'80s Resurrected

Randy Laist is a professor of English at Goodwin University and the University of Bridgeport. He has authored and edited several books on literature, popular culture, and pedagogy. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

“Engaging, challenging, and of vital importance to discourse, fandom, and scholarship.”—Marc DiPaolo, author of War, Politics and Superheroes and Fake Italian

• Table of ContentsIntroductionRandy LaistTime After Time: The Meaning of ’80s Nostalgia“There’s nothing for you back there”: Reflective Nostalgia in Stranger ThingsValerie SurrettThe Breakfast Club, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Riverdale’s ’80s PalimpsestStephen HockThe Americans and How We Think About the Reagan ’80sLilly J. Goren“It’s just one of them things innit, there’s nothing you can do about it”: The Specter of Thatcherism in This Is England ’86–’90Jack AndersonRemembering to Forget: 1980s Retro Gaming and the Aesthetics of EscapeJohn MisakThe Pop Music Montage: Nostalgia as a Function of 1980s Film SoundtracksCarrie ClantonMen Without Hats and Material Girls“Cobra Kai Never Dies”: Reframing Masculinities in The Karate Kid’s Nostalgic Transgenerational RebootKristen GalvinTragic Masculinities and Craig Mazin’s ChernobylJohn QuinnSafety, Stoneybrook, and the SittersMorgan E. FosterThe Cutest Doll at the Arcade: Technology and (American) Girl PowerMyrna MorettiBack to the (Gendered) Future: Feminist Nostalgia in Netflix’s Stranger Things and GLOWAnn M. CiasulloA Very ’80s Love Affair: Joanna Hogg’s Formalist Feminism in The SouvenirHelena I. GurfinkelFight the Power: Social JusticeJem, ­­She-Ra, and My Little Pony: Combating Misogyny, Homophobia, and Racism in ­­Girl-Centered RebootsMelanie HurleyNostalgia for What Always Was: Race and American Superheroes in Television and FilmPatrick L. Hamilton and Allan W. Austin“Dad, every serial killer is somebody’s neighbor!” The Problem of White Supremacy in Summer of ’84Erika Tiburcio MorenoDallas Buyers Club: Libertarian American Dreams in the Neoliberal 1980sCraig ClarkRyan Murphy’s ’80s and the Past as Political Postmodern BattlegroundIlaria BianoCinematically Satirizing AIDS Realities of the Reagan Decade in Chocolate BabiesKylo-Patrick R. HartFilm and Television Works CitedAbout the ContributorsIndex