7 Reasons Why 1984’s Pop Culture Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving

There was something in the air in 1984. Though it wasn’t necessarily appreciated at the time, the year produced an absurd amount of pop culture gold that still holds up four decades later. Maybe it was the peak of the blockbuster era; maybe it was the excitement of apex-period MTV; maybe it was the specter of George Orwell’s famous novel hanging over the culture. Whatever it was, it led to a banner year for movies, music, and television. 

The Impact of 1984’s Box Office Is Still Felt Today

While the release of Jaws in 1975 is widely considered the birth of the modern blockbuster, big crowd-pleasers really hit their stride in 1984. The three highest-grossing movies worldwide that year were Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the first Indiana Jones sequel—the other movies would all get their own soon enough). In 2024 audiences were treated to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the fifth film in the franchise, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the series’s fourth entry. The previous year saw Indiana Jones’s final outing—as played by Harrison Ford, at least—with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. 

Elsewhere in 1984’s top 10 were Splash (with a remake currently in development), The Karate Kid (still going in the form of the Netflix series Cobra Kai), Gremlins (recently adapted into an animated show, with another coming in fall of 2024), and Police Academy (currently six sequels deep with a seventh possibly on the way). Even the blockbusters from the year that didn’t spawn franchises, like Footloose, are still iconic today. 

Some movies that were less successful at the box office managed to be monumental in other ways. The Terminator launched both a perennial franchise and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s impressive movie star run. Before Denis Villeneuve made Dune mainstream in the 2020s, David Lynch directed the first (and much less well-received) screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel in 1984.  While it wasn't a blockbuster, 1984's This Is Spinal Tap became a cult classic. After inspiring countless imitations in the mockumentary genre, a new sequel is being filmed in 2024.

VHS Encouraged Filmmakers to Get Weird

While 1984 didn’t have a proper Star Wars movie (the regrettable made-for-TV Ewoks spinoff, Caravan of Courage, doesn’t count), it did get a Star Trek film in The Search For Spock, the third theatrical release in the series. The most memorable sci-fi and fantasy movies from the year had plenty of Star Wars in their DNA, but they fell short of its blockbuster status. Instead, movies like The Last Starfighter and The NeverEnding Story turned out to be cult hits.

Many of these films were given new life as physical media. By 1984, roughly half of all U.S. households owned a VCR, allowing families to tune into movies on their own time from their living rooms. One way to watch movies at home was to rent them; by the end of the year, over 15,000 video rental stores were operating in the U.S. Another was to record television broadcasts onto VHS tapes—though entertainment corporations fought hard against this practice. In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sony in the infamous Betamax case, giving technology companies and consumers the power to record copyrighted content.

This technology meant that, given enough time, anything could find an audience. Repo Man, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, C.H.U.D., Stop Making Sense, and Paris, Texas were some of the off-beat titles from that year that took off as home releases. 

Horror also had a moment at the dawn of the VHS era. Fans had their pick of two Stephen King adaptations in 1984: Children Of The Corn, which was rebooted in 2020, and Firestarter, which is most notable for starring a young Drew Barrymore. VHS copies of A Nightmare on Elm Street were passed around school playgrounds endlessly, traumatizing a whole generation. In the UK, the Video Recordings Act led to “video nasties” being banned, which ironically made them all the more desirable in bootleg or pirated form. Bawdy comedies—like 1984’s Top Secret!, Bachelor Party, and Revenge of the Nerds—circulated this way as well.

Change Was Brewing in Hollywood

As the content of popular films changed, the movie industry itself went through a transformation in 1984. The PG-13 rating was created in part due to the goriness of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Meanwhile, Disney launched Touchstone Pictures for movies that had more swear words than were appropriate for a film introduced by a cartoon mouse.

The adventure comedy Romancing the Stone never became a mega-franchise (though it did get a sequel, and there were several attempts to remake it), but its success opened the door for director Robert Zemeckis’s next project, Back To The Future (1985).

Some of the biggest names of the 1990s got their start in 1984. John Hughes made his directorial debut that year with Sixteen Candles, and Joel and Ethan Coen launched as a writer-director duo with Blood Simple. A funny young actor named Tom Hanks had his first two starring roles in Splash and Bachelor Party, and that was hardly the last audiences heard from him. 

Television Left the ‘70s Behind

What we remember as the 1970s era of TV extended into the 1980s. Happy Days, Three’s Company, and Captain Kangaroo all aired their final episodes in 1984. That year also signaled a new era of television with Miami Vice.  Pitched as  “MTV cops” according to legend, the show dragged the world of TV law enforcement into the garish ‘80s. Murder She Wrote, a very different type of crime show, also premiered that year, proving that some concepts are timeless. 

A new age was dawning in media. A news anchor named Oprah Winfrey began hosting a morning talk show, and a gameshow host named Alex Trebek became the face of Jeopardy!. Cheers introduced a character by the name of Frasier Crane, and little did viewers know that he’d still be on TV 40 years later. After originally airing for over a decade, the spin-off Fraiser was rebooted for Paramount+ in 2023. Here’s another unbelievable piece of pop culture trivia from 1984: That year George Clooney began starring in E/R. Not ER, the show that made him famous a decade later—an entirely different show called E/R. 

As the content of television shows changed, so did the quantity. The number of cable subscribers in the U.S. doubled between 1980 and 1984, creating a need for more programs to fill out schedules. This led to a lot of new content being produced (some great, some less so), as well as a glut of reruns. In addition to having their pick of new shows to choose from, media connoisseurs in the ’80s were well-versed in the shows their parents grew up on, from Gilligan’s Island toThe Munsters.

MTV Coronated Pop Royalty

While MTV had already been on the air for three years by that point, 1984 solidified the channel’s status as a star-maker. That year saw the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards, along with its first-ever controversial performance. As Madonna writhed on stage to her hit song “Like a Virgin,” she laid the groundwork for the numerous provocative VMA performances that followed. 

Prince was also all over MTV in 1984. The pop star was at the height of his fame, appearing in Purple Rain (the movie), as well as releasing Purple Rain (the album) featuring “Purple Rain” (the song). That year Prince became the first artist to ever have the top movie, album, and single at the same time

At the beginning of the year, the British band Culture Club topped the UK charts with “Karma Chameleon,” one the most 1980s songs ever recorded. The song also helped make lead singer Boy George a star in his own right. His signature androgynous style, which was still shocking to many even in 1984, contributed to his high profile. 

Music Got Political

Many musicians who didn’t have No. 1 hits in 1984 still had a major influence on the industry. Run-DMC’s debut album changed what people thought hip-hop was, introducing new subgenres overnight and ushering in a fresh era. Red Hot Chili Peppers also released their first album that year. For fans of punk and heavy metal, GWAR, Celtic Frost, Blind Guardian, Fields Of The Nephilim, and The Offspring all formed in ‘84. Iron Maiden took their mammoth World Slavery Tour behind the Iron Curtain, a sign that the days of the Cold War were numbered.

Music and politics were entwined in other ways. Footage of the famines in Ethiopia inspired Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldof to form the charity supergroup project Band Aid, which in turn led to Live Aid the following year. Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s gay sex anthem “Relax” was actually released in late 1983, but it was in ‘84 that it became a phenomenon. When it was banned from BBC radio that year, the backlash propelled it to No.1 on the UK charts. The German band Nena’s catchy, Berlin Wall-inspired tale of overzealous war ministers, “99 Luftballons,” became an anthem of Cold War fear. When it comes to apocalyptic pop bangers based on geopolitical tensions, neither the German nor English version can be beat.

Pre-internet Memes Went Viral

Social media wasn’t around in 1984, but memes—as in ideas that spread and mutate organically throughout human culture—were alive and well. This Is Spinal Tap, one of the most-quoted films ever made, introduced the world to the idea of “going to 11.” Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, released just months after the original Breakin’, is best remembered for its delightfully strange subtitle. It has since become a snowclone, or a phrase template that’s used as shorthand for a joke or an idea. In this case, someone might tack “Electric Boogaloo” onto the end of a movie’s name to evoke ridiculous sequel subtitles. 

Many of the year’s biggest memes didn’t come from movies. In 1984, Wendy’s asked “Where’s the beef?”, Paul Hogan invited viewers to “pop a shrimp on the barbie,” and Lionel Richie starred in the video for “Hello” (along with a clay replica of his head). These events were all parodied, referenced, and ripped off to oblivion for decades. 

Some of the heaviest concepts pervading the culture actually originated in 1948. That year George Orwell published 1984, a sci-fi novel that imagined a dystopian society oppressed by government surveillance and censorship. Renewed interest in the book in its titular year absolutely contributed to ongoing talk of Big Brother, groupthink, and the Thought Police—terms that either originated with or were inspired by Orwell. 

A movie adaptation starring John Hurt came out in 1984. Despite this, many people’s image of  the book comes from a SuperBowl ad that aired that year. In the Apple commercial introducing the Macintosh, a woman chucks a sledgehammer at a screen playing Big Brother’s propaganda, thus shattering it and freeing the gray-clad drones in the audience. It ends with the tagline: “You’ll see why 1984 won't be like 1984.” 

The ad barely mentions the Macintosh and doesn’t show it all, but nonetheless, it marked a new phase of home computing.  It’s also frequently cited as one of the greatest commercials of all time. That’s not surprising considering it was directed by Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) director Ridley Scott—another big name in 1984 who’s had a massive influence on popular culture in the decades since. His next project in 2024 is Gladiator II, a sequel that thankfully doesn’t have a corny subtitle (“Electric Boogaloo” or otherwise). 

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