80's Chapter Summaries

Final Response Paper

The Eighties overall is a great book that covers many factors of what is now society, it gives a brief but very deep explanation of things which I really enjoyed. The information it gave me was enough to become informed about certain topics and also to creating some curiosity about such an interesting and developing decade. Every chapter of the book was interesting, however the one that most caught my attention was Chapter Four, “Popular Culture and the Culture Wars.” We live in a culture where technology is one of the most important factors and it was extremely interesting for me to read a whole chapter about innovations that happened in the 80’s. Significant developments that were introduced during this time that were
the common ground for innovations that we have now.
“Few decades can top the 1980s in the changes that took place in the field of consumer electronics and popular culture.
Astonishing new devices transformed the way people related television, music, movies and their workplaces.”(Chapter 4) After reading this chapter I am really convinced of the importance of the 80’s in American history. Not only in politics but also in social life. The 80’s forms that common ground for most of American’s innovations and ideas. It was the beginning of a new life, a new set of ideas and devices. The description of the past social processes described in this chapter helped me understand American history and how closed minded our society was at one point. I almost see it as if the American society lived in a cave for so many years until the 1980’s came along with all these new ideas and developments.
This chapter did shed light on the social constructs of gender. I was able to realize this when reading about Madonna she was such a character in the 1980’s, her overt displays of female sexuality elicited condemnation from social conservatives and many times put her in the center of culture wars over this time. Not everyone saw her, as a bad image though, there was also those who applauded its portrait of a sexually empowered
woman.
Another topic mentioned in this chapter that I found interesting is the power and determination the PMRC had. The power relations that characterized this group were important in my opinion. Although their concerned bugged many I think it was necessary, you would really have to be the parent to understand this. Personally, I believe this was so important at this time because our society was just being welcomed into a new world with a lot more opened minds and ideas.
In this chapter I learned how most of the craft in history happened during the 1980’s or at least this was the beginning of it. Capturing the beauty, creativity and originality of craftsmanship all began to happen during this time. The film highlights artists and the inter-relationship of what they do, how they do it and why they have chosen a life of creating art all was explained during this era. The author did a wonderful job interpreting the meaning of the events covered. Every main idea that he gave was followed by a variety of supporting details like statistics that helped me as the reader understand what he was trying to communicate to me. The way the author interpreted the meaning of events really helped gain a clear understanding of what they were and how they contributed to America’s history. His language is academic at the same time that it is simple enough to understand every concept he describes. In my view the author is a great writer, the quotation I decided to analyze is absolutely amazing. Well it ties the whole chapter into one right at the beginning of the chapter which helps the reader feel more at ease, this is a great technique from the author in my opinion and demonstrates his talent.
From this chapter I can really say the author is very well informed of this time frame and the details that occurred within this time. He used statistics, which shows me as the reader that he really wants me to get something out of this reading; he must have used a lot of sources to write this chapter and have all these concrete stats. As I said before every argument the author makes in the book matches and is followed by evidence and sources that add a whole lot of credibility to the writing. Overall the whole reading of this book was something completely new to me, although I did know some of this stuff already the interested in learning more about the eighties had not occurred in my person until after reading this and realizing there is a lot more to what we know and traditional textbooks teach us.