blissblogger
Well-known member
There's a really good essay on this era of film - not the music - called "Blissing Out: the Politics of Reaganite Entertainment" by Andrew Britton. It's all about those films like Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentlemen, Rocky etc etc. Written during the 1980s.
I came across it a few years ago and was a bit taken aback by the title having done a book called Blissed Out - which is essentially about youth taking refuge from the Thatcher-Reagan era in clouds of gorgeous noise aka dreampop.
Musically, others in this Eighties pugnacious vein would be Journey "Don't Stop Believing", Bon Jovi "Livin' On a Prayer", Van Halen "Jump"
The Journey song and "Eye of Tiger" are typical songs that schoolkids do at performances in American schools - sort of secular equivalents of hymns (cos we can't have hymns at school what with separation of church and state in the US). More recent ones in the genre are Katy Perry tunes like "Roar" and "Firework", Taylor Swift "Shake It Off", and "Let It Go" from Frozen. All positive thinking, uplift, nothing gonna hold me down / back sentiments,
it's very much in the American grain, this kind of can-do, gumption 'n' pluck thing. Reagan brought it back after the doubt and drift of the 70s with his famous "Morning in America" speech.
I came across it a few years ago and was a bit taken aback by the title having done a book called Blissed Out - which is essentially about youth taking refuge from the Thatcher-Reagan era in clouds of gorgeous noise aka dreampop.
Musically, others in this Eighties pugnacious vein would be Journey "Don't Stop Believing", Bon Jovi "Livin' On a Prayer", Van Halen "Jump"
The Journey song and "Eye of Tiger" are typical songs that schoolkids do at performances in American schools - sort of secular equivalents of hymns (cos we can't have hymns at school what with separation of church and state in the US). More recent ones in the genre are Katy Perry tunes like "Roar" and "Firework", Taylor Swift "Shake It Off", and "Let It Go" from Frozen. All positive thinking, uplift, nothing gonna hold me down / back sentiments,
it's very much in the American grain, this kind of can-do, gumption 'n' pluck thing. Reagan brought it back after the doubt and drift of the 70s with his famous "Morning in America" speech.