Listening to 1984: An Experiment in Time Travel - Part 10 of 12
Terminator, Willie & Kris, Chaka Khan, Frankie's Body Double, Reagan's Mic-Drop, and why the 80's were "Clacky." It's October 1984 and the only way out is through!
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 the spring of 2021 I was still in 1984…
(Note: If you just came onboard and are thoroughly confused, start with Part 1.)
October 4, 1984 / August 25, 2021
“October, the leaves are stripped bare / Of all they wear / What do I care?”
– That’s U2 from an earlier year. But I do care. Fall in Minnesota is an enchanting, almost indescribable experience. I did not have enough falls in Minnesota.
We are finally in October, 1984. Alex P. Keaton is in college. Reagan barrels toward his landslide. Chaka Khan begins to ride a Prince song up the charts, joining Sheila E. (also riding a Prince song) and the Purple One himself. Madonna and the Boss are in the mix. My life in 1984—the first round—seems a little distant. It’s that difficult 5th grade year. My male classmates are less interested in toys and such; they’re noticing the girls in our midst. I am too, but I’m in denial. Retreat, retreat!
But tonight is another night of must-see TV. Now, the problem with Miami Vice: Crockett and Tubbs are all over the place doing busts, chasing bad guys, appearing at crime scenes and trials in their true identities as police officers. And yet, they are also long-term undercover operatives in Miami’s drug scene. How dumb are the Miami dope dealers? It’s a big city, but… I’ve got to imagine that the drug-dealing “community” is connected enough that, at some point, someone gets busted by Sonny or sees him hanging out with the police chief and realizes that this fun-loving guy in the bright outfits who lives in a boat in the marina with a pet alligator is a cop. You would think!
But maybe they are just that dumb.
In anticipation of the meeting between Reagan and Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko (that has now transpired), Hugh Sidey wrote the following in Time:
Reagan will not confront Gromyko. The President is tough on policy, in speeches, on paper. Eyeball to eyeball he softens, not hardens. He listens, smiles, talks softly, encouragingly…. Still, says (former Secretary of State) Rusk, we need more “pointless talks” at the highest levels of diplomacy. Out of such seemingly aimless moments come feelings that at first are formless but can change the world some day just as surely as the strongest armies. Something could start this week. Stranger things have happened at lunch in the White House.
“Something could start this week.” It does… I think. Is this the beginning of the thaw? Gorbachev is still in the wings, and I don’t know this Gromyko. I don’t remember him, or Chernenko, or Andropov. They’re analogous in my mind to the gallery of mostly forgotten and interchangeable late- 19th century US presidents. Still, we have Reagan talking with, not to, the Soviets. Much of what historians will remember Reagan for begins here.
One other interesting thing: In the midst of his campaign, Mondale falls in line, supporting the president in these talks. Says Mondale, addressing Gromyko via the media: “When Mr. Reagan speaks to you on the 28th, he speaks for all Americans.”
Fascinating. The wheels have not come off the two-party system. In 1984 there is still sportsmanship in the political game. There is still the idea of the loyal opposition.
October 7, 1984 / September 2, 2021
Holy smokes. In the first debate, Mondale wins on substance and style. Far from being an embarrassment, he has a firm command of the issues, thinks seriously and pragmatically about the problems facing the world, and argues his points with clarity and feeling. Furthermore, he appears to be in the game for the right reasons, in service to his country. This Mondale, if placed in several of the other election matchups of my lifetime, would be a contender.
None of this will matter. Mondale can’t get traction in the go-go mid-‘80s because he’s essentially the earnest young(er) man handing out Bibles to happy customers leaving the whorehouse.
Still— for Reagan it’s an off-night and then some. He’s shaky, he flees specifics, falling back on small government comfort food.
His answer to the query about why he doesn’t attend church (doesn’t want to put his fellow churchgoers in danger of a terrorist attack) sounds noble but is disingenuous. Why not hold a service in the White House? And what about all the other times he goes out in public—wouldn’t he be endangering his fellow Americans in those moments too? Why not admit he’s not an organized religion kind of guy? (I know, I know… it wouldn’t be politically prudent. But it strikes an off note against Mondale’s candor).
The evasive answers to the questions about the budget deficit amount to an abdication of the Republican tradition of fiscal responsibility and will set a precedent for many of his successors.
Perhaps even worse, Reagan’s tone is sometimes shrill, and he succumbs to the presidential cliché of blaming the previous administration for some of the tricky issues raised by the moderators. That doesn’t wear well when you’ve been in office nearly four years. I’m disappointed, Ronnie. Where are you tonight?
October 10, 1984 / September 7, 2021
Contrast Reagan’s debate performance with the reports being filed in Time on the Gromyko meeting: “Grim Grom” and Reagan, standing “almost toe to toe” in the Oval Office, each gesturing animatedly. Both polite, controlled, but insistent. Their aides leave; the state of the world seemingly in the balance. The president holds his own.
Apparently, he doesn’t have much left in the tank afterward. He fluttered through the presidential debate with an air of detachment—sometimes genial, sometimes alarming. We know Iran-Contra is in the wings, and Reagan’s future defense that he didn’t know what was going on will seem plausible to anyone who has witnessed his performance here.
But in his elaborate tango with the Soviets, he will distinguish himself. This despite the fact that the first meeting with Gromko will be judged, in the short term, a failure. Grim Grom hasn’t budged on anything, won’t concede a point, won’t accept any entreaty for further talks. Everyone, including the president, must be wondering: What was the point?
They don’t know what I know.
October 12, 1984 / September 16, 2021
Songwriter starring Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson: Okay, this feels like home. Country music was a big part of my original go-round with 1984, because it was my dad’s favorite music. I resisted it, despised it at times. But as an adult, as a songwriter myself, how can I not be stunned speechless by Willie Nelson? Along with—let me summon the names: Kris, Johnny, Merle, Waylon. All of these folks were active in the ‘80s, and their music formed the soundtrack of the many road trips my family took across the country.
But now, hearing Willie pick up a guitar and play, I see how he is a cut above: how his palette is wider. I’m hearing jazz, specifically Django Reinhardt, but also Cole Porter. Of course Willie would record a couple albums of standards; his own songs are instant standards. And this movie is a delight from the first frame. Effortless. They just put Willie and Kris in front of a camera and turned it on. I’m loving every minute of it: the improvisation, the verisimilitude (key aspects of the plot bear more than a passing resemblance to Willie’s real-world money troubles), the playful update of “Who’s on first?’ with the “Say that to me again” scene.
Perhaps because of the classic feel of its characters, there is nothing to pin Songwriter to 1984. But this was a quality of the “Outlaw Country” movement, and perhaps of all country music. Nashville adopted slicker production and occasional keyboards in the 1980s, but the stabbing, robotic synths of New Wave did not make the same inroads with the genre they did with soul and R&B (with often wonderful results; see Chaka Khan). And while I love that New Wave sound and vision, it’s nice to find these little pockets of timelessness scattered throughout the year. The fact is, significant segments of the population remained stubbornly impervious to the dominant cultural trends—just as happened in the 1960s—and it’s important to remember that. MTV was popular in the 1980s. It was hugely influential. But it didn’t own the 1980s.
Anyway… Thank you, 1984, you’ve delivered for me today.
October 12, 1984 / September 22, 2921
I was listening to the bright synths, brisk pace, and overall “get up and go” energy of Chaka Khan’s 1984 album I Feel for You, and I wondered: How much of the era was fueled by cocaine? That’s not meant to cast aspersions on Khan—though I know she struggled with the drug—but the ‘80s were awake. We had come out of the lethargy of the 1970s, and the malaise—which was real—exited with Carter. And suddenly everything is in full color. The yuppies arrive. Everyone is going places. Surely Reagan deserves some credit for the tone, but pop music set the beat. In the music world of the ‘80s, we have the confluence of new technologies: portable synths, drum machines, quantization. MTV brought an explosion of visuals. Underlying this sensory riot, was there a shifting of public preference for “uppers”? This speculation is still a bit grown-up for me and I’m reluctant to pursue the thread. My memory is “Just Say No,” but my adult brain tells me that “Just Say No” must have been a response to something. Was the spring in society’s step not quite as spontaneous as it seemed? Should I begrudgingly thank the South American cartels for this oasis of color and pep sandwiched between the two dreary decades of the 1970s and 1990s? It’s not something I especially want to acknowledge as it drives a stake through the unmedicated effervescence of my childhood, but it’s in the mix, isn’t it?
(2024 editor’s note: In an interview with V13.net, Love and Rockets’ Daniel Ash also commented on the chemical roots of the ‘80s bright sound, though he is speaking here on something slightly different than Chaka Khan’s music—which, to my ears, is not quite so time-stamped: “(T)here’s the thing in the ‘80s that went on as the bands and the producers were using far too much cocaine for the mixes, so everything sounds ‘clacky.’ You’ve got this thing where they go, ‘Ah, that was made in the ‘80s, and the kick drum sounds like a snare instead of the kick.’ It’s all trebly because your hearing goes when you do too much blow. Apparently. (pauses) So they tell me (laughs).”
October 14, 1984 / September 23, 2021
Absorbing the poll results on the first round of debates, via Newsweek on Air, I disagree with the consensus that Bush won the vice-presidential debate. He won on foreign policy, which, to me, was the only area where he was on solid ground. He was strong enough there that I can see how it might have lulled viewers / listeners into forgetting everything else, but my own feeling is that Ferraro was the clear winner overall. Maybe I’m just appreciative of her low-key, well-prepared, attorney-like demeanor. It seems so rare in politics to have someone up there who actually knows what she’s talking about and is not dodging questions. I like this Ferraro better than the one that spoke at the convention, and I get the feeling that this version of her is more reflective of who she truly is.
On the flip side, the general feeling that Reagan was shaky—perhaps disastrously so—in his own debate gets no argument from me. Having been around a couple of senior citizens with cognitive challenges lately, I see troubling signs in the president’s going in and out of focus. For some reason this does not seem to be a barrier to the highest office in the land, given the age and public performances of the last two occupants of the White House in the 2020s. I wouldn’t be opposed to getting back to a younger set: 50s-60s are fine!
October 17, 1984 / October 1, 2021
Watching a double-header: two consecutive episodes of Entertainment Tonight. Insights: John Travolta plans to go into directing movies; I wonder what’s going to become of that. Donna Summer talks about her newfound Christianity and I’m having the eerie feeling that I saw this clip when it originally aired. John Denver and Jeff Bridges are working on relieving hunger in Africa. Neil Diamond sings the national anthem at a Democratic gala. More interesting are the commercials: Senka decaffeinated coffee hawked by a frazzled music teacher who doesn’t want to be edgy with his students; an outreach ad from some kind of bankers’ association; and a car dealership commercial. The cars: small, boxy, with muted colors: lots of variations of grey. The women have big, teased-out hair and seem to favor loose, frumpy clothes that don’t show off much in the way of curves or skin. The men are all sporting the 1980s “hair helmet.” As always, the commercials bring me face to face with the alien qualities of the era, evoking both fascination and an acute awareness of the passage of time. Even the idea of watching broadcast television with commercials now seems remote.
Later, Donald Trump shows up. Pugnacious, stern, very “New York.” Doesn’t seem crazy, other than the fact that he’s attached to some non-NFL football team. (And he has a point about the NFL being a monopoly.) He has a full head of dark hair that is not trying to achieve escape velocity from his skull, and his red tie is a bit more subdued than its future iteration.
Elsewhere we have Rudy Giuliani, talking rapidly. It seems the gang’s all here, just in time for…
October 19, 1984 / October 19, 2021
A ripple in the time-space continuum, then a jolt as the two timestreams sync back up—for one day: October 19. In 1984, we have the epic “Calderone’s Return” on Miami Vice. Early readers, including the President of the United States, are beginning to digest Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. Several movies debut, including Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, The Razor’s Edge starring Bill Murray, and Crimes of Passion starring Kathleen Turner. And in 2021… I don’t know what is happening in the wider world. I’m frazzled, grappling with the recent loss of my father-in-law, emotionally maxed out on work and childcare concerns. Things seem tough, but they are tougher for my neighbors, who are apparently dealing with rent issues and were visited last night by a fleet of police cars.
Some brief thoughts on The Razor’s Edge, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel of spiritual pilgrimage: I’m not fully buying Bill Murray as the war-haunted seeker Larry Darrell, even though Murray seems to have been more invested in his role here than he was in Ghostbusters. He will distinguish himself as a dramatic actor in future decades, but this initial move away from comedy is rocky. Just the way he carries himself—always on the verge of some kind of surreal mayhem even when he is not—makes me want to burst out laughing. Also, while he’s not unhandsome, his face looks like it was sculpted out of Silly Putty—by a talented artist, no doubt, doing his best to work off of a photo of John Garfield or Clark Gable or some other 1940s leading man, but… well, this artist is a bit tipsy, he forgot his glasses and… the room is too hot; the sculpture is melting! That zany face brings happiness to my life, but it can’t be properly corralled into this Merchant Ivory-type movie.
There are some affecting scenes though, and Murray connects with his character quite welcomely and unexpectedly in the doomed romance between Larry Darrell and Theresa Russell’s similarly haunted Sophie MacDonald. When Murray says in response to her troubled past, “It’s very easy to love you,” there is real feeling behind it. Murray may not be so much a case of “still waters run deep” as “slow, bubbly waters swirling in silly shapes run deep.”
October 22, 1984 / December 8, 2021
From my decades-removed vantage point, Mondale wins the second presidential debate on substance, though Reagan brings his charm to the podium—and then some. I can understand why the country is in thrall to Reagan’s charisma because I’m susceptible to it myself; what I don’t understand is why Mondale is not more competitive in this race.
Perhaps it comes down to the moment that seems to have obliterated everyone’s memory of all that preceded it. I am speaking of Reagan’s retort to the critique that he may be too old for the office: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience,” which inspires both genuine mirth from Mondale and the moderator’s comment: “I’m not even going to try to catch that one before it goes over the fence.”
Maybe a quick (or in this case, rehearsed) wit is all that is needed to sway an audience. Mondale is funnier than people remember—he has Will Rogers and Groucho Marx on recall—but in this regard he is in the ring with Ali.
My own mythologizing of Reagan has multiple causes: a happy childhood overlayed with Reagan’s ubiquitous media presence; my affection for the older men in my family and trust in their positive appraisals of the president; my fondness for the upbeat culture of the ‘80s; and Reagan’s subsequent elevation to the status of “greatness,” much of it driven by conservatives in need of a holy figure, but some also from objective historians’ gradual recognition of him as a president of consequence.
It appears that 1984 is the year that the Reagan myth begins its ascent. In a perceptive piece in the October 22 issue of Time, Lance Morrow writes:
Americans considered Mondale with a merciless objectivity. But many of them came to absorb Ronald Reagan in an entirely different and subjective manner. They internalized him. In recent months, Reagan found his way onto a different plane of the American mind, a mythic plane. He became not just a politician, not just a President, but very much an American apotheosis…. Partly by accident of timing, partly by a kind of simple genius of his being, Reagan managed to return to Americans something extremely precious to them: a sense of their own virtue…. Perhaps, after so many failed presidencies since the assassination of John Kennedy, an amazing number of Americans are eager to see Reagan succeed.
It’s hard to shake all this. And yet, experiencing Reagan again in real time, there are moments—such as these debates—when another memory surfaces in competition with the nostalgia: For stretches of his presidency, Reagan was regarded by a not-insubstantial portion of the population as a buffoon, mocked for his gaffes, his unsteadiness, his perceived senility. The teasing was generally more affectionate than what we’re used to in the 2020s, but Reagan was a seemingly inexhaustible source of merriment. I remember a comedy sketch that started off with actual footage of Reagan stumbling during a speech, then cut to a backstage “shot” of an aide running out, opening a latch in the president’s back, and inserting two fresh batteries. Cut back to the actual speech as Reagan regains his footing.
Could it be that this weirdly complicated open book of a man somehow moved the world forward with several oars rowing in the wrong direction? I have spent more time watching and listening to him this year than I ever did when he was around. The result is that I’ve moved away from the idealized image I’ve held for most of my life, but I have no idea what I am moving toward. It has become trite to say that he is an enigma, but, well, he is.
October 26, 1984 / December 16, 2021
The 26th of October is going to be another long day—or night. We’ve already had the dramatic conclusion of the Calderone saga on Miami Vice. I’m now into Body Double and I’ve also got Terminator on deck.
England is reeling from an IRA terrorist attack in Brighton. The prime minister barely escaped but several in her government were killed. “This time we were unlucky. But just remember: You must always be lucky, while we only need to be lucky once,” —so say the terrorists. I am made aware, again, of my myopia. The 1980s weren’t so great for Britain: strikes, terrorism, unemployment, a divisive leader. Reading about the brazenness of the IRA campaign and the anxiety it provoked, the 1980s in Britain feel a bit like the early 2000s in America. Maybe worse: After that one devastating day of 9/11 we didn’t have any attacks on our shores for a good while. For us, it was an anxiety fueled by possibility. The Brits were actually getting attacked.
As for me in 2021, I’m battling a kidney stone. I recall that my dad had to go through this—quite possibly in 1984. And now I’m hit with one… while reliving 1984. Once again, the timestreams fold in on each other. I wanted to experience 1984 as an adult. Queue up Apocalypse Now: “I wanted a mission… and for my sins they gave me one” !
*****
I enjoyed Body Double in spite of myself. It’s instructive to compare this with Crimes of Passion, the other “erotic thriller” of the moment. The Ken Russell-directed Crimes seeks to provoke arousal, discomfort, anger; it wants to say something important about human sexual relations in the ‘80s. But in the end, it’s dumb as a fence post and about as erotic as Schindler’s List, despite the herculean efforts of Kathleen Turner to make it otherwise. (It’s intriguing that Kathleen Turner and Bill Murray, two of the biggest stars of 1984, both rolled the dice on their careers in the same month, and both walked away from their artistic plane crashes relatively unscathed). Body Double, helmed by iconoclastic auteur Brian De Palma, gives the impression of being dumb, announcing itself in its first minutes as a B-movie, then demonstrates artistry and cleverness as it unfolds. It’s a Hitchcockian murder-frame-up story that is also pretty hot for the era.
I listened to a fair amount of the movie while driving around and walking, then went back and watched some of it. I’ll say this of the iconic drill murder scene: Damsel-in-distress Gloria had ample time to get away from that slow-moving implement, but I suspect the absurdity of her staring at her glacially approaching demise was intentional; that seems to have been a quality of some of the old-style horror and suspsene movies Body Double is emulating. Later on, I had gotten the impression (from listening) that there was an extended sex scene between Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) and porn star Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) that spanned the entirely of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song “Relax.” What could De Palma have filled those four minutes with, I wondered? But when I watched the sequence, it turned out to be an actual Frankie Goes to Hollywood video inserted into the movie—a quintessentially ‘80s filmmaking quirk.
It’s a pretty neat video for a pretty dumb but very catchy and self-assured song, and I wasn’t upset by the tradeoff. Plus, there is a brief hookup directly afterward that has real chemistry and a surprising amount of vulnerability for such a hyper-affected movie. We can thank Melanie Griffith—superb throughout the film—for this touch.
October 26, 1984 / January 20, 2022
Some notes on The Terminator (Would you believe that I had never seen it before?):
Pure 1984 in its effects, fashion, music. You can apparently buy an Uzi over the counter in this movie’s reality (“perfect for home defense”), which seems like more of a 2020s thing, but oh well.
Some clunky dialogue, a couple exaggerated characters (the roommate, the psychologist—cannon fodder mostly), but brilliant filmmaking. Relentless.
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor: one of the great female action protagonists, alongside Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in the Alien movies.
I’m also reeling from the discovery that a producer was ready to cast OJ Simpson in the Terminator role, a suggestion that was rejected by director/co-writer James Cameron on the grounds that Simpson would not be believable as a killer (per Wikipedia).
Although I did not see this movie in 1984, I vividly recall much of the plot being re-enacted for me by enthusiastic friends at school and in my backyard.
As for the prediction that humankind will cede control to the machines, we’re on our way there in the 21st century. The only piece that may be off is the time-travel element.
SPOILER ALERT: I have questions about how Sarah knows which button to push to crush the Terminator in the robotics factory, and how she can be confident enough in her selection (It looks like there are a couple of identical red buttons) to say, “You’re terminated, fucker.” But I suppose I’m being nitpicky here. It’s a great movie, expertly paced, with a strong cast (Even Michael Biehn’s histrionic moments land on the right side of campy). The dialogue is not a strong point, but the groundbreaking direction more than makes up for that. It’s my favorite mainstream movie of the year.
October 31, 1984 / January 26, 2022
Dynasty’s “The Trial” ends on a cliffhanger and we slide into November, a multicolored hue of leaves raining down on yards across Minneapolis. Shades of red, brown, copper, beige. My mind is in three locations: 1984, 2022, and all spaces between. I once thought that a return to the happy year of 1984 would reorient me—that time spent in Eden before the Fall (that is, before adolescence and adulthood) would enable me to reconnect with some of that earlier happiness. And I have reconnected, to some extent, but it turns out that if you open the box of memory and dig through it in such a thorough manner, you’re going to pull out some unwanted items. Time travel is not precise, and there is rarely such a thing as wall-to-wall happiness. Even an ostensibly “happy” time will have countercurrents that can reassert themselves if a person insists on reinhabiting the past.
And why are so many of my memories bound up in media? I’m not a huge consumer of TV and movies in the present day, so all of this time spent wading through the visual media of my childhood has drained me. I can’t help but wonder what gaps in my psyche I was trying to fill with other people’s fantasy worlds during those years and beyond.
But I see an end to all this up ahead. I see, too, that decoupling from the past will be a slow process. Only in the movies do you abruptly close the door on something.