My legendary indulgence in cheesy ‘80s movies began one lazy Friday night, two-and–a-half years ago. To relieve myself of the loneliness following a cross-country move, I relocated to the couch, where, in a lively group chat, I nurtured and sustained a cross-country connection with my best friend, her mother, and mine, with spirited debates over casio to saxophone soundtrack ratios, and the cliched corvette-driving fraternity boyfriend counterpart, to the worldly yet uninspired high school central female protagonist. What began as a Friday night tradition over popcorn and Patrick Swayze, where I laughed, momentarily close to those I loved, soon became a window into which I found the wheels of my mind turning: a depth of contemplation I thought highly improbable for subjects such as villainous motorcycle gang chases, fight sequences and spontaneous but finely-orchestrated mixologist acrobatics.
The absurdity of ‘80s cinema that made Friday nights spirited transported me into worlds where love affairs with department store mannequins and anthropomorphic ducks created a cinematic universe that seemed even beyond the reaches of the ultra-imaginative. As Friday night movies came and went, filled with connecting cringes and infectious laughter shared miles apart, I became further humorously trapped in this psychedelic, far-fetched, big hair, motorcycle, saxophone neurosis, hypnotized by the aesthetic chaos of this era-centric cinema, and most of all, the mere unbelievability of the antics and acts.
Movie nights continued to be an integral part of my relaxation routine, an end-of-the-week pick me up, a cinematic “bartender, I’ll have one more, please,” a way to both simmer in my week and escape from it. Friday night movies expanded, becoming the night my mother, father, and I watched movies with my aunt and uncle across the country, the chaos of college placing my original movie cohort into an irregular routine, one more suited for the periods of holiday breaks. Friday nights became the pinnacle of my week, the evening I most looked forward to, when I could finally let out my breath, settle in, and exchange papers and deadlines for the gleeful idiocracy of adult men cast as high school burnouts and many a mundane melody, unknown soundtracks, eliciting a musical aesthetic comparison to that of a major pop hit. It was a weekly journey, a guilty pleasure escapade away from reality and into a multiplicity of the far-fetched fantasies full of the insane, cringe-worthy, the zany, and at times, the ignorant, all managing to be set to the quintessential Casio, the oh-so omnipresent soundscape of 80s film.
Perhaps my immense enjoyment—nay, my compulsion for terrible ‘80s movies—stemmed from their very far-fetchedness. Although a creative hyperbole in action, Tom Cruise’s perfectly- executed New York City nightclub-turned-tropical-island-cocktail-shaker stunts were as far from realistic as possible, and comically, with a hint of idiocracy, I silently distanced myself from the stress of the outside world, of all the faces and phrases that shook me to my core, the realities of my reality that I could not avoid when the sun was above the horizon. As much as the ‘80s implicit definition of fantasy almost contradictorily departed the sphere of fantasy itself, the almost-artistically primal sequence of uninhibited gymnastic acrobatic abandoned warehouse, wife-beater-clad dancing transported me to a location in which I could easily justify avoiding the grievances that existed in my life and not that of Ren McCormack trading in unrequited love and test anxiety for doctrinaire dance restrictions, and first kisses in the aforementioned abandoned warehouse. Fundamentally, the emphatic preposterousness within ‘80s cinema validates our desire to trade in 9-5 mundanity for the deviance of an escapade. The prosaic demands the preposterous to create an acute case of a balanced life and state of self. ‘80s films convey and reflect our yearning for an “other,” a malleable alternative to our chaos now. As much as stupidity festers itself in the productions, it is that laughability that reflects our desire to engage in well-deserved reality avoidance. Seemingly, the obscenity of this era’s cinema appears so absurd that the fantasy floats, not concrete enough to use as a mode of transportation into escape. Yet, it is in viewing the most ridiculous films that fleeing from the concreteness of my reality is second nature, a reflex brought on by the extent of the absurdity, rather than an effort or an action that I myself performed.
While most may not consider these films “serious” cinema, content worthy of a pretentious indie award or hipster film festival recognition, I believe that these films hold and offer an alternative serious cinematic experience. Our lives demand us to try, to put forth effort, to strive and survive, to pull through when we least want to, and to live when we most want to. Yet, these efforts are hard, and grievances dot life with moments, yes, of happiness and joy, but also hardship, tears, and disbelief that destroy the very center of our souls, threatening to make us question our abilities, roles, and purpose. As unrealistic as the cinematic universe of the ‘80s is, it is this era’s dissociation from reality that offers the power of escape and ease, to leave our life, and to live another’s, however stupid. It offers a break; moments so comical, zany, ignorant, and despicable that we are jostled out of the stagnation that plagues us in the present. We all need to and deserve to love our own lives, but fantasy is essential. Fantasy begs us to remember to revel in doing nothing, that escape is a form of self-care and compassion, amidst the Russian Roulette of reality, the unknown of our present corporeality. It is these very movies, in these ugly duckling films of the 80s, that we are presented with easy, albeit often questionably morally-outdated dialogue and imagery, but regardless, ways to be so jolted that we are removed from the anxiety of the present. Pushed out of the now, we can escape to a corybantic world of resorts in the Catskills, boom boxes held up in inspiring desperation, human-orchestrated reanimated playboy boss corpses, and psychedelic music. As Peter “Maverick” Mitchell says in the incomparable Top Gun, “I feel the need, the need for speed,” and like Maverick, I feel the need, the need for speeding through these tacky films I codify as meditation, have no intention of any time soon stopping my viewing of. Reality may bite, but, through my movies, I’ve bitten back by escaping and choosing myself even when reality may try to take hold of me.