How did the '80s become a punchline?

Today's opening of "MacGruber" -- which Karina Longworth's review clusters alongside "Hot Tub Time Machine" and "Cop Out" as movies whose primary subject is a decade's worth of pop culture rather than actual people -- confirms what we already knew: VH1's "I Love The 80s" was far, far more insidious³ than we figured.

Compare and contrast -- the trailers for "MacGruber" and "Hot Tub Time Machine" are below:

The '70s didn't suddenly see a big spate⁴ of films mocking the '50s, nor the '80s the '60s and so forth⁵. There is a joke in "Dazed and Confused" -- the only one that really guns for the low-hanging fruit -- where a character speculates on the rule of how every other decade is awesome⁶, and figures out since the '70s suck, maybe the '80s will be totally awesome. But that's about it.

That an entire decade's worth of pop culture is, in and of itself, a punchline, is new and unnerving. It's different from the numerous films taking old TV franchises⁷ as a starting point for a movie. The idea isn't playing with an established brand and resurrecting familiar images; it's toying with passed-down imagery as a joke whose currency is already established.

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The idea that changes in fashion (accessories, clothing, music, so on) automatically constitute hilarity⁸, then, is a special rule we've come up with for the '80s. Familiarity breeds contemptuous affection for a decade that's just stupid, which was VH1's whole premise⁹ -- mention just a title or name, then laugh away. What's unclear is whether thirtysomethings now getting to make their own movies will be able to sell that to kids too young to directly remember the '80s, those for whom the below montage conjures¹⁰ no nostalgia.

What really gives me pause is wondering whether this is a one-off or a harbinger of something more sinister¹¹. 20 years hence, will we be deluged¹² with movies portraying¹³ the aughts as a time of toxic¹⁴ smart-phone abuse, American Apparel and people writing their own Wikipedia entries? It's easy to reduce a decade to its pop-culture sound-bites and trend topics when you have no memory of being complicit with them. Sneering¹⁵ is easy, compassion¹⁶ is hard.

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