I’m a product of the 1980s, having lived through about half the decade (oops…did I just date myself?!?). Naturally, I was intrigued when I read a review in Buffalo News of David Sirota’s Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now…
Buffalo & Erie County Libraries have multiple copies available, but I was wait listed. When it was my turn to check out an almost-hot-off-the-press copy, I was excited to delve in. What I expected was a recollection of the 80s I remember: Atari, InTelevision, Commodore 64, Apple IIe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Saturday morning cartoons, LEGOs, big hair, "Full House," the USSR…I could go on.
What I got was a deep and dark political analysis of the 1980s worldview and how the 1990s and 2000s grew out of this monster. Essentially from this Huffington Post contributor, it's a chance to posthumously bash Ronald Reagan. Sirota reconstructs how each decade roughly from the 1950s through the 1980s shaped successive mindsets prevalent in our politics, our wars, our media even to this day. While intriguing at times, his writing can get needlessly complex and heavy (read: hard to stay awake through).
One of the things I hoped for was thorough treatment of 1980s pop culture. That was one area Sirota did not disappoint, analyzing everything from Rambo, to Red Dawn, to E.T. and continuing on through popular television.
In fact, it’s 1980s TV that defines the last segment of Sirota’s work, aptly named “The Huxtable effect” after the fictional African American family of “Cosby Show” fame. Here Sirota dives head-first into the thorny issue of racism. He writes as an extreme advocate for all minority groups, of which he’s not a member of (judging by the dust jacket photo, he’s a regular white American male). Perhaps most shocking in today’s politically correct and ultra-sensitive world, he’s not afraid to bare the n-word in all six letters.
What does Sirota want? He seems to call out everything that he finds wrong with the 80s. Does he want an extreme-left nation? How do we deal with prejudice in our society? The fact is people have differences. Long on criticism, Sirota is short on solutions.
But I’m not here to totally bash Sirota's work. It’s cumbersome to read at times. It definitely doesn’t resonate with my personal politics. But perhaps I just didn’t get what I expected from this 1980s analysis. I wanted to read in depth about the technology (80s technology fascinates me; so much of what we rely on today was given birth during the decade), media, pop culture, and Cold War (another era I’m fascinated by and subject of a term paper). It’s like ordering steak and instead getting chicken; not bad, just not what you expected. Conversely, reading about the advertising campaigns (particularly Nike’s Just Do It) and public relations of the 80s was very interesting to someone with a mar/com background.
Perhaps the best audience for Back to Our Future is someone who actually lived through the 1980s and is old enough to remember more of it. More of the politics, more of the Cold War fear, more of the Reagan…Maybe someone who was old enough to grow a mullet or big hair (or a nasty combo of the two?!). That reader would probably better relate to some of the heavy concepts discussed.
GET IT
Back to Our Future just came out and is very up to date. Buffalo & Erie County Libraries have copies available (get on that wait list now!) as do major booksellers.
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