A Tag for the ‘80s? Let’s Wait ‘Em Out

Elizabeth Dobbs of Vista wonders what name will be given to the 1980s. From what she reads, she believes it will be known as the decade of the yuppies and striving for material success.

It seems a bit early to be naming the ‘80s. We have about a year and a half to go. The century will not end until Dec. 31, 2000; but the ‘80s will end at midnight Dec. 31, 1989.

I was bemused when the cover story of Newsweek’s first issue of 1988 arbitrarily proclaimed the end of the decade: “The ‘80s Are Over: Greed Goes Out of Style.” It said the ‘80s finally collapsed with the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987.

Not only did that announcement seem recklessly premature, but I was also not convinced that greed had been the definitive trait of the ‘80s, nor that it was necessarily going out of style.

Excusing itself for ending the decade so abruptly, Newsweek said, “Decades are not a function of calendar time. They are trends, values and associations, bundled up and tied together in the national memory. . . .”

OK. Some major event may put its stamp on a whole decade, obliterating the frivolities and minor obsessions that beguile us. We have recently seen a revival of interest in the fads of the ‘50s--the hula hoop, tail fins, drive-ins and early rock ‘n’ roll. Sounds like fun. The fun ‘50s.

But what about McCarthyism? The Cold War? Little Rock? Sputnik? And the phenomenal spread of television? (By 1959 there were 50 million sets in American homes.) The Space Age, and the age of communications had dawned. Yet the images we most easily remember from the ‘50s are Elvis Presley and tail fins.

Some decades are dominated by certain events. The 1770s was the decade of revolution; the 1860s was the decade of Civil War; the Spanish American War was the geopolitical event of the 1890s, but that was also the decade of scientific discovery and invention: radio, the automobile, the movie camera, the Zeppelin, X-rays, the electron, radium, and radioactivity. Yet we remember it as the decade of Lillian Russell and Broadway--the Gay ‘90s.

Queen Victoria reluctantly gave the first decade of the 1900s its name by dying on Jan. 22, 1901, exactly 22 days into the 20th Century. Society eagerly embraced the fun-loving King Edward VII and gave his name to that elegant era. Edward gracefully died soon after 1910 began, thus disassociating his name from the terrible events of that decade.

Perhaps everyone’s favorite decade, purely as nostalgia, is the 1920s--the Jazz Age. Short skirts, cloche hats, the Charleston, hip flasks, speak-easies, Fords and Stutz Bearcats, raccoon coats, Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong, the cocktail, Emily Post, Jack Dempsey, T. S. Eliot, George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Barney Google,” “Tea for Two,” and “Yes, We Have No Bananas!” And Calvin Coolidge summed it up: “The business of America is business.”

Newsweek may be right in saying the the 1980s ended on Oct. 19, 1987, with the collapse of the Dow; because the 1920s ended prematurely with the crash of Oct. 28, 1929.

The 1930s are better not talked about. Depression suppressed joy around the world, and the Nazis killed what was left of it.

Obviously World War II was the dominant fact of the 1940s, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki perhaps should be separated from the war itself, since they altered forever the nature of war and launched the nuclear age.

Except for civil rights gains, the 1960s and 1970s were too unspeakable to mention.

I still think that Newsweek closed off the 1980s too soon. Some cataclysmic event may yet define this decade in a way the yuppies and the inside traders haven’t done.

Who knows? We may yet have the nuclear holocaust, though the chances for avoiding it seem better than they have in the past 40 years. We may even have international sanity and peace, though the chances for that are about as good as Shirley MacLaine’s chances of dying and coming back as Thomas Jefferson.

A distinguished UCLA historian once told me, “No historian would like to have lived in an earlier age.”

So let’s make the most of what we have left in the 1980s. It may be the best of times.