Anthropocene nostalgia for the 1980s in Netflix’s Stranger Things

Expressions of nostalgia for the 1980s in contemporary American culture are diverse. The most interesting of them go beyond a wistful longing for the past. A complex ‘nostalgia trip’ offered by Netflix’s Stranger Things serves as a notable case study of a distinctive type of this sentiment. Instead of yearning for the restoration of previous times, it plays with past aesthetics in a critically articulate manner, effectively demythologizing the depicted decade. I argue that this significant alteration of the traditional sentiment stems largely from the recent acknowledgment of the Anthropocene and its irreversibility. This article aims to examine the peculiar, self-aware, paradoxical nostalgia, which is coloured by the current, Anthropocene-induced fears for the environment and, thus, our future. The analysis of Stranger Things – its thematics, genre, visuals and the meticulously reconstructed image of the presented era – draws parallels to the techniques employed by the ‘novel nostalgia’: bitter, ironic depiction of the past and references to natural phenomena. The study thus investigates the show at the intersection of contemporary nostalgia for the 1980s and the cultural repercussions of the Anthropocene. In so doing, it will unravel the innovation in the programme’s discourse on the 1980s decade in American culture.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out: Political Horror, Dawn Keetley (ed.) (2020)

Review of: Jordan Peele’s Get Out: Political Horror, Dawn Keetley (ed.) (2020) Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 254 pp., ISBN 978-0-81425-580-3, h/bk £98.95, p/bk £29.95

Fashioning masculine anxieties: Clothes and style in The Bonfire of the Vanities

This article is a broad-spectrum exploration of the reconciliations between fashion choices and masculine anxieties in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. It traces the complex processes where the socially stratified worlds of the male characters are configured, especially through the tropes of clothes and lifestyle. The American 1980s, in times of Reaganomics, are understood as a period of excess, social mores and ‘bigness’. This is reflected in the operatic style of Bonfire, which offers a social critique of New York City in the 1980s. Wolfe’s dispassionate gaze takes in the excesses of the Reagan era, all the time exploring the relationship between men’s clothing and New York City. The central premise of the article pivots on performing masculinity through the 1980s menswear, where garments and lifestyle choices acquire specific meanings as indexes of class, vanity, individuality, identity and social mobility. The focus is on the three masculine protagonists at the forefront, but there are also glancing references to other secondary characters. Fashion, within the scope of this article, is based on the explorations of dress, clothes and style, rather than catwalk.

Why Reagan was not impeached

In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution, and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public trust and respect for American political institutions.

Real men don’t eat quiche, do they?: Food, fitness and masculinity crisis in 1980s America

Written for laughs in 1982, Bruce Feirstein’s Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: A Guidebook to All that Is Truly Masculine hit a real and raw nerve among American men. Beneath its jokes, the book documented a moment of 1980s gender crisis that pitted older constellations of masculinity against ‘the new man’. This article analyses how Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche and its cookbook sequel communicated this gender anxiety through food and the body specifically, considering the context of the Cold War, notable transitions in nutrition science and policy, and period food and fitness trends. Although many readers today may not know the origin of Feirstein’s book’s titular phrase, notions of ‘real men’ and gendered food still have cultural endurance, often deployed as a shorthand for hegemonic gender norms that pose destructive consequences 40 years later.

Popular Modernism and Its Legacies: From Pop Literature to Video Games, Scott Ortolano (2018)

Review of: Popular Modernism and Its Legacies: From Pop Literature to Video Games, Scott Ortolano (2018) New York: Bloomsbury Academic, xi + 277 pp., ISBN 978-1-50132-511-3, h/bk, £100.00, p/bk £29.99

Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear, Victoria McCollum (ed.) (2019)

Review of: Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear, Victoria McCollum (ed.) (2019) New York: Routledge, 230 pp., ISBN 978-1-13849-828-0, h/bk, £120, ISBN 978-0-36772-745-1, p/bk, £36.99

Fit to be president: William Howard Taft, sports and athleticism

The early twentieth century was a time when the US public consciousness recognized an increasing association between their political leaders and sports and athleticism. With an exceptional precedent for this connection set by Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09), his replacement as US president would inevitably find it hard to keep pace. In the modern-day popular consciousness, Roosevelt’s immediate successor, William Howard Taft (1909–13), is often noted more for his obesity than for his physical athleticism or sporting prowess. Yet, as this article shows, as Taft moved closer to the White House, the contemporary US press increasingly associated him with sports, and at least the pursuit of physical fitness. In a post-Rooseveltian America, a rise to national political prominence demanded a portrayal of a president’s links to sports and athleticism, even in the unlikeliest of candidates.