, and Canadian animator Richard Williams was hired to supervise the animation sequences. Production was moved from Los Angeles to Elstree Studios in England to accommodate Williams and his group of animators. While filming, the production budget rapidly expanded, and the shooting schedule ran longer than expected. (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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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...)
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Roar is a 1981 American adventurecomedy film written and directed by Noel Marshall, and produced by Marshall and Tippi Hedren. Its plot follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, tigers, and other big cats. When his family visits him, they are instead confronted by the group of animals. The film stars Marshall as Hank, his real-life wife Tippi Hedren as his wife Madeleine, with Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith and Marshall's sons John and Jerry Marshall in supporting roles.
In 1969, while Hedren was filming Satan's Harvest in Mozambique, she and Marshall had occasion to observe a pride of lions move into a recently vacated house, driven by increased poaching. They decided to make a film centered around that theme, with production starting when the first script was completed in 1970. They began bringing rescued big cats into their homes in California and living with them. Filming began in 1976; it was finished after five years. The film was fully completed after 11 years in production. (Full article...)
In 1973, Coppola began development of a film based on the life of Tucker, originally with Marlon Brando in the lead role. Starting in 1976, Coppola planned Tucker to be both a musical and an experimental film with music and lyrics written by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The project eventually collapsed when Coppola's American Zoetrope experienced financial problems. Tucker was revived in 1986 when Coppola's friend, George Lucas, joined as an executive producer. (Full article...)
Scrooged was filmed on a $32 million budget over three months in New York City and Hollywood from December 1987 to March 1988. Murray returned to acting for the film after taking a four-year hiatus following the success of Ghostbusters, which he found overwhelming, although he had a minor role in Little Shop of Horrors. Murray worked with Glazer and O'Donoghue on reworking the script before agreeing to join the project. The production was tumultuous, as Murray and Donner had different visions for the film. Murray described his time on the film as "misery", while Donner called Murray "superbly creative but occasionally difficult". Along with Murray's three brothers, Brian, John and Joel, Scrooged features numerous celebrity cameos. (Full article...)
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The Care Bears Movie is a 1985 animatedmusicalfantasy film directed by Arna Selznick from a screenplay by Peter Sauder. It was the second feature film from the Canadian animation studio Nelvana after the 1983 film Rock & Rule, in addition to being one of the first films based directly on a toy line and the first based on Care Bears. It introduced the Care Bears characters and their companions, the Care Bear Cousins. The voice cast includes Mickey Rooney, Georgia Engel, Jackie Burroughs and Cree Summer. In the film, an orphanage owner (Mickey Rooney) tells a story about the Care Bears, who live in a cloud-filled land called Care-a-Lot. While traveling across Earth, the Bears help two lonely children named Kim and Jason, who lost their parents in a car accident, and also save Nicholas, a young magician's apprentice, from an evil spirit's influence. Deep within a place called the Forest of Feelings, Kim, Jason and their friends soon meet another group of creatures known as the Care Bear Cousins.
American Greetings, the owners of the Care Bears characters, began development of a feature film adaptation in 1981. Later on, the card company chose Nelvana to produce it and granted them rights to the characters, in addition to financing the film along with cereal manufacturer General Mills and television syndicator LBS Communications. Nelvana's founders were producers, with fellow employee Arna Selznick directing the film. Production lasted eight months, with a production budget of at least $2 million, and took place in Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea. Carole King and John Sebastian contributed several songs for the film. Though major American film studios passed on the project, newly established independent distributor The Samuel Goldwyn Company acquired the distribution rights to the film and soon spent a record $24 million promoting it. (Full article...)
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Kids Can Say No!, stylized as Kids Can Say No, is a 1985 Britishshorteducational film produced and directed by Jessica Skippon and written by Anita Bennett. It is intended to teach children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be sexually abused, how to escape such situations, and how to get help if they are abused. In the film, Australian celebrity Rolf Harris is in a park with a group of four children and tells them about proper and improper physical intimacy, which he calls "yes" and "no" feelings. The film has four role-playing scenes in which children encounter paedophiles, with Harris and the children discussing each scene.
Harris said that he came up with the idea for the film on a 1982 Canadian tour when he saw Vancouver's Green Thumb Theatre production of Feeling Yes, Feeling No, a play about child sexual abuse. Kids Can Say No!, released in October 1985 on VHS in the United Kingdom, was the first British children's film about sexual abuse and was purchased by police forces, educational institutions, and libraries across Europe. Upon the film's release, The Times obtained opinions from four sexual-abuse experts, who unanimously opposed using Kids Can Say No! or any other film to teach children about the subject. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation received a positive response to its 1988 broadcast of Kids Can Say No! and therefore broadcast it a second time that year. Harris and Skippon collaborated on the 1986 sequel Beyond the Scare, which advises teachers about what to do if a child discloses abuse. Showings of Kids Can Say No! eventually decreased as VHS became less popular in favour of DVD-Video in the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s. (Full article...)
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