‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’

The 80s were all about getting pumped up in various ways, it's slightly interesting that the first medical treatments for erectile dysfunction turned up in 1983.

That it was in the 1980s treatment was developed, with phentolamine and papaverine followed by the massive impact that viagra had, possibly with an aging male population in mind, seems significant. Or that the later 80s/early 90s was characterized by  sex-killing drugs like E. There may have also been more older male focused movies (City Slickers came out in 1991 shortly after viagra was patented, there were probably more) but that's only speculation.

"it's fast / it's wrong"

Estrangement, intensity; the dream that our separate abjections and ecstasies might be reconcilable - if only in the manner of a verse melody in the relative minor playing over a chorus in the relative major. Why do they appear as separate in the first place? The lyric personae of Wouldn't it be Good stand in for two directions of social mobility - for the "downwardly" and "upwardly" mobile, for those thrown out into the cold and for those consumed by the white phosphorous of financial conflagration.

The patterns are more established, their ideological reflections more secure, by the time Microdisney come to address them - in 1987, with And He Descended Into Hell, and in 1988 with Gale Force Wind:

"If a power was to lift him up / and make him rich / would he admit it was luck?". Again we are making deals with God: the force driving us apart is nameless, sublime, possibly malevolent. It deals in anarchic reversals of fortune, in uplift and sudden ruin. If Kate Bush tries to confront this anarchy with erotic solidarity, Cathal Coughlan takes stock of the human relationships it has destroyed and the pathologies generated by nostalgia for a stable moral order:

"He believed he was right to ask for things / to be his and for him alone / and the world was not right with him unless / his wish was the world's command". How, without reimposing rights of ownership over others, tying them to us so that they cannot escape or be blown away, is the world to be made right again?

Return of the Cockney - playlist

After publishing the 'Return of the Cockney' post I realised that I hadn't included any music which seemed an oversight, so after some prompting from Alex here is the 'playlist'.

80s cockney music has its roots in pub rock and punk, with their deliberate deployment of London accents (real or acquired), songs and imagery about London ('Down in the Tube Station at Midnight', Kilburn and the Highroads) and importance of local venues like the Hope and Anchor in Islington, which attracted loyal followings.

It was Ian Dury and the Blockheads, though, who set up the key elements for 80s. Obviously, through their frontman they kept the vocals and imagery side, with Dury's art-school twist. But they also added funk and soul to the music, and this took them into proper pop hits territory. These two elements are, I think, in tension with each other for many London working class bands through the 80s.

For Madness, it would be ska and reggae rather than funk and soul but the balance is similar. They also cemented the saxophone into London music of this period.

Like Chas and Dave, Madness combine lyrics about child/adult relationships ('Baggy Trousers'// 'Sideboard Song') with catchy choruses, and it this nostalgia for all age groups that explains something of their long lasting appeal.

Alternatively you could drop the vocals side entirely (and indeed any humour or playfulness) and concentrate on being a slick, modern soul band, as with Islington's finest Spandau Ballet:

As Squeeze moved into the 80s they also went in this direction - there would be no more 'Cool for Cats'. The video for 'Black Coffee in Bed' is a rewrite of the narrative of 'Up the Junction' but instead of ending on the sigh of the everyman, Glenn Tilbrook is now more cynical. 'Oh well on to the next one' his eyes say to us. What these bands seemed to particularly value in soul music (and we could include Sade in this) was not just a modern sound but also a grown-up sexuality: "listening to Marvin all night long".

Curiously given Paul Weller's love of black music, 'modernism', and class politics, the Style Council should been the best of all these bands. Although they had 7 top ten singles, which are as good as anything he did with The Jam, the mix between the elements never quite convinces. Despite his supposed love of style, Weller is responsible for commissioning some of the oddest videos of all time. Without these they probably could have had some success in the US, but MTV viewers would simply have been baffled by the mix of homoerotcism, Eastern European chic or, er, northern Town Hall chic:

Unlike Spandau and Squeeze, Weller was too prickly just to let go and fully embrace slick pop. Perhaps unexpectedly it was those who never attempt to have a modern sound, but kept the vocals/imagery side, who have lasted best. But they did this either being being half-outsiders like the Pogues or as with Billy Bragg deliberately trying to undercut the assumptions of his own time and place. His best songs are not his big political numbers, but his love and everyday life material. 'A Lover Sings' is far more 'grown up' about sex, than hanging by the nightclub bar with your sleeves rolled up. His unpicking of male life on 'Like Soldiers Do' or 'Its Says Here' is particularly strong, perhaps why Morrissey was a fan at the time. 'Levi Stubbs' Tears' could be seen as the flip side to 'True' or 'Smooth Operator': a very different mix of soul music, sexuality and London life.

The Black Book of Fleet Street

Chapter 14. The Thoughts of Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of Britain’s biggest selling newspaper the Sun, 1981-1994.

What Kelvin wanted
“... He rushed off, leaving one of the newsdesk minions to explain the new rules of the game patiently to other startled hacks who were standing around. ‘When will you lot get it through your heads that Kelvin’s not interested in whether things are true or not,’ he told them. ‘What you’ve got to do is give him what he wants.’”

On his readers
“... Mackenzie rapped out his picture of the Sun’s older reader. ‘He’s the bloke you see in the pub – a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and weirdoes and drug dealers..."

On violence
"'I’ve got a story about someone who’s confessed to seventeen rapes,' MacKenzie had said on 13 June. ‘Is that a record? If it’s a record I want it on the front page.’ ... His management style was revealed in his offering a knife to an elderly worker on the art desk and advising him: ‘Do us all a favour, you useless c***- cut your throat.’"

On race
"... ‘Well, Botha has said the days of white power are over in South Africa. What he doesn’t say is what’s going to happen when the darkies come down from the trees,’ was one of MacKenzie’s choice remarks. ‘No, I’m not having pictures of darkies on the front page,’ said deputy editor David Shapland ... the night an Asian man won Sun Bingo, ‘That’s the last things our readers want – pictures of blacks raking it in.’"

On AIDS and homosexuality
"A report in the paper in February quoted an anonymous ‘psychologist’ at an AIDS conference in Washington DC as advocating mass killings of gays. ‘All homosexuals should be exterminated to stop the spread of AIDS. It’s time we stopped pussyfooting around,’ he supposedly said.
MacKenzie responded to hacks expressing mild concern about the paper’s approach to the subjects with jeers like ‘Come out, have we eh? One of them, are we, eh?’ followed by a shout across the editorial floor: ‘Watch out, folks! There’s a botty burglar about!’"

All quotes from Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick It Up Your Punter! The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper (Simon & Schuster, 1999. Revised edition.)

Now That Fits Nice

In close parallel to the 1978-83 post-punk renaissance (as documented in Simon's Rip It Up And Start Again), funk, disco and the poppier side of side of soul was also having a damn good run of it at the same time (covered in Peter Shapiro's equally excellent tome Turn That Beat Around). With a vicious backlash, and fatigue at the cultural hegemony of Saturday Night Fever, the dust of disco settled into all kinds of interesting shapes - from the first stirrings of hiphop to hi-concept New York punky funky disco eccentrics like James Chance, Arthur Russell, the Was Bros. and Kid Creole/August Darnell. Punk, Afrobeat, reggae, fusion, electropop and Latino music were cheerfully appropriated for dancefloor use. Add the ominous dynamics of Reagan's victory and the constituencies he came to destroy, it made for a heady, implicitly political brew. It was perhaps unsurprising that new wavers like Talking Heads and The Clash hitched along for the ride. It was also apt that Bowie would end his run of greatness with Nile Rogers instead of Brian Eno. The integration of the audience was frequently as seamless as its collage of musical styles. It wasn't so much mutant disco, as hybrid; lending it a frequently unpredictable pizazz.

Of course, the arrival of Thriller, its almost totalitarian commercial impact, and the (arguable) backlash it provoked in the form of hiphop, swept this mini-utopia away; leaving dancefloors between a desexualised, deracialised, deradicalised Disneyland and the harsh admonition to 'keep it real' (until rave, itself a different kind of Disneyland, albeit existing largely in the head). Funk was eventually pushed to the margins, but for a while there the influence of George Clinton could be heard all over the place (yaoww!), and not just among his own P-Funk collective. This was before the horrors of AIDS and conservatism, when sexuality was openly celebrated; unlike the paranoid disgust of Jacko and his many imitators, or Material Girls insisting the only thing going on was the rent. Disco was assimilated into the default pop mainstream by the likes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and Hi-NRG-lite like New Order and the Pet Shop Boys (their one true classic 'West End Girls' - the source of this blog's title - emerged from the New York scene mentioned above, but itself riddled with noirish sexual dread). The only Utopia Madonna pledged allegiance to was her own neoliberal success story. Jellybean Benitez served his instrumental purpose many movers and shakers ago. Despite her (increasingly desperate) bumping and grinding, the actual tracks sounded as sterile as any other by the late 80s. Disco vets like Prince stood out for the idiosyncratic niche he carved, but he was a rarity; reliant on MTV and Hollywood to make his mark. There were still somewhat anomalous exceptions, like Sly and Robbie's awesome 'Boops (Here To Go)'; but rather than prove influential, they ultimately suggested lost possibilities. 

Anyway, all the above is just an excuse to post some great tracks from the period. Ironically, the songs below are now most likely to be heard (if at all) in the twattier kind of hipster venue. Places that are far from sexy, integrated, adventurous, politicised or remotely Utopian. Where "fuck you" is the soulful refrain replacing "let's do it!" At least musically, things were a little more open then. Michael Henderson was an in-demand session player with fusion superstars, proving he could funk with the best of them, coiling his mighty bass around a filthy double entendre. Arthur Russell's deeply personal, spacious, spiritual style now has its due recognition. Rick James' Street Songs is the rare album that's excellent from beginning to end, and in a more just world, would have outsold Thriller to much healthier social and commercial effect. The production credits of Sly and Robbie speak for themselves, being in demand as producers with good reason. They eventually settled into the increasingly conservative and enclosed world of Jamaican pop. Frankie Beverly's Maze were relatively 'trad', reflecting the short-lived optimism of an emergent black middle-class; but never quite entered the mainstream with their lack of video glitz and high reputation as a live act. The last track (one of the greatest dance tunes ever, IMHO) is a lovely example of August Darnell's pop genius, and could be a manifesto for the whole milieu I'm lazily attempting to describe. Of course, with the exceptions of mighty Rick and Grace (for obvious reasons - look at 'em), none of these tracks had the pop videos that would be de rigeur by mid-decade. History was indeed made at night, but the Spectacle was closed to its potential; as pop (and nightlife) carried out its slowly gentrified, neutered facelift and eventual irrelevance. But whenever I hear this stuff, it can't help but evoke thoughts of a warmer world.

Daydream Nation: Back To The Velvet

Critically and commercially, Back To The Future (1985) and Blue Velvet (1986) continue to be influential and popular in a way that so few hits of the 80s are. Frequently placed on 'all-time favourites' lists, the former continues to entertain school kids with frequent TV broadcasts, the latter still finds an enthusiastic college-age audience on DVD. In retrospect, what is most striking is how very similar both films are. The main difference may be their respective genres' terms of reference, but they have far more in common than first impressions indicate. Both films hark back to the 50s, not least the persistent myths of lost purity and cohesion. These myths even extend to their use of 50s pop music. The only non-white people visible in either film are 'Chuck Berry' and his band - taught how to play rock'n'roll by white Marty. For all of Blue Velvet's borrowings from Kenneth Anger and its sexual 'subversion', homosexuality is solely suggested by a camp rendition of 'In Dreams'. Women serve as battlegrounds, over which 'family values' struggle against fathers abusive or weak. Blue Velvet's kidnap plot takes a back seat to its sexual violence. Compared to symbolic flourishes and dream imagery, its crime 'mystery' is the least memorable aspect of the film. Similarly, Back To The Future's sci-fi trappings are largely there to open, close and advertise the film. The real genre connecting both is the fairy tale, where the hand of the princess and the keys to the kingdom are earned by overcoming demons external and internal. Both films' 50s genre adornments are mere 'McGuffins' to that most ancient of dramas: the Oedipal triangle. The real 'meat' of both stories concerns the affirmation of patriarchal authority, won via young men's journeys into an underworld (of dreams, dangerous curiosity, sexual turbulence, or the unknowable past). What makes them highly relevant to the 80s is their restoration and empowerment of the 'good' family, of traditional gender (and implicitly, class and race) relations.

As with most fairy tales since Grimm, both films are as conservative as they are perverse. Both screenplays cunningly exploit the thrill of taboo, while also working to repress the curiosity and traumas of the Primal Scene. By not hiding behind the symbolism of the Oedipal triangle, making the blood relations at stake explicit, Back To The Future was arguably more risky. This is a kid-friendly blockbuster where Marty McFly spends most of the film trying to discourage sexual advances from his own mother. It's rare to see any mother in a 'family' film portrayed as sexually assertive, especially when the object of desire is her youngest son. As with Blue Velvet, the story was years in gestation, tinged with autobiography and childhood nostalgia; 'personal' projects that rescued the director's reputation after a notable flop. Blue Velvet's characterisation is built around David Lynch's childhood memories of small-town life (including the traumatic sight of a bewildered, naked woman walking the streets). Back To the Future screenwriter Bob Gale stated that his story emerged from speculating on whether he would have been friends with his father had they attended school at the same time. It is perhaps logical that director Robert Zemeckis added further speculation - over the desirability, and indeed availability, of one's own mother if she also attended the same school. It may be its dreamlike tone and environment that allows Back To The Future to get away with this central conceit.

 

Although controversial, Blue Velvet got away with its 'outrageous' scenario by presenting an America removed from any recognisable reality. 70s crime thrillers and neo-noir often focussed on the degradation of 'the excremental city' or town, where patriarchal order was hideously abusive (Chinatown, Serpico, Gloria), subject to mockery (Dirty Harry, Dog Day Afternoon, The Long Goodbye) or tragically ineffective (Night Moves, Cruising, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie). Left, right or liberal; the city was always corrupted, with varying emphases of blame. In the 80s, noir increasingly presented a hyperreal 'America' - a country in inverted commas where story, environment and performance became more overtly 'plastic', as in Body Heat, Blood Simple, Body Double, Trouble In Mind, Down By Law and Something Wild - moving towards stylized black comedy and away from urban realism. Complementing this noir trend, science fiction moved away from its earlier (and far less profitable) litany of doom, towards childlike optimism and renewed faith in family values. Again, comedy played a big part. Unlike the 70s, the Disneyfied America was no longer a niche - it was common parlance, as mise-en-scene turned away from 'realism', back to the fairy tale and its comforts.  

Along with the traditional hero, the 70s was a period when the cinematic father was thrown open to question. Despite the death of the western, its narrative set-ups moved into the suburb, the city or even outer space. The restoration of the father's Law and legitimacy can be charted over the first Star Wars trilogy; but came to dominate many genres like the Teen movie. Teens adjusting to social norms by asserting aspirational values over the indulgences and 'failed' authority of their Boomer parents was a common motif in 80s film (Exhibit A: John Hughes). Flattering the ideology in which its young audience was growing up, it was youth bringing the Law to town. When making Back To The Future, Michael J. Fox was starring in the popular sitcom Family Ties, a key show of Reagan's 80s. Where previous sitcoms played off the conservative father against the more progressive son, here roles were reversed. Fox played the right-wing yuppie, fighting against the hippy liberal values of his father (that's all I can remember about the show, apart from the distractingly youthful Meredith Baxter as the mother - herself adding a layer of Oedipal tension). In Back To The Future, it's not so much a conflict of values as attitude. Marty's family, especially father George (played by the very 'Lynchian' Crispin Glover) are a source of comic embarrassment, losers that disappoint the ambitious, energetic Marty. Their domestic discontent, their failure to keep up with the Joneses, is the desperate situation in need of narrative remedy (later continued into the following century and, somewhat appropriately, the wild west).

If the McFlys begin with a failed patriarch's impotence (and ensuing lack of domestic discipline), Blue Velvet opens with two versions of patriarchal castration, true to Lynch's usual approach of painting symbolism with boxing gloves. The red, white and blue of the idyllic suburb is disturbed by a sudden stroke, the father's hose out of control, punctuated by a dog that snaps away near his crotch. For the rest of the film, the 'true' father will be absent; as will the owner of the severed ear Jeffery Beaumont finds on the way back from his hospital visit. The rest of the film will be loudly dominated by the monstrous, obscene father (veering between 'Daddy' and 'Baby'); using his power to violate the Law in the absence of idealised, silent fathers. Compared to the difficult but well-judged performances of the other leads, Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth is as hammy and cartoonish as Christopher Lloyd's Doc - performances from the school of Robert Newton's Long John Silver. Like Silver, they are dangerous substitute fathers, unpredictable 'wizards' reliant on artificial enhancement, leading our young heroes into perilous (but ultimately containable) dreamworlds. The 'dream' being a hyperreal, mythologised America that must overcome temptation and confusion. Frank also incorporates the role of town bully (as goblin or fire-breathing 'dragon'), like Biff in Back To The Future. Both bullies must be destroyed, physically and/or economically - in the interests of hygiene: to cleanse the town, the home and the mind, a threat to be exterminated as decisively as the insects populating Blue Velvet. In accordance with 80s economic ideology, the first battle for social redemption is within the family.

In the interests of 'surrealism', Blue Velvet preys upon infantile anxieties and adolescent fantasy. Complementing those mysterious noises that emanate from mommy and daddy's room, Lynch adds imagery redolent of animal sex: reminders of why parents hastily lead children to the next cage at the zoo. The voyeuristic Primal Scene that introduces Frank has been analysed to death elsewhere. His 'bad father' sadism usually garners the most attention, Dorothy's 'bad mother' masochism less so. Why does she accept her 'punishment' so willingly, even encouraging it from a reluctant Jeffery? Despite his wilful violation of patriarchal order, Jeffery is still presented as the 'innocent' throughout. His response to Dorothy's abuse is foregrounded, as much as his own beating is given greater narrative weight than the regular violence Dorothy is subjected to. Instead of punishment or condemnation, his voyeurism is rewarded with a plot device familiar from any number of porno films - the virginal peeping tom 'punished' with fellatio (sex-with-stepmother also being a porno staple). Even the first-time viewer knows that the castrating knife she holds won't be used - being more of a Hollywood taboo than incest, or sexual violence encouraged by its victims. Jeffrey's position in the fairy tale (as son, as 'apprentice') allows for a license that Dorothy can't claim. 

Sex without family is presented as the instincts of beasts, like the snarling dog or writhing insects of the opening scenes. As much as Back To The Future, Blue Velvet is very much concerned with 'taming' female sexuality. The casting of glamorous Isabella Rossellini, her relative youth compared to Hopper (or even the man playing her husband) throws her into the thankless position of mother as sexual being without domestic purpose; a guilt that seems to haunt Dorothy until the film's final shot. As with Back To The Future's Leah Thompson, she is written and played as more sexual (and disturbingly sexy) than the protagonist's 'real' girlfriend. Marty's mother's desire is subject to the demands of narrative and biological destiny (he has to procure the Primal Scene to exist). As 'mother', Dorothy bears the brunt of punishment, for the absence of supposedly stabilising influences of husband and child (whose hat, fascinating to Jeffery, could be read in similar terms to the severed ear, as severed/castrated from patriarchal coherence). Although Dorothy is often described as a 'femme fatale', Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Bennett were never this willingly victimised; but then 40s noir rarely added 'failed' motherhood to its locus of betrayals (a notable exception being Mildred Pierce). Their characters also had a far greater role in manipulating events, a luxury brutally denied to Dorothy.

Lynch's highly acclaimed career would continue in a similar vein, with stories of women in trouble. The look and manner of his heroines echoing a re-imagined 50s, their agonies and mutilations a punishment for 'modern' sexual transgression. Even TV's Twin Peaks sold itself with the fetishised image of a young girl's corpse. Its film spin-off gloated upon the torture that led her there. The actions of Lynch's abusive father figures or murderous cuckolds are frequently explained away by a supernatural presence (deus ex machina as convenient as the Force, Superman's time-reversal, or opening the Lost Ark). Zemeckis would go on to be one of the most financially successful directors of all time, notably with Forest Gump: a celebration of political ignorance and revisionism, with historical punishment for counter-cultural discontent, particularly for women. The mid-80s may be the turning point where the Hollywood blockbuster and American 'art' cinema found a common ideological ground. As 'independent' film increasingly become an exercise in style and pastiche, it was a decade in which the post-modern condition closed the gap between notions of art and commerce, mainstream and counter-culture; all under the vigilant watch of neoliberal hegemony. Although social reality continued to move further away from domestic idealisation, American film pushed the family fairy tale as the only social 'unity' worth working towards. As with the 80s police procedural or war film, father knew best again. Hollywood made fundamental demands of faith from an increasingly juvenile audience. 

Reagan and Bush I were fans of Back To The Future, both citing it in speeches (the murderous presence of "Libyan terrorists" probably helped). Its idyllic treatment of the 50s, with a previously irreversible outcome available for correction and revision (history be damned!), had obvious Republican appeal. This attitude was even apparent in the making of the film: "We decided to shoot all the 50s stuff first, and make the town look real beautiful and wonderful. Then we would just totally trash it down and make it all bleak and ugly for the 1980s scenes." However, lifelong Republican Lynch's (very 50s) Lumberton sees its nocturnal, inarticulate inner city 'cleansed' by suburban outsiders; as Jeffrey's righteous resolve kicks in when Dorothy's violated, naked body 'violates' the wholesome space of his idyllic, retro suburb. It is also a journey to the new Morning in America; the restored strength of the white bourgeois family to which both films awake at the end, in blinding sunshine. A gentrification of the soul. Although some ambiguity persists (for the benefit of sequels... or critics), memories of urban degradation, sexual transgression or moral failure are conveniently devoured by the Law, nature (the robins), science (time travel) and right-wing family values. The patriarchal family is not only consolidated, but enhanced. 

For all the contradictory impulses and sexual dread of their protagonists, both films' denouements come after the most American of solutions. As manipulated by Marty, George McFly earns the right to be a father (the right father) as his trembling hands transform into well-timed, well-aimed fists (at a dance event called 'Enchantment Under The Sea', emphasising the fairy-tale Freudianism). With this, the family rapidly fading from Marty's photograph returns to visibility and future invincibility. Jeffrey enters sexual maturity (exiting the 'dark underbelly' of moral and sexual confusion) by blowing out the brains of the obscene dad of nightmare; and with that blowing out the 'dark' side of himself, foreshadowing Fight Club years later. This time the camera emerges from an ear free of insects and mutilation. Oedipus has completed his journey with both eyes intact. Initially meek, our suburban mother fuckers have enforced the Law; using the last resort of all politics, sexual, domestic or otherwise. Rescued from sexual coercion from 'undesirable' elements, both mothers return to their rightful role in the magic kingdom, after male violence is placed in the 'right' hands. If both films are about entry into (and escape from) dream worlds, it is physical force that has final say before the family can return to an acceptably altered reality: The 80s version of the American Dream.

Tech Noir Sex

Sexuality as the mediated, oppressive, conscious contagion attacking personal agency, biology and ontology. Subject to deception, technology, ideology and social stratification (The Law being as un/dead as Bela Lugosi). Subcultural neuroses that would eventually become common parlance, and then repackaged accordingly. AIDS was beginning to be diagnosed around the same time, but wasn't a mainstream panic until the middle of the decade. If sci-fi/horror's nightmares don't exist at its time of writing, it may be necessary to invent them shortly after.

All the above are cult classics, highly influential in their respective (sub)genres. 'Sleeper' hits that took years to grow an audience (or canonization for Blade Runner), their motifs moving across fashion, adverts, pop videos, and product design, ie. everywhere. A virus of the pleasure principle. Away from the peer pressures of cinema viewing, the lonely - guilty? - space of home video gave these films room to gestate. The lifestyles, behaviour and economic conditions of their characters now appear far less alien than they did in 1982/83. We may be more alienated than these doom-mongers could forecast. Consider the shape Cafe Videodrome has taken since, and your statistical likelihood of surveying either (a) a corporate-led social network, or (b) pornography shortly after looking at this blog. All those immaterial encounters... like tears in the rain...