Lynda responds...

Andrew,
I don't feel adequate to speak to the appropriation of
80's music by the media and college freshmen, but I
was staring at my unread books on my bookcases today
and grabbed Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death
and I think that it speaks to this issue...if only
insofar as it further complicates your question. What
does it say that today's culture is reaching back for
the things the amused previous generations rather than
(or while concurrently) create (creating) their own
amusements? (and what does it say about me that I'm
using someone else's intellectual work from the same
time period to address your question? ;) )
"Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada,
as a metaphor of our national character and
aspiration. . . . For Las Vegas is a city entirely
devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such
proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse increasingly takes the form of
entertainment. Our politics, religion, news,
athletics, education and commerce have been
transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business,
largely without protest or even much popular notice.
The result is that we are a people on the verge of
amusing ourselves to death." ~Neil Postman
. . . if, in the 80's, we were a people on the verge
of amusing ourselves to death: what's going on now?