80s Movies: Toxic Culture Like Toxic Food
The 80s were the decade of Gordon Gekko, Reagan, black stockings and garter belts, and Nic Cage’s most iconic role
I used to unfairly ask my students to guess my age and proudly brag that I was a “woman of the 80s.”
Absolutely. Such a woman of the 80s. I just watched all of one of Nicolas Cage’s most famous films, Vampire’s Kiss, the other evening.
My God, it’s so 80s, I thought. From the giant hair and giant shoulder pads to the “sexy” requirement of every one of Cage’s love interests to disrobe down to black stockings and garter belts —
Obsession with vampirism (immortality, wealth, glamor)
Vicious abuse of women
Insanely self-centered man
Easy hookup sex (HIV/AIDs just emerging)
All-night coke binging
Yep: the 80s.
Nicolas Cage has credited this role (you have to see it to believe it) as being one of the formative ones of his career. Don’t get me wrong: I like Nic Cage and I am fine with his checkered (to put it mildly) film career. His over-the-top antics in Vampire’s Kiss are the best reason to watch the movie.
Although now his bug-eyed, whacked-out faux-vampire expressions are fuel for endless internet memes, you can see several homages to the classic German silent film Nosferatu (1922) in Vampire’s Kiss. Cage has said,
“I did make certain choices to realize my abstract and more ontological fantasies with film performance, by playing people who were crazy, or by playing people who were on drugs, or supernaturally possessed — so that I have the license, if you will, to explore the German Expressionistic style of acting, or the Western kabuki. Whatever you want to call it.”
Men’s rights advocates and those who are deaf, dumb and blind could say that the possible-fantasy vampire in Vampire’s Kiss, portrayed by Flashdance Jennifer Beals, represents feminine power.
No, she doesn’t. She’s a gorgeous woman who represents a sexual fantasy for the — check this out, because I’m pretty sure it would never be made today — LITERARY AGENT Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage).
That’s right. Cage’s character is supposed to be a book agent. He has a movie-style Manhattan apartment which means three to four times the size of actual Manhattan apartments, an endless series of expensive suits, and enough cash to go out clubbing every night and see an absurdly sympathetic female psychiatrist with an office overlooking Central Park on an as-needed, whenever basis.
If that isn’t fiction enough for you, Cage hooks up with beautiful women in addition to Beals, like Jackie (portrayed by Kasi Lemmons, now a successful filmmaker) and is unbelievably, insanely abusive to his secretary Alva, up to the point of raping her — Alva is portrayed by beautiful Maria Conchita Alonso.
Did I note that all of Loew’s love interests are women of color?
Why yes — yes, they are.
Except for the one girl that Loew finally murders in the disco near the end of the movie. Too bad, so sad, coke-snorting chick is dead.
This movie hates so bad on women and is so unselfconsciously racist, it made me physically ill. And it’s all portrayed as entertainment and no, Cage’s wild antics don’t save the day.
And that’s what I was a young woman in.
I wore the same outfits as Beals and Jackie. The black stockings. The heels. The underwear strategically placed so a man could have easy access.
The giant earrings, the short skirts. The big hair. The crazy makeup.
Of course there were few literary agents like Peter Loew, with high enough salaries to afford that kind of apartment and that kind of lifestyle. But maybe I do know of one or two who — I hope — didn’t treat women the way that Loew’s character the sometime vampire did.
This movie is a fantasy about a man who hates women so much he thinks that one he’s strongly attracted to is a vampire who will suck the life out of him. I’ve read that the screenwriter Joseph Minion wrote the script because he was in a bad relationship.
How the hell bad was it, Minion?
The storyline of this movie, the endless scenes where Cage treats his secretary Alva horrifically in front of the entire office, and the agents and boss sit around and laugh — there’s actually a scene where the boss says, “She asked me for a raise” after Cage jumps on a desk in full view of everyone and shrieks abuse at Alva — they all laugh ha ha ha ha —
Nobody thought anything of this at the time. We were like Alva. Stuck. A mom who says she’s got to go to work no matter what. We had to go to work no matter what.
It’s a wonder that any of us have made it out — like Kasi Lemmons. Imagine being that part in that movie, the abuse target of the disgusting Peter Loew, a gorgeous, smart young woman, and this is who Kasi is today. I’d call that a triumph and good news for all real humans.
“It’s just a movie.”
I was in a relationship with someone who considered himself (and others as well) as a bestseller-picking guru who never made it out. Alan Rodgers would routinely point out any woman who looked older (not fat — he was himself, fat and had been morbidly obese before I knew him) and mock their appearance. Wrinkles, gray hair, sagging jowls — all guaranteed to be mentioned. “No woman is attractive over age 30,” he’d declare. He was trapped, a victim of the 80s.
Although the film and TV industry was difficult for women throughout its history, the 80s was peculiarly obsessed with perpetual youth and yes — the vampirism that Vampire’s Kiss seems to unconsciously lampoon. This is the era of the Billionaire Boys Club. Gordon Gecko, the Wall Street vampire who announces, “Greed is good!”
Greed is good and women were only good for one thing. As Peter Loew tells his ludicrously-sympathetic psychiatrist, after every one-night-stand, “I couldn’t wait for her to get out!”
That’s the dehumanizing crap I grew up with. That was the attitude of the man who raped me because I won the 5-college writing prize two years in a row in 1983. That’s the attitude of all those who protected him over the course of two decades.
It was all like poison for the soul.
Just the worst sort of toxic, fake poison as the foods that were being sold in earnest at that time.
Alan often told a story of how he’d seen a hardcover copy of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire on a Knopf editor’s desk and said casually, “I think this will be a massive bestseller.” I think that’s probably not true, but he did pick out other bestselling books, as he had an unerring eye for this type of poison.
At least 800 billion words have been written about why people enjoy vampire stories, and the basic appeal, I think, is that vampires are a literal representation of the mentality of 80s Reagan Billionaire Boys Club America. Live fast, be fabulously rich, and be soullessly immortal in a good-looking corpse.
Vampire’s Kiss is the same type of film that Bill Hicks lampooned in his famous “walk away” routine, which was about an early-90s holdover from the 80s, Basic Instinct.
Bill was a man of the 80s too, but he was honest about it. Goat Boy had sexual needs — sometimes embarrassing ones — but real ones.
But there’s a difference between sexuality and hatred and I very much doubt that Bill Hicks hated any woman. He hated evil. He hated the Gordon Gekkos of the world. He hated pretension, greed, and hypocrisy.
And he had dreams, too. He would end his routines with a dream very similar to the one I’ve always had, and maybe you have too. That one day we would transcend the material world and live in peace, unity, and harmony.
Like me, Bill was a child of the 70s and 80s. Like my mom, like my friend Vonda, he died of pancreatic cancer.
The 80s did so much damage to all of our psyches and I think those of us who were born into that time who are still alive, are in the process of healing. If you believe what Bill said, each of us is in the process of healing from a near-fatal soul and spirit injury as grievous as that done by toxic foods, environmental damage, and toxic pharma for profit.
Vampire’s Kiss is a classic 80s movie and that is not a good thing.
With that kind of lifestyle, Loew would have been more believable as a character if he had been a Hollywood agent. They must have assumed all agents are the same (they're not).
I had the advantage of being a child during the 80s and being shielded from the word excesses of it by parents, family and teachers. But not everyone was as lucky.
It's unsettling to watch 80s movies. I've gone through a couple of them as they've come up. That domination of women is such a prevalent theme, it says something about what Hollywood thought would play.
Even innocuous kids' movies have so much casual awuflness. 'Fag/faggot' left and right. The obvious emphasis on gender roles. A couple standouts that hold up still, but all those fantasy and 'sci-fi' movies I so enjoyed...um.