Listening to 1984: August Deep Cuts

This installment yields the deepest of deep cuts: "The Philadelphia Experiment," "Tightrope," "Oxford Blues," and one very unusual top 40 hit.

The story so far: Sometime in 2019, I had a premonition that 2020 was going to suck. So— I decided to spend the year re-experiencing my favorite year from my childhood: 1984. By "re-experiencing" I mean listening to the music, watching the TV shows and movies, reading the news magazines and books, and listening to "American Top 40" and "Newsweek on Air" week-in, week-out, in chronological order. Weirdness ensued. I kept a journal. It took longer than expected, and by spring 2021 I was still in 1984…

August 8, 1984 / February 22, 2021

The Philadelphia Experiment. It’s worth noting that the time leap between World War II and the 1980s—the gap traversed by the protagonists in this film—is roughly the distance between the 1980s and now. If I fell into some time/space wormhole in August, 1984 and came out in the present day, what would I find most jarring? Smartphones, certainly. Also self-driving cars, social media. The Internet might not be a total surprise; I’ve been reading about it in Neuromancer. The histrionic level of 2021 politics and the frantic pace of life in general would be almost unbearable. 24-7 news—what? Who would want access to news 24 hours a day? What is this appetite for misery? And, what’s this? Prince is dead, Michael Jackson is dead, his legacy embroiled in scandal. Robin Williams is dead by his own hand. And two celebrities who have recently been boosting the 1984 Olympics—O.J. Simpson and Bruce Jenner—have had some surprising developments in their lives! Covid-19: We’ve had the specter of AIDS growing steadily in the background; a global pandemic would seem jarring, but perhaps not surprising.

Would I like 2021? Would I want to stay in the future as the hero from The Philadelphia Experiment did? Or would I want to hustle straight back? If there is much that would be disorienting, my interest would be piqued on several fronts: electric cars, independent space-exploration companies, digital currency, the ability to work at home and live pretty much anywhere, and an entrepreneurship revolution. In 1984 most everyone is driving to an office (or factory) and punching the clock. The notion that anyone can start a thriving business from one’s bedroom at little cost is largely alien. How would you ever explain Etsy millionaires to someone in 1984?

On the other hand, there is the impression that work in 1984 is steadier. People are less inclined to hop from job to job, or career to career. It’s common for someone to settle in for decades and then retire. But if you love your job in 1984 and you get fired or laid off, there can be panic. There are no online job searches, no instantly accessible network of contacts across the country to be tapped for the next move.

As for the film The Philadelphia Experiment, I loved it in 1984. My feeling as an adult is that it’s hokey and fun. Something of the spirit of John Carpenter’s original screenplay draft must have carried through the subsequent eight revisions by nearly as many writers. Carpenter had difficulties with the third act that I don’t think were ever resolved, but there are enough cool time-travel twists in the story to make this an enjoyable, if nonessential, excursion.

August 10, 1984 / March 9, 2021

In August 1984 a comic book lands on my doorstep, and it will turn out to be an unusual—even transformative—reading experience for this ten-year-old. No, it’s not something by Alan Moore or Frank Miller, it’s the G.I. Joe issue devoted to the “secret origin” of the character Snake Eyes. Don’t laugh! This single issue is different from the tongue-in-cheek material that has preceded and will succeed it. Here, in an extended flashback, writer Larry Hama works his Vietnam experiences into a comic book: the chaos of battle, the bitter disappointment of coming home to a mix of indifference and scorn. We even have the specter of the stoned-out vet who brings the war home with him. And finally, there is a younger version of the Hawk character, tasked with the awful burden of informing Snake Eyes of the death of his family. All of this in an otherwise campy series whose sole reason for existence is to promote a toy line.

This is a surprising place to find such material, and yet it’s not an anomaly in the ‘80s. Ostensibly “light” entertainment such as Magnum P.I. and Airwolf also grappled with Vietnam from the perspective of the vets who had now been back for ten years and had rebuilt (or attempted to rebuild) their lives. I remember the end of an early episode of Magnum P.I. in which Magnum and T.C., horsing around on the beach, are brought to a moment of seriousness when T.C. asks, “Do you ever think about it?” (meaning Vietnam). “Nah,” says Magnum. But it’s obvious they both think about it—a lot. So, I grew up with a complex portrait: The war was confusing, its necessity debated ad infinitum. As in all wars, there was atrocity. Yet there was also heroism and sacrifice beyond anything I as a civilian would ever be asked to face. The vets deserved my respect and the right to live their lives with dignity.

2024 Editor’s note: G.I. Joe writer Larry Hama would later helm a comics series called The ‘Nam that dealt with the war head-on, from the soldiers’ perspective. According to Wikipedia, the series was praised by a veterans’ group as the “best media portrayal of the Vietnam War."

August 17, 1984 / April 5, 2021

Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope: I used to love this kind of movie: Wind up the protagonist, kill or maim those he loves, set him loose and revel in the visceral thrill of vengeance delivered coldly and brutally. But Tightrope is past its sell-by date, and it’s not just because of the quirks that have plagued Eastwood action movies: Clint jogging at a leisurely pace after much quicker opponents yet somehow catching them; abrupt endings that often feel like a letdown (To be fair, this is a widespread problem of the era). No, my problem goes to the movie’s underlying bait-and-switch: Tightrope is an amusement park ride masquerading as something more. And in the execution of that task, it resorts to all manner of cheap trickery: The camera cuts away as Clint—sorry, Wes Block—struggles with the killer. Two shots are fired. What happened? Who got whom? Then, someone appears at the door to the closet where Clint’s terrified daughters are hiding, someone holding—gasp!—the killer’s telltale red ribbon. Only, it’s Clint! (Now think about that for a minute: Would any dad, in that situation, do anything to prolong his children’s terror for even one second? It’s a seemingly small detail but it takes me right out of the movie.)

Tightrope tries to have it both ways: There are attempts throughout the movie to explore weighty questions: What do we do with the darkness inside? And how do those tasked with protecting us from such evil resist succumbing themselves? These are worthy questions but in the end they’re just a fancy overlay on a rote cat-and-mouse / damsel-in-distress movie complete with—really!—a frantic struggle in the path of an oncoming train.

I remember in the 1990s there was a movie that showed in heavy rotation on the UGA housing channel called Heaven’s Prisoners. I saw it out-of-sequence, but I was pretty fired up about it.  Epic chase scenes through rainy and/or sweltering New Orleans; Alec Baldwin’s Dave Robicheaux pushed to the breaking point. Will he avenge his wife’s murder? Will he succumb to the bottle? What a thriller!

A classmate punctured my enthusiasm over breakfast in the dining hall. She had also seen the movie, and she was not impressed—and it wasn’t simply the questionable Southern accents that put her off. “I don’t like stories that are exploitative,” she said. “Exploiting the emotions of the audience and exploiting the character—just to get a reaction.” A compelling critique that has stuck with me. Whether we’re talking about a drama, a comedy, or a thriller, events need to unfold organically, and the characters need to feel real—acting of their own volition and not in the obvious service of the plot. By this yardstick, Tightrope fails, the Seth Rogen comedy The Interview fails. And—I’m going to stick my neck out here—what I managed to read of Gaiman and Pratchett’s novel Good Omens fails. (It’s not exploitative, but to me it came across as just a bunch of gags and set pieces). On the flip side, The French Connection succeeds, The Big Lebowski succeeds. (It may take place in the exaggerated reality of the “Coenverse,” but it is 100% internally consistent), and, despite my classmate’s misgivings, Heaven’s Prisoners remains in my good graces due both to the sturdiness of James Lee Burke’s source material and Eric Roberts’s multi-layered, scene-stealing performance, which seems to anticipate Matthew McConaughey’s entire career.

But the immediate question arises: How many more Tightropes will I need to sit through (or walk) in this project and in my life?

August 24 / April 13, 2021

Oxford Blues: I think I love this movie. Rob Lowe as a slightly exaggerated version of himself, mixing it up with a hit-list of established and up-and-coming British acting aristocracy. A fish out of water tale—the American at Oxford—with an improbable but charming romance with an English model thrown in (and with Ally Sheedy as the American girl we’re really rooting for). 30 minutes in and that ‘80s magic is present and accounted for.

I remember this movie playing in an Oxford, Mississippi hotel room during an epic family road trip in 1985. Dad liked to put the hotel TVs on HBO during the day, so I saw several of the 1984 movies—this and The Flamingo Kid and probably a handful of others—in Spring 1985 when they were all in pay-cable rotation. Oxford Blues, viewed in Oxford, MS: I remember commenting on this, wondering if the movie was about the University of Mississippi, my parents’ alma mater. Dad set me straight.

That was an especially vivid trip. Me being me, I remember the media: the aforementioned movies, Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith” playing everywhere (a much bigger hit in the South than in Minneapolis). But I also remember the heavy, almost tropical humidity, the grandeur of the Ole Miss campus, the statues—most of which are gone now, and whose complicated history I barely grasped at age eleven. The old buildings, the students milling around, it all made an impression. I would likely have ended up there if the University of Georgia had not beckoned with its superior music scene.

August 25, 1984 / April 24, 2021

Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” hits number nine on American Top 40. Lots to unpack here. First and most obvious detail is Casey Kasem’s discomfort at having to announce, week after week, a Top 40 hit about masturbation (from a woman’s perspective, no less!). The solution: Say absolutely nothing about the song’s contents. We have a hard stop on the usual “stories behind the song” that are Casey’s stock-in-trade. Remember Van Stephenson’s “Modern Day Delilah” - “A song inspired by the most famous haircut in history”?  Or the “When Doves Cry”-inspired musings on chart-topping songs featuring birds in the title? But with “She Bop” there’s nothing to see here, folks! Move along! He talks instead about Cyndi’s quirky mannerisms, her ubiquitous presence in the media, her close relationship with her mother. It’s getting awkward!