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 39 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 Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجرای ایران-کنترا; Spanish: Caso Irán-Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an arms embargo at the time. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration figured out a loophole by secretively using non-appropriated funds instead.
The official justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven US hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. Some within the Reagan administration hoped the sales would influence Iran to get Hezbollah to release the hostages. (Full article...)
... that according to one reviewer, the problems that may have prompted the publication of Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life in the 1980s had "only gotten worse" by 2005?
... that in the 1980s, "Sherman Bonner, The Human Thermometer" presented the weather on an Arkansas TV station?
... that Derek Jeter discusses his biracial upbringing and experiencing racism in Michigan in the 1980s and 1990s in The Captain?
Image 18Stage 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 19The 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 20The 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)
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...)
Image 3
Le Dernier Combat (French:[lədɛʁnjekɔ̃ba]; English: The Last Battle) is a 1983 French post-apocalyptic film. It was the first feature film to be directed by Luc Besson, and also features Jean Reno's first prominent role. Music for the film was composed by Éric Serra. The film was the first of many collaborations between Besson, Reno and Serra. A dark vision of post-apocalyptic survival, the film was shot in black and white and contains only two words of dialogue. It depicts a world where people have been rendered mute by some unknown incident. (Full article...)
Goldman began writing the script in 1971, deriving inspiration from his encounters with dysfunctional couples. He spent several years trying to secure a major film studio to produce it before taking it to 20th Century Fox. Parker learned of the script as he was developing Fame (1980), and he later worked with Goldman to rewrite it. After an unsuccessful pre-production development at Fox, Parker moved the project to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which provided a budget of $12 million. Principal photography lasted 62 days, in the period from January to April 1981, on location in Marin County. (Full article...)
Image 5
Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation is a 1986 animatedmusicalfantasy film produced by LBS Communications and Nelvana. It is the third animated feature from Nelvana and the second film based on the Care Bears franchise. It was directed by Dale Schott, written by Peter Sauder, and produced by Nelvana's three founders; Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert, and Clive A. Smith. It stars the voices of Alyson Court, Cree Summer, Maxine Miller and Hadley Kay. In the story, The Great Wishing Star (voiced by Chris Wiggins) tells the origins of the Care Bears and the story of their first Caring Mission. True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse lead the other Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins in aiding Christy, a young camper who is tempted by the evil shape-shifting Dark Heart. This is also the first appearance of the Care Bear Cubs, who also had their own line of toys.
A New Generation was made over a seven-month period at Nelvana's Toronto facilities, with additional work handled by Taiwan's Wang Film Productions, and involved several crew members who had worked on the original Care Bears Movie. Patricia Cullen served as composer, and Los Angeles musicians Dean and Carol Parks worked on the film's six songs. The Samuel Goldwyn Company, the US distributor for the first film, was originally set to release the sequel, but demands from the film's producers caused the company to give up. The worldwide distribution rights were then acquired by Columbia Pictures. (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...)
Payanangal Mudivathillai is Sundarrajan's directorial debut and the inaugural venture of Kovaithambi's Motherland Pictures. The film was produced by R. Elanchelian, Pollachi M. V. Rathinam and P. Muthusamy. Ilaiyaraaja composed the music and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and S. Janaki performed the songs. Cinematography was handled by Kasthuri and the editing by R. Bhaskaran. (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...)
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...)
Image 14
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...)
You are invited to participate in WikiProject Years, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about years, decades, centuries, and millennia.