America in the 1980s

Lesson Goals: To understand the social context of Batman

1989 and consider the impact this had on the film

The decade of Me!Me!Me!

• The 1980s became the Me!Me!Me! generation of status seekers

• Catch phrases ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’, ‘You can have it all!’, ‘Shop til you drop’.

• According to Tom Wolfe the baby-boomer generation became the ‘splurge generation’

• Binge buying (labels) and credit became the new way of life

The Business world• Wall Street – ‘Greed is Good’.• Hostile Takeovers, Leveraged buyouts and mega mergers

spawned a new breed of billionaires (Donald Trump) at the expense of ‘mom and pop’ trader

• Insider trading scandals were common (Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken)

• A study by UCLA and the American Council on Education indicated that college freshmen were more interested in status, power and money than at any time during the last 15 years

• Business Management was the most popular Major

Fads, Fashion and Lifestyle

• As incomes climbed by more than 20% consumerism dominated –’Keeping up with the Jones’

• Opulent clothing styles (designers like Calvin Klein and Donna Karan) based on Princess Di and Nancy Reagan (power dressing). Madonna was influential on the young.

• Image became extremely important – tanning salons, plastic surgery, and cosmetic products boomed like never before

• Vogue - Madonna

Literature

• The most popular genre was legal thrillers (Tom Clancy)

• But George Orwell's 1984 was also penned at this time

• Best selling non fiction books: The Beverly Hills Diet, Richard Simmons’ Never Say Diet Book, Trump – Surviving at the Top, Iacocca – An autobiography

Art and Architecture

• The 80’s were a huge decade for the Arts.• Artist were experimenting with new forms and

pushing traditional boundaries• Art work became status symbols and fetched

record prices (eg Sunflowers by Van Gogh $39.9m)

Crime

• Prisons over flowed and violent crime rates tripled.

• Crack cocaine appeared in 1985 and the growth in crime was seen as clearly linked to this

• Cocaine addiction rose by 35% between 1985 – 1990.

Batman is a reaction and a mirror for American society at this time

• How?

How?

• The Joker comes from big business – the greatest evil of the time

• He attacks the beauty industry – he is a psychotic plastic surgeon, chooses to attack people via beauty products, makes a mockery of the beauty ideal (Jerry Hall)

• Uses money to con the people of Gotham• Destroys art work • Drug addicts scare people in the city• Crime is everywhere (think about the death of The

Wayne’s) – they need Batman.• Even the police are corrupt, driven by money and wealth

What makes a good essay?

• Read the two past answers. One scored 27/40 and the other got 36/40

• What makes a good essay?

Essay Question

• How useful have your wider contextual studies been in understanding similarities and differences in the American films you have studied for this topic?

• Plan using Batman ( you will cover Dark Knight later with Miss T)