Our cultural moment simultaneously adored the ’80s with artifacts—like this year’s Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice and Chappell Roan creating ’80s synth pop—and relived the decade with presidential elections, American conflicts with Russia, and the excitement of… inflation. As we compare events and pop culture from 1984 to 2024, I’m excited to say we’re halfway through this series, which started in 2020 (vs. 1980).
This year we’re reviewing how 1984 screen staples like The Cosby Show, Miami Vice, and Beverly Hills Cop present the theme of freedom compared to this year’s highlights like American Fiction, the WWF’s Mr. McMahon, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. The theme of independence was seen in other areas too, like the presidential races of 1984 and 2024; in lyrics from Cyndi Lauper, Prince, and Run-D.M.C.; and in 2024’s female-dominated music with artists like Chappell Roan, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift. Pastor/activist figures like 1984’s James H. Cone and 2024’s Eric Mason explain how Jesus’s work of liberation should take place outside and inside the Church, while writers like 1984’s Bill Hull and 2024’s John Mark Comer share ideas on how God’s word can lead to a freedom rooted in constraints.
Who Controls the Past Controls the Future: Orwellian Olympics, WWF and WMDs
Paris, France hosted the 2024 summer Olympics with a beautiful and epic opening ceremony. Unlike the 2020 Games, athletes were allowed to participate if they had COVID, with Noah Lyles winning bronze despite having the virus. Held in Los Angeles, the 1984 Olympics were boycotted by the Soviet Union in a retaliatory move against the U.S.’s boycott of the 1980 Games held in the U.S.S.R. Russia was banned from the 2024 Games due to the going-on-three-year war with Ukraine. And in the nexus of campaigns and competition, there is an interesting tie between sports, enemies of the U.S., and George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four about government overreach.
The ’80s saw a return to a kind of patriotism that hadn’t been seen since the 1950s.
Although Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949, in some ways the dystopian novel seemed to prophecy events and ideologies of the actual year 1984. Naturally, a cinematic version titled 1984 was released in 1984. The faithful adaptation starring John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton holds to themes like rabid nationalism and contradictory statements such as “Freedom is Slavery.”
The ’80s saw a return to a kind of patriotism that hadn’t been seen since the 1950s. As mentioned in my “1981 vs. 2021” article, President Reagan was the poster boy for ’50s’ sentimentality in the ’80s, which Trump recycled for the 2020s. This nostalgic nationalism pervaded 1984’s pop culture.
ABC was repeatedly accused of biased and nationalistic coverage of the Olympics. The relatively small tech company Apple created an infamous 1984 commercial melding footage of a colorful Anglo-American Olympian with images of grey communist bureaucrats clearly set in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. And the WWF provided mini battles where Americans could vicariously participate in beating up the Other.
Mr. McMahon, a 2024 documentary series, chronicles the rise of the WWF wrestling organization (now called WWE due to trademark infringement). Speaking of the ’80s, WWF owner Vince McMahon says, “…there was a lot of nationalism then. A lot of ‘Raw, raw, America’ and for those years we had problems with Iran.” McMahon elaborates on the decision to create the Iron Sheik “bad guy” who ultimately faced off against All-American Hulk Hogan. This rivalry culminated in 1984 when Hogan beat the Iron Sheik to win the WWF title.
Iran was constantly in the news in 2024 regarding allegations of U.S. election interference, with the coup de grâce being Iran’s assassination plots on several politicians, including the president-elect. But as one reporter said, “While much of the attention has been focused on Iran, Russia is still seen as the biggest threat.” In late November 2024, Putin, the primary decision-maker for launching Russia’s nuclear arsenal, escalated the nation’s nuclear protocols, implying it was retaliation because the U.S. supplied Ukraine with conventional (non-nuclear) missiles.
Putin points to the ’80s as the point when their country was “‘destroyed by a mischievous scheme’ of ‘domestic traitors’ in league with Ronald Reagan.” When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it seemed the Russian people bought into their government’s propaganda,1 but as time has passed it appears citizens are changing their views.
Book sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four are skyrocketing in Russia as the war drags on. And the Russian metal band Slaughter to Prevail made headlines in 2024 by releasing the song “1984” which condemns the Ukrainian war and Russian censorship. Interestingly, upon Trump’s 2024 win, book sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four shot up (similar to when he won in 2016), as well as other dystopian narratives, including The Handmaid’s Tale (again, as when Trump won in 2016), “about a country in which women are brutally repressed.”2
Two Things You Don’t Discuss in Polite Company: Politics and Politics
I spent most of 2024 avoiding the presidential election circus, but when the big top roles through, one should be informed and exercise the freedom to vote (or move to another country). With politics and the two major parties being such a toxic departure from what they were forty years ago, there were some interesting comparisons and contrasts to 1984. Most of 2024 pitted incumbent President Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Both men faced what has become the white noise of sensationalized derision, with their ages (81 and 78 respectively, at the time of the election) being a major issue.
It’s no surprise The Apprentice about Trump and Dennis Quaid’s Reagan came out this year.
Interestingly, in 1984 Walter Mondale accused Ronald Reagan (73) of being too old, which Reagan handled deftly in his famous debate joke, making everyone laugh (including his opponent).3 But 2024 held no cordiality, even as Trump lost his long-time enemy when Biden surprisingly dropped out of the race. Trump staggered for a few weeks, but finally found his footing on how to attack Kamala Harris.
As a movie star, Reagan utilized pop culture more than any other technique in his politicizing, an approach now integral to presidential success. Reagan used Lee Greenwood’s “God bless the U.S.A” and praised Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” (both 1984 hits); where 2024’s RNC used classic rock hoping to “harness nostalgia,” the DNC played “today’s popular artists,” “reflective of America in 2024.” It’s no surprise The Apprentice about Trump and Dennis Quaid’s Reagan came out this year.
Ultimately, Trump won the election, although I’m confused by statements that it was “overwhelming” or “by a large margin,” when only 49.9% of voters elected him, as opposed to Harris’s 48.4%. These results don’t just highlight the country’s division, but also show how politicians using sensationalized hyperbole to flaunt superiority and degrade others (something both parties are guilty of) has become commonplace.
For perspective, Reagan had an actual landslide win in 1984, securing 70.14% of the popular vote. Voters usually elect Republicans during inflations, and many believe Reagan’s definitions of “freedom” convinced the public he could combat The Great Inflation of the early ’80s.4 The title of Eric Foner’s 2024 article is quite telling: “The US presidential race will be fought over competing definitions of ‘freedom’.” Foner explains, “[S]ince the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan in effect redefined freedom as limited government, low taxes and unregulated economic enterprise, Democrats have pretty much ceded the word to their opponents.”
In July 2024, Trump forced the Republican Party to accept his twenty party platform policy principles, where “freedom” was mentioned seven times, “liberty” six times, and “right” (as in “civil liberties”) nineteen times. But Democrats made it clear that the 2024 campaigns would start capitalizing on the word too. Whyy reported on one small example: “Wednesday night’s [Democratic] convention theme was ‘Freedom.’ Backed by Beyoncé’s song of the same name…the word flashed on the video screen and in speech after speech at the United Center.”
The previous section considered governmental “freedoms” affecting foreign policy perception, and here we’ve reviewed voting and political rhetoric as it affects the citizens of the nation. While the reality is that the President has very little control over things that affect individuals, including the economy, job markets, grocery prices, gas prices, and interest rates, many Americans consider this to be blasphemy. Nevertheless, some in 1984 and 2024 genuinely considered how individuals fared.
In 1984, preeminent minister and social justice activist James H. Cone wrote For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church as a history of the Black Theology movement from the late ’60s up to that point. The movement’s goals were to bring attention and improvement to the downtrodden groups who had their freedoms infringed upon, primarily poor Blacks.
Combatting Racism: The Huxtables as an American Fiction and Beverly Hills Cop Justice
A major issue in the ’80s was the curated perception of race and racism. Unfortunately, a central issue was not how to fix the problem, but simply acknowledging that the problem existed, and 1984 was a pivotal year in that battle. Although his position on violence had relaxed by 1984, Cone’s frustration at the U.S. government—and more so, at the Church’s position of willful disregard toward the Black person’s plight—remained. Dr. Cone acknowledged that critics wondered if he distorted the gospel in favor of Black power politics, but he had a fantastic retort: If Jesus could be in “the easy life of the suburbs,” wouldn’t He “continue his work of liberation” in the ghettos where people “are living at the brink of existence”?
Cone does two things here: He 1) addresses the “ghetto” and 2) names Jesus as the liberating solution. Dr. Cone couldn’t acknowledge a gospel or Church that ignored the Bible’s hatred for the suppression of any people group. As we’ll see shortly, Pastor Eric Mason has recognized God’s attribute of justice and applied it very similarly to a 2024 context.
Still debated, Reagan’s economic plan, colloquially called Reaganomics, claimed African American employment rose by a staggering 25% from 1982 to 1988 (although fair and equitable wages were another story). In his book Back to Our Future, David Sirota documents the pop culture illusion that multitudes of Blacks rose out of working-class jobs, calling the phenomenon a post-ghetto genre.5
The Cosby Show, while hilarious and loved by millions… sometimes gave a false impression.
And comedian Bill Cosby’s wildly popular debut of The Cosby Show in 1984 may have been the biggest contributor. Sirota says, “We know from surveys that both children and young adults who watched a lot of 80s television disproportionately saw the Huxtables as a realistic representation of the average black family when, in fact, the Huxtables’ wealth was the rare exception to a 1980s experiencing an explosion in black poverty.”
One of Cone’s critiques of the early Black theological movement was that sometimes Black leaders submitted to opportunism and “claiming to speak for the poor, we actually speak for ourselves.” In the same way, The Cosby Show, while hilarious and loved by millions (holding the record for spending five seasons in Nielsen’s number 1 spot), sometimes gave a false impression. Whites could congratulate themselves on being anti-racist6 by enjoying a “Black” show, but subconsciously believe that not only could any Black family become the Huxtables by hard work, but more dangerously, that there were many Blacks living this lifestyle.
Another post-ghetto addition was the pilot of 1984’s Miami Vice: lowly New York beat cop Rico Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) pursues his brother’s killer to Miami, where his perseverance prevails (despite breaking every rule) as he becomes a member of the vice squad. The show deserves praise for a multiethnic cast (I saw a Quora post asking if Miami Vice was the first woke show); however, the majority of bad guys were persons of color (POC), while the Black hero climbed the post-ghetto ladder into esteemed police ranks. Although popular and groundbreaking (more in a bit), Vice was too gritty for many viewers, and that’s where Cosby cracked the code.
Sirota explains The Cosby Show made three intentional decisions: 1) give the onscreen family powerful, high-paying jobs, 2) leave out racial controversy, and 3) play up aspects of Black heritage that Whites already accepted while downplaying contemporary Black issues. I believe Bill Cosby and NBC had (mostly) good intentions; as Sirota says, Cosby “wanted to go from ‘blaxploitation’ to ‘blaxpiration.’” It is, of course, commendable to put a marginalized group in a good light. But to Cone’s point, when given a spotlight, isn’t there responsibility to share that group’s current suppression and need for freedom as well?
As a comedy (albeit dark) about a well-off Black family, American Fiction7 was the early 2020’s film version of The Cosby Show. Realizing his moderately successful, intellectual writing does not distill into Black tropes, Professor Monk (deftly played by Jeffrey Wright) pens a parody that gains commercial success. How he deals with one-dimensional Black entertainment, ridicule of his professorial nerdiness by his gay brother (the incredible Sterling K. Brown), and discomfort at acting “thug,” share commonalities that Cosby tried to avoid and yet may have instigated.
Writer and director Cord Jefferson created the high concept American Fiction as an exploration of Black identity. Speaking recently on how the Western Church has behaved in terms of racial justice, Pastor Eric Mason says, “…It has caused a real undercurrent of false identity, Black identity… [is] a huge apologetic issue in our era. [Search] ‘Christianity white man’s religion’…there’s a reproach to the gospel, because of our relationship with one another cross-ethnically in the body of Christ.”8
Cone said that racism was so embedded inside the Church that Black Christians should create “autonomous institutions.” If Cone’s cries for Whites in the churches of 1984 to help with Jesus’s “work of liberation” are reiterated now by Pastor Mason, why has nothing seemingly changed in forty years? The problem seems to be that the majority of the Church says racism is nonexistent or irrelevant to the Church, to which he gives the gentle but determined reply: “I don’t argue about whether racism exists anymore… I don’t have time for it, ’cause I’m in a community where they experience the effects of it… I only have time to do justice and be kind.”
As Jesus-like and (hopefully) inspirational as Pastor Mason’s “practical response” is, back in 1984 some, like Eddie Murphy, were outspoken about racism’s effect. Fresh off the success of his 1983 comedy special Delirious (discussing Reaganomics’ “negative impact on low-income minorities”), Eddie Murphy’s 1984 Beverly Hills Cop “set a precedent for black action stars.” Almost identical to Miami Vice’s fish-out-of-water concept, Axel Foley (Murphy) goes from Detroit’s mean streets to affluent Beverly Hills, while breaking all the rules undercover.
Axel stays true to Murphy’s roots (often making a mockery of the White detectives—a risky move in the ’80s), but is so charismatic even in the face of discrimination (wrongfully arrested, condescended to, etc.), that audiences made it the ninth top-grossing film of the entire decade (three other 1984 films achieved the ’80s top 20 list: Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Gremlins).
Twenty twenty-four saw the fourth franchise installment, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, where Axel reunites with the old gang to save his daughter and friends. Axel’s lawyer daughter (Taylour Paige) seeks the freedom of a man wrongfully convicted. The story isn’t anything new, but pitting a group of POC against a corrupt system fronted by White men is a reminder that despite many changes in four decades, some things haven’t.
Music: Girls Just Want to Have Fun(damental Rights)
The vague subtitle of Axel F (although slightly better than “Part IV”), I believe was solely a strategy to capitalize on the original film’s quintessentially ’80s theme song “Axel F” (my kids’ generation doesn’t know the film, but definitely knows the “Crazy Frog – Axel F” video). This underscores the genius of the ’80s revolutionary practice of merged multimedia: crossovers create new audiences. Miami Vice helped set this standard when, in what might be the pilot’s best and most famous sequence, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” plays at length.
Although Collins released the song in 1981, it only blew up because everyone thought it was written for Vice. But showrunners sought current tunes too: Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” plays at a strip club (where somehow Tubbs gyrates more than the dancers) and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blares at a beach volleyball game (which distracts the undercover agents from witnessing a murder).
The Mr. McMahon documentary discusses Lauper’s use of WWF wrestlers in the “Girls” music video, which blossomed into her unexpected career in the WWF. But, in retrospect, entertainment wrestling isn’t that surprising, considering “Girls” became a feminist prototype asserting independence. Lauper’s use of “fun” showed a desire for women’s equality and inherent value, and, if I had to guess, Chappell Roan’s recent use of “fun” is just the tip of a comparison iceberg for Lauper-like longevity.
Ascending the 2024 charts, Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”9 describes a girl disappointing her mother by leaving for Californian freedom with lyrics like, “Oh mama, I’m just having fun.” Her “fun” is certainly in the traditional use of “enjoyment,” but also meaning acceptance and safety in more non-traditional concerns, such as her queer advocacy. Many have forced sexuality to be a source of division in the early 2020’s, but have forgotten 1984’s immensely popular “Purple Rain” album featuring lyrics, music videos, and a full-length film featuring the often androgynous singer Prince.
Not quite a Prince powerhouse, singer-songwriter Conan Gray vocalized frustration at attempts to label his “sexuality and gender and beliefs.” Gray’s “Found Heaven” album didn’t only produce “Never Ending Song,” titularly reminiscent of 1984’s The NeverEnding Story, but also featured “Lonely Dancers,” which sounds like 1984 and 2024 had a baby—at moments his vocals sound like Michael Jackson and at others they’re very 2020’s pop.
[Beyoncé’s] “Cowboy Carter” album… ushered in “a new era,” and encouraged artists and audiences to “liberate ourselves from genre.”
Pop icons like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, as well as up-and-comers like the aforementioned Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, and Billie Eilish, dominated 2024 sales, streams, and the “overall cultural footprint.” Certainly there were shallow love songs, but themes of freedom flowed freely. Although 1984 female musicians like Tina Turner (“What’s Love Got to Do With It”), Deniece Williams (“Let’s Hear it for the Boy”), and Pat Benatar (“Love is a Battlefield”) earned fame, the year unquestionably promoted male acts, from Michael Jackson’s eight Grammys for “Thriller,” to Van Halen (“Jump”), Wang Chung (“Dance Hall Days”), Tears for Fears (“Shout”), and Wham! (“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”).
Men were also commissioned to merge multimedia with songs from major releases like Ray Parker Jr.’s title theme “Ghostbusters,” Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” for Beverly Hills Cop, Kenny Loggins’ title track “Footloose,” Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best” for The Karate Kid, and Red Dawn’s memorable “Death and Freedom” end credits. There were indie films as well, like mockumentary originator This is Spinal Tap about a moronic metal band (Spinal Tap II coming soon!), The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension about a Renaissance band protecting human freedom from an alien invasion, and Repo Man’s punk rock soundtrack.
The relatively new musical style of rap was also male dominated. Considering Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” (1980) was the first certified gold rap song, it is impossible to explain how impactful Run-D.M.C.’s 1984 self-titled album was, as the first full-length rap record that also became certified gold, releasing four years later (although the 2024 documentary Kings from Queens: The Run DMC Story [sic] does a pretty good job). Rap has seen an explosion in popularity over the last forty years. In one break from the 2024 female-led trend, Shaboozey interpolated a twenty-year-old rap song into the country-laced “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which tied for longest time at No. 1 (nineteen weeks).
In the same rap/hip hop/country vein, Beyoncé designed her “Cowboy Carter” album to reclaim the overlooked Black pioneers of American musical and cultural history. Collaborator Jon Batiste said the album ushered in “a new era,” and encouraged artists and audiences to “liberate ourselves from genre.” Apparently, Beyoncé had to create this genre freedom in order to communicate her message.
Now that we’ve considered how 1984 and 2024 communicated their freedom messages, we must ask: What is the definition and message of liberation?
Modeled Freedom for a Waiting World
Society has defined “freedom” in wildly different ways. Reagan said it was limited government and low taxes; others claim it’s avoiding election interference and censorship; social activists say it’s acknowledgment and combat of racism; Lauper and Roan imply it’s feminism asserting independence; Trump advocated for American freedom in space and “to… Pray and Read the Bible in school [sic, Trump’s famous capitalization typos]; whereas some liberals said the word applied to opportunity, communities, and democracy, while other Democrats said it was a “fight over reproductive rights,” gay rights, and banned books.
Silence and solitude require two general things: shutting out distractions (like constant political news and social media) and sacrificing time by listening to God.
But what if the cliché is true? What if Dr. Cone was right, and both earthly and heavenly freedom really do originate with Jesus? And what would that look like in the years following 2024? John Mark Comer’s recent book Practicing the Way states that a “Rule of Life is an invitation to a very different definition of freedom than that of the modern world—an invitation to embrace the constraints that, if you give yourself to them, will eventually set you free.” Acknowledging that “constraints” sound antithetical to freedom, where would we find God’s constraints?
Comer agrees with Bill Hull, when, in 1984’s Jesus Christ, Disciplemaker, he said, “The written revelation of Scripture—God’s word—is important primarily because the principles taught therein lead to spiritual freedom… Getting environmentally high [external stimuli] won’t free us, a sensual experience won’t do it, procedures and policies won’t do it, determination won’t do it—only truth revealed from God’s word will set us free.”
And God’s word, as an individualized Rule of Life, includes things like the Sabbath, service, and silence and solitude. These practices (as in the title Practicing the Way), more than just being a good person, are, as Hull emphasized, spiritual. And specifically, the spiritual practices of silence and solitude seem to align with 2024’s cultural moment.
Although political polarization began picking up speed in 2016, the acceleration into 2024 has been particularly divisive. Comer quotes sociologists saying the U.S. “is more divided than it’s been since the Civil War.” And the 2024 film Civil War took this premise seriously, depicting a United States ravaged by internal conflict. Many viewers were confused by which side was supposed to be the “good guys,” but writer/director Alex Garland went to great pains to leave it ambiguous. More than a welcome alternative to modern spoon-fed storytelling, Garland wisely intones that in a civil war, everyone loses.
In a time where many share angry opinions without listening, a daily time where we sit undistracted, hearing God speak, the practice of silence and solitude is much needed. This assumes we’re willing to make individual sacrifices to come together and even want to be a united nation. While devaluing the importance given to politics is absolutely necessary (consider the exhausted masses who tuned out of political news in 2024), this may not actually be our nation’s primary problem. We, like many first-world societies, are feeling the vertigo of moving from an industrial age to the digital age. Comer calls this “social disruption” a “key inflection point in human history.”
The biggest union of these two forces (politics and the digital age) is social media. In a fascinating article on Mere Orthodoxy, editor-in-chief Jake Meador explains that digital media started as the “open internet” (audiences could read blogs regardless of computer or browser) but in 2003-2006 major social media platforms created the “closed internet” era (confined to a commercially developed network). Meador believes the “closed internet” era ended in 2020 and those like Om Malik agree—social internet is dead (others like DataReportal disagree, while acknowledging social media may not be servicing the need it used to).
For those hardcore proponents, I will admit there are a couple of benefits to social media. But there are so many psychology reports and “I quit social media and am so healthy” articles, we should seriously consider limiting or ending our usage. Meador’s 2024 manifesto proclaims a new era where Mere Orthodoxy doesn’t “simply care about renewing the church or securing power and advantage for Christians,” but rather renewing “trust and common life in the various cultures and institutions that our readers participate in.”
However, the model isn’t a one-use game plan: it’s sustainable for any publisher, if they stop thinking of users as “customers” (readers or paid advertisers) and instead move “toward a ‘patronage’ model.” So how does this apply to you, the reader? More than cultural documentation, this model is the application of freedom from the subjugation of political news and illusions of social media through Jesus’s words and deeds. If social media is dying (or at least it isn’t healthy or useful anymore), then a return to an open internet, one not governed by greedy corporations, is the way forward. This means the majority of individuals wouldn’t have a global audience (which, as I mentioned here, is probably what God intended). I apologetically and humbly recognize this sounds elitist, which brings us back to the practices of God’s constraints.
Silence and solitude require two general things: shutting out distractions (like constant political news and social media) and sacrificing time by listening to God. He will speak to us in accordance with His word in the Scriptures. We should expect our God of Justice to ask us to “continue his work of liberation,” as Doctor Cone warned forty years ago. We’ll stop debating whether racism exists and start supporting those like Pastor Mason who are battling the lie that Christianity is “white man’s religion,” by actively building cross-ethnic relationships inside the Church.
This would mean we also become good stewards of the digital age, combating social disruption by constraining our posts and communicating communally and individually. We might use our limited time online by becoming patrons of worthwhile publishing, not of media that perpetuates confirmation bias, but of those working to renew trust in their readers’ “various cultures and institutions.” After all, God’s freedom rooted in constraints gives peace to His followers and hope to those outside the Church looking in.
- A jailed Russian dissident described “…the Kremlin’s ‘relentless pro-regime and pro-war messaging’ [as] resembl[ing] 1984’s Two Minute Hates, except that ‘in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, televised hate goes on for hours.’” ↩︎
- Book sales of Melania and Hillbilly Elegy also rose. ↩︎
- Ironically, once accused of being too old, Reagan immediately mangled facts during the debate. ↩︎
- Americans have complained of an inflation through the early 2020’s, and when 2018 (1.9% inflation), 2019 (2.3%), and 2020 (1.4%) are compared with post-pandemic 2021 (7%), 2022 (6.5%), 2023 (3.4%), and 2024 (2.7%), it makes sense. But consider 1980’s almost 15% inflation! ↩︎
- Sirota expounds that early ’70s TV celebrated the Black working class with shows such as Good Times, the early ’80s imagined the Black working class pulling themselves from the ghetto in shows like The Jeffersons, the mid-1980s portrayed The Cosby Show “having used transcendence to complete that climb” and, bringing it full circle, the late ’80s/early ’90s used shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, where “a transcendent black family” saved Will Smith from “nontranscendent Good Times roots” (Back to Our Future, p. 192). ↩︎
- Although the term “anti-racist” has been around since 1943, it had an explosion in use in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered. ↩︎
- Although released in the final days of 2023, the film received a massive amount of acclaim and discussion in 2024 due to Oscar nominations and wins. ↩︎
- Eric Mason, “The Book of Nehemiah: 5. Nehemiah 5:1–19,” RightNow Media. ↩︎
- Although released in 2022, “Pink Pony Club” became popular in 2024, hitting number 32 on Billboard’s “The 100 Best Songs of 2024” and performed on Saturday Night Live’s prestigious 50th season, among many other examples. Sabrena Carpenter and others shared a similar phenomenon. ↩︎
