The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was the decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on 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 40.4 million people (as of 2022). Global warming theory began to spread within 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.
Glasnost (/ˈɡlæznɒst/GLAZ-nost; Russian: гласность, IPA:[ˈɡlasnəsʲtʲ]ⓘ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissibility of hushing up problems. In Russian, the word glasnost has long been used to mean 'openness' and 'transparency'. In the mid-1980s, it was popularised by Mikhail Gorbachev as a political slogan for increased government transparency in the Soviet Union within the framework of perestroika, and the calque of the word entered into English in the latter meaning. (Full article...)
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, film producer, and philanthropist. Known as "the Voice", she is one of the most awarded entertainers and one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales of over 220 million records worldwide. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts and her performances influenced the breaking down of gender and racial barriers, as well as popular culture. Known for her vocal delivery and distinctive timbre, Houston was ranked second by Rolling Stone on its list of the greatest singers of all time. Her life and career have been the subject of multiple documentaries and television specials.
Image 4Stage 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 10The 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)
Image 13The 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)
Walt Disney planned to put the story in a proposed package film containing Andersen's stories, but scrapped the project. In 1985, while working on The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Clements and Musker decided to adapt the fairy tale and proposed it to Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who initially declined due to its similarities to a proposed sequel to the 1984 film Splash, but ultimately approved of it. Ashman became involved and brought in Menken. With supervision from Katzenberg, they made a Broadway-style structure with musical numbers as the staff was working on Oliver & Company (1988). Katzenberg warned that the film would earn less since it appealed to female viewers, but he eventually became convinced that it would be Disney's first blockbuster hit. (Full article...)
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...)
The story is a tale of redemption for paroled convict Jake and his blood brother Elwood, who set out on "a mission from God" to prevent the foreclosure of the Roman Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. To do so, they must reunite their R&B band and organize a performance to earn the $5,000 needed to pay the orphanage's property tax bill. Along the way, they are targeted by a homicidal "mystery woman", neo-Nazis, and a country and western band—all while being relentlessly pursued by the police. (Full article...)
Set in rural Yorkshire during the summer of 1920, the film follows a destitute World War I veteran employed to carry out restoration work on a Medieval mural discovered in a rural church while coming to terms with the after-effects of the war. (Full article...)
Gale and Zemeckis conceived the idea for Back to the Future in 1980. They were desperate for a successful film after numerous collaborative failures, but the project was rejected more than forty times by various studios because it was not considered raunchy enough to compete with the successful comedies of the era. A development deal was secured with Universal Pictures following Zemeckis's success directing Romancing the Stone (1984). Fox was the first choice to portray Marty but was unavailable; Eric Stoltz was cast instead. Shortly after principal photography began in November 1984, Zemeckis determined Stoltz was not right for the part and made the concessions necessary to hire Fox, including re-filming scenes already shot with Stoltz and adding $4million to the budget. Back to the Future was filmed in and around California and on sets at Universal Studios, and concluded the following April. (Full article...)
Harold Becker and David Lean were originally to direct before Spielberg came on board, initially as a producer for Lean. Spielberg was attracted to directing the film because of a personal connection to Lean's films and World War II topics. He considers it to be his most profound work on "the loss of innocence". The film received positive reviews, with praise towards Bale's performance, the cinematography, the visuals, Williams's score and Spielberg's direction. However, the film was not initially a commercial success, earning only $22 million at the US box office, although it eventually more than recouped its budget through revenues in foreign markets, home video, and television. (Full article...)
Not wishing to feature the Nazis as the villains again, executive producer and story writer George Lucas decided to regard this film as a prequel. Three plot devices were rejected before Lucas wrote a film treatment that resembled the final storyline. As Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas's collaborator on Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned down the offer to write the script, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who had previously worked with Lucas on American Graffiti (1973), were hired as his replacements. (Full article...)
Producer David De Silva conceived the premise in 1976, partially inspired by the musical A Chorus Line. He commissioned playwright Gore to write the script, originally titled Hot Lunch, before selling it to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). After he was hired to direct the film, Parker rewrote the script with Gore, aiming for a darker and more dramatic tone. The script's subject matter received criticism by the New York Board of Education, which prevented the production from filming in the actual High School of Performing Arts. The film was shot on location in New York City, with principal photography beginning in July 1979 and concluding after 91 days. Parker encountered a difficult filming process, which included conflicts with U.S. labor unions over various aspects of the film's production. (Full article...)
Kids Can Say No!, stylized as Kids Can Say No, is a 1985 Britishshorteducational film produced and directed by Jessica Skippon and written by Anita Bennett. It is intended to teach children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be sexually abused, how to escape such situations, and how to get help if they are abused. In the film, Australian celebrity Rolf Harris is in a park with a group of four children and tells them about proper and improper physical intimacy, which he calls "yes" and "no" feelings. The film has four role-playing scenes in which children encounter paedophiles, with Harris and the children discussing each scene.
Harris said that he came up with the idea for the film on a 1982 Canadian tour when he saw Vancouver's Green Thumb Theatre production of Feeling Yes, Feeling No, a play about child sexual abuse. Kids Can Say No!, released in October 1985 on VHS in the United Kingdom, was the first British children's film about sexual abuse and was purchased by police forces, educational institutions, and libraries across Europe. Upon the film's release, The Times obtained opinions from four sexual-abuse experts, who unanimously opposed using Kids Can Say No! or any other film to teach children about the subject. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation received a positive response to its 1988 broadcast of Kids Can Say No! and therefore broadcast it a second time that year. Harris and Skippon collaborated on the 1986 sequel Beyond the Scare, which advises teachers about what to do if a child discloses abuse. Showings of Kids Can Say No! eventually decreased as VHS became less popular in favour of DVD-Video in the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s. (Full article...)
Filmed on location in and around New Orleans in late 1980 with assistance from the Louisiana Film Commission, additional photography took place at De Paolis Studios in Rome. Released theatrically in Italy in the spring of 1981, The Beyond did not see a North American release until late 1983 through Aquarius Releasing, which released an edited version of the film titled 7 Doors of Death; this version featured an entirely different musical score and ran several minutes shorter than Fulci's original cut, and was branded a "video nasty" immediately upon its release in the United Kingdom. The original version of the film saw its first United States release in September 1998 through a distribution partnership between Rolling Thunder Pictures, Grindhouse Releasing, and Cowboy Booking International. (Full article...)
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...)
You are invited to participate in WikiProject Years, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about years, decades, centuries, and millennia.