The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was the decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on December 31, 1989.
The decade saw a dominance of conservatism and free market economics, and a socioeconomic change due to advances in technology and a worldwide move away from planned economies and towards laissez-faire capitalism compared to the 1970s. As economic deconstruction increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. The AIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 40.4 million people (as of 2022[update]). Global warming theory began to spread within the scientific and political community in the 1980s.
The final decade of the Cold War opened with the US-Soviet confrontation continuing largely without any interruption. Superpower tensions escalated rapidly as President Reagan scrapped the policy of détente and adopted a new, much more aggressive stance on the Soviet Union. The world came perilously close to nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but the second half of the decade saw a dramatic easing of superpower tensions and ultimately the total collapse of Soviet communism.
Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the Live Aid concert in 1985.
By 1986, nationalism was making a comeback in the Eastern Bloc, and the desire for democracy in socialist states, combined with economic recession, resulted in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, which reduced Communist Party power, legalized dissent and sanctioned limited forms of capitalism such as joint ventures with companies from capitalist countries. After tension for most of the decade, by 1988 relations between the communist and capitalist blocs had improved significantly and the Soviet Union was increasingly unwilling to defend its governments in satellite states.
The 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing the 1970s and 1990s, and arguably being the largest in human history. During the 1980s, the world population grew from 4.4 to 5.3 billion people. There were approximately 1.33 billion births and 480 million deaths. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually. The 1980s saw the advent of the ongoing practice of sex-selective abortion in China and India as ultrasound technology permitted parents to selectively abort baby girls.
The 1980s saw great advances in genetic and digital technology. After years of animal experimentation since 1985, the first genetic modification of 10 adult human beings took place in May 1989, a gene tagging experiment which led to the first true gene therapy implementation in September 1990. The first "designer babies", a pair of female twins, were created in a laboratory in late 1989 and born in July 1990 after being sex-selected via the controversial assisted reproductive technology procedure preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Gestational surrogacy was first performed in 1985 with the first birth in 1986, making it possible for a woman to become a biological mother without experiencing pregnancy for the first time in history.
The global internet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many other computer networks of both academic and commercial use such as USENET, Fidonet, and the Bulletin Board System. By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in most developed countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwards Tim Berners-Lee formalized the concept of the World Wide Web by 1989. Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively.
... that according to one reviewer, the problems that may have prompted the publication of Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life in the 1980s had "only gotten worse" by 2005?
... that in the 1980s, international LGBT organizations organized protests in Europe and the Americas in support of Belgian teacher Eliane Morissens?
... that Japanese actress Junko Ikeuchi was known as the "Queen of TV Dramas" from the 1960s to the 1980s?
Ride was a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1973, a Master of Science degree in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978 (both in physics) for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium. She was selected as a mission specialist astronaut with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of NASA astronauts to include women. After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm. In June 1983, she flew in space on the Space ShuttleChallenger on the STS-7 mission. The mission deployed two communications satellites and the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1). Ride operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve SPAS-1. Her second space flight was the STS-41-G mission in 1984, also on board Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space. She left NASA in 1987. (Full article...)
Image 2The Grateful Dead in 1980. Left to right: Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh. Not pictured: Brent Mydland. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 11The world map of military alliances in 1980: NATO & Western allies, Warsaw Pact & other Soviet allies, Non-aligned countries, China and Albania (communist countries, but not aligned with USSR), ××× Armed resistance (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 12Stage view of the Live Aid concert at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium in the United States in 1985. The concert was a major global international effort by musicians and activists to sponsor action to send aid to the people of Ethiopia who were suffering from a major famine. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
Image 1
Americana is a 1981 American drama film starring, produced, edited and directed by David Carradine. The screenplay and story, written by Richard Carr, was based on a portion of the 1947 novel, The Perfect Round, by Henry Morton Robinson. The novel's setting was originally post-World War II, but the screenplay involved the post-war experiences of a Vietnam War veteran, obsessed with restoring an abandoned carousel.
In 1981, the film won The People's Choice Award at the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.[disputed – discuss] Financing the film himself, Carradine shot most of the footage for the film, which was co-produced by Skip Sherwood, in 1973 with a band of 26 people, mostly his family and friends, over the course of 18 days. Problems with financing and distribution kept the film from being released until 1983. The film was well received by audiences, but met with primarily negative criticism. (Full article...)
Image 2
Le Dernier Combat (French:[lədɛʁnjekɔ̃ba]; English: The Last Battle) is a 1983 French post-apocalyptic film. It was the first feature film to be directed by Luc Besson, and also features Jean Reno's first prominent role. Music for the film was composed by Éric Serra. The film was the first of many collaborations between Besson, Reno and Serra. A dark vision of post-apocalyptic survival, the film was shot in black and white and contains only two words of dialogue. It depicts a world where people have been rendered mute by some unknown incident. (Full article...)
Image 3
Jaws 3-D (titled Jaws III in its 2-D form) is a 1983 American horror film directed by Joe Alves and starring Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale and Louis Gossett Jr. It is the second sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws and the third installment in the Jaws franchise. The film follows the Brody children from the previous films to SeaWorld, a Florida marine park with underwater tunnels and lagoons. As the park prepares for opening, a young great white shark infiltrates the park from the sea, seemingly attacking and killing the park's employees. Once the shark is captured, it becomes apparent that a second, much larger shark also entered the park and was the real culprit.
The film made use of 3D during the revived interest in the technology in the 1980s, amongst other horror films such as Friday the 13th Part III and Amityville 3-D. Cinema audiences could wear disposable cardboard polarized 3D glasses to create the illusion that elements penetrate the screen. Several shots and sequences were designed to utilize the effect, such as the shark's destruction. Since 3D was ineffective in home viewing until the advent of 3D televisions in the late 2000s, the alternative title Jaws III is used for television broadcasts and home media. Jaws 3-D amassed commercial success but received overwhelmingly negative reviews, and was followed by Jaws: The Revenge in 1987,which retroactively ignores this film. (Full article...)
Image 4
Mr. India is a 1987 Indian Hindi-language superhero film directed by Shekhar Kapur and produced jointly by Boney Kapoor and Surinder Kapoor under the Narsimha Enterprises banner. The story and screenplay was written by the duo Salim–Javed in what was their last collaboration before their split. Starring Anil Kapoor, Sridevi, and Amrish Puri, the film tells the story of Arun Verma (Kapoor), a humble violinist and philanthropist who receives a cloaking device that grants him invisibility. While renting out his house to pay his debts, he meets the journalist Seema Sahni (Sridevi) and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, the criminal Mogambo (Puri) has plans to conquer India.
After watching his previous directorial venture Masoom, a 1983 family drama about children, Boney Kapoor approached Kapur to make another film with similar themes. Principal photography, handled by Baba Azmi, took place in Srinagar, Mumbai, and other locations in India, starting in July 1985, and finished after 350 days. Laxmikant–Pyarelal composed the soundtrack, while Akhtar wrote the lyrics. After filming ended, Waman Bhonsle and Gurudutt Shirali jointly edited it; Peter Pereira completed the special effects. (Full article...)
The story is a tale of redemption for paroled convict Jake and his blood brother Elwood, who set out on "a mission from God" to prevent the foreclosure of the Roman Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. To do so, they must reunite their R&B band and organize a performance to earn the $5,000 needed to pay the orphanage's property tax bill. Along the way, they are targeted by a homicidal "mystery woman", neo-Nazis, and a country and western band—all while being relentlessly pursued by the police. (Full article...)
The film was first completed in 1975 as a live-action/animated film, in which only the main characters were animated and the rest were portrayed by live actors, but the film's release was pushed back, and later postponed indefinitely. Warner Bros. claimed that this version of the film was unsatisfactory; concerns about the backlash against Coonskin were also cited. (Full article...)
Image 8
Begotten is a 1989 American experimentalsilenthorror film written, directed, and produced by E. Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsberg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Theatreofmaterial, Merhige's theatre company. Its unconventional narrative depicts the suicide of a godlike figure and the resulting births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey across a barren landscape. The film does not contain dialogue, and its visual style evokes early silent films.
Following publication of the novel, Hjortsberg began developing the screenplay for a film adaptation, but found that no major studio was willing to produce his script. The project resurfaced in 1985, when producer Elliott Kastner brought the book to Parker's attention. Parker began work on a new script and in doing so made several changes from Hjortsberg's novel. He also met with Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna, who agreed to finance the $18 million production through their independent film studio Carolco Pictures. Filming took place on location in New York and New Orleans, with principal photography lasting from March 1986 to June of that year. (Full article...)
It premiered on the CBC in 1984 and was later broadcast on American Playhouse in 1985. The film received mixed reception from critics. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was featured in the eighth-season finale episode of the comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1997. (Full article...)
Set in rural Yorkshire during the summer of 1920, the film follows a destitute World War I veteran employed to carry out restoration work on a Medieval mural discovered in a rural church while coming to terms with the after-effects of the war. (Full article...)
The Killer (Chinese: 喋血雙雄) is a 1989 Hong Kong action film directed and written by John Woo and produced by Tsui Hark. The film stars Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee and Sally Yeh. Chow plays Ah Jong, a professional assassin for the Triads who wants to retire, who accidentally damages the eyes of singer Jennie (Yeh) during a shootout and sets out to perform one last hit for her treatment.
After the financial backing from Hark became problematic following the release of Woo's film A Better Tomorrow 2, Woo had to find backing through Chow Yun-fat's and Danny Lee's financing companies. Woo went into filming The Killer with a rough draft whose plot was influenced by the films Le Samouraï, Mean Streets and Narazumono. Woo wanted to make a film about honour, friendship and the relationship of two seemingly opposite people. After finishing filming, Woo referred to The Killer as a tribute to directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Martin Scorsese. (Full article...)
You are invited to participate in WikiProject Years, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about years, decades, centuries, and millennia.