When 12yo and I happen to see some old video from my formative years, I often have to just shake my head and say, "Honey, the 80's were a dark time in America. I can't talk about it." How do you explain Men Without Hats? Yes, we thought that was cool at the time. They had the Safety Dance, the girl, the midget...they were Canadian. Canadians were cool. We thought Reagan was gonna blow us all us any second. We grasped at straws.
I see the 80's coming back in 12yo and her friends these days, in their music certainly. The politics are the same but magnified, and the music is just as bleak, just as dystopian. (Gorrilaz, the Killers) The Killers, especially, are space without use. I've heard a bit of their music, which is standard rock-pop. They look like 80's refugees, heavy on the eyeliner and mascara. But their lyrics...they're more apt to disdain poverty, or command a homeless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps than show any empathy. The lead singer is in a feud with another band for their (in his opinion) unpatriotic lyrics. The Killers have put blind nationalism into a counter-culture package.
I wonder sometimes, what she will say to her kids about now. It's a dark time. How will she explain us to the next generation?