… into the discussion are you just using them as a way of marking time instead of years (like using reigns of Kings or Emperors), are you saying it was a kinder, simpler time before those leaders caused the change, or perhaps the culture changed and picked the leaders?
I am no fan of dictators, or presidents and prime ministers that attempted to dismantle and privatize necessary government institutions (in my opinion), but I am sure your phrase is a message. Collecting that lot together is probably a message in and of itself. What is it?
I might’ve stuck with the wasn’t it cool, why didn’t it stay that way, how do we recover that approach and attitude, but you have got the bully pulpit here.
He’s referring to a regressive-conservative sea-change that occured in the 1980s, rolling back the clock on gains made for women’s and gay rights in the 1970s, as well as a host of other social issues.
Yeah, it’s a shortcut for the change in the time-period. We tend to point at the leaders, since naming every inhabitant of those countries is somewhat more difficult.
I’m kinda more with @hhype here that it was a bully pulpit move. I say that based on the writer’s history. It would have been just as easy to point to a calendar date to discuss nostalgia than to unnecessarily politicize an ad for an entertainment product. In any case, al pasts are “lost” and crying about it does nothing for the present.
For those alive at the time it speaks just as much without editorializing. Readers are free to blame politicians of course but that ignores the fact that someone elected those politicians after all.
Perhaps I disagree with that last part. Of course I screwed up the discussion by pointing it out.
Back to - wasn’t this ad cool, I wish it would’ve stayed that way (or even represented the reality of the time) and I hope we continue moving to a state where anyone can and does play whatever creative role-playing/dice-based/computer/fantasy (both literary and sport)/other games there are out there without a perception that certain things have the perception of being gender, race, orientation, or other quality specific…
Not all of us feel that feminist perspectives on cultural change are unnecessary. If you feel that politics should not be brought into discussions of culture, then BoingBoing is probably not the place for you.
Today, people of the age in the photograph would have been born since 2000.
1980 is as distant from us today, as WWII was in 1980. It’s ancient history. In 1980, I thought hippies were ancient history (I was born in 1970).
I was talking to my wife about this last night, how the birth of techno-rave is just about as far away from us now than the music of the late-60s was when I was in college (88-92). To me, Front 242 (Tyranny For You and prior) still sounds like the future. But I’m just another techno-hippie wearing a zoot-suit and trying to hold on to a mythical golden age.
Context helps others, sometimes. Even if it is editorialized – but again, I believe this image was posted as an editorial.
@zikzak I don’t think @Israel_B is opposed to those things; I just think he’s opposed to soap-boxery in all spheres. We’re arguing about place-and-time (of content), not the content itself.
You raise an interesting point but possibly that actually re-enforces my idea that this was more than needed since for those born since 2000 this presents one political view rather than explains history.
Oddly enough I listened to that album just recently and didn’t experience nostalgia or a sense of excitement at all. I wondered why it didn’t move me at all any more, in fact it required effort for me not to just stop the music and make it to the end. Other music from my past still does for me but honestly I kinda cringe at the techno-rave futurism now. I’m just a couple years older than you BTW.
I guess the problem here is me myself. I’ve hit the overflow point with editorial lately on all fronts. Somehow it just feels like I’m being told from all directions that I’m just not a true Scotsman after all.
Well, since you so clearly know the writer’s goals best, it logically follows that you would know what is and isn’t necessary to arrive at the goal you set for them!
Entirely correct. I don’t oppose the broad spectrum of feminism or the historical fact of cultural change. To do either would be as pointless as Xerxes having the waves whipped or King Kanut ordering the tides to stop coming in.
This I think would be a more fair observation for some cultural artifacts, but growing up in the 1980s I remember clearly that D&D playing actually was a heavily politicized phenomenon even at the time. I even just watched a police training video this week from around 1990 warning parents to watch out for D&D as a potential warning sign “occultism and other illegal activity”. Occultism, of course, being a watch-word for non-Christian religion being de-legitimized by the bullying efforts of the increasingly influential US conservative political movement of the time. The reasoning was that if you play D&D, you are probably being lured away from the dominant values of the culture, and thus probably a bad citizen. If that’s not politicized, I don’t know what is.
The ad is great because it provides a nice contrast to that propaganda. An inclusive image of kids having fun.
It’s funny to try applying the “role playing fear” arguments to other games which didn’t involve faux sorcery. Are kids who play Gamma World going to grow up scavenging in a post-apocalyptic landscape? Are kids who grow up playing Paranoia going to clone themselves and hide from computers? Nobody seemed very worried about other RPGs.
