Michael Grasso is a senior editorat We Are the Mutants, a web magazine that analyzes the pop and underground culture of the Cold War era.
The pro-Trump Zoomer sees the 2020s as a degenerate age and the ’80s as a time when men were men. It’s why their homemade videos are filled with VHS scan lines, old Gillette commercials, and Van Halen’s “Jump.”
At the heart of the US-Japanese franchise Transformers is a tension between visions of robotics as liberation and as enslavement.
As economic crisis grew in the 1970s, the government launched a sprawling campaign to enlist everyday Americans in a fight against inflation. But the last four decades have soured the public on such calls for self-sacrifice — and for good reason.
American TV once threatened to become radical and strange through the proliferation of local stations. But it wouldn’t be allowed to last.
The “union label” ads of the 1970s are a reminder of how labor tried and eventually failed to win a battle for the airwaves.
The “Just Say No” campaign is remembered today for the huge quantity of kitsch media it produced, like McGruff the Crime Dog. But the campaign was based on the psychological warfare techniques of the Cold War.
As the Reagan era kicked into overdrive, Americans abandoned earthy and organic home decor to turn their residences into cold, sleek totems to upper-class aspiration.
The TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous inaugurated an era when the ruling class was there to be envied more than to be abolished.