The 1980s? We regret them, we adore them, we copy them, we are inspired by them, we pay homage to them. What does this craze say about this decade, particularly in France? Decryption of a phenomenon.
Have we already commented on and regretted the 80s as much as the 2020s? In 2026 particularly. As a corollary, another question: does this decade not benefit from a nostalgia that has never been denied? In any case, we can no longer count the trends in fashion, shoes, two-wheelers, events, outings, projects, shows, films, tours, songs, novels, which currently tend to support this trend.
Michael, The Cure, Jacky…
The triumph of Michaela biopic recounting the first part of Michael Jackson’s life has just exceeded five million admissions, the latest film from the Toledano-Nakache duo, Just an illusionthought of as a burst of nostalgia, has crossed the two million mark, The Cure fills three arenas in Nîmes in a few minutes, even the incredible success, on our website, of an article devoted to Jacky, one of the hosts of the Dorothée club… Here we have a few epiphenomena which speak of attachment to an era, to a regretted period.
Music and songs remain one of the main vectors (see opposite page), and have formed a soundtrack which still accompanies ferias, votive festivals, boomer fiestas or student evenings today.
But the images produced and broadcast during these years contributed at least as much to forging the identity of this decade, on the big and small screen.
Bullfighting and NBA
Technological innovations have contributed to this. The VCR and the K7 video made it possible to record and watch and rewatch films, shows, series, etc. at leisure. The appearance of the remote control also changed the relationship with television (we skip it), and the private channels (late La Cinq, M6) like the newly encrypted one, have disrupted programs, habits and uses. Canal +, above all, which proposed, and displayed it as its reason for being and its profession of faith, what we had not previously seen anywhere else: the matches of the French football championship and all those of the European Cups, American basketball (Michael Jordan and the NBA entered our homes), or films accessible six months after their theatrical release. But also, bullfights (in prime time!) or porn (a little later…), which would be unthinkable today.
Also read:
Fans of the 80s (2/2): “the music of the 1980s unites and is linked to emotion”… The cross-interview with Philippe Corti and Yann Muller
We are perhaps touching on what allowed the 1980s to infuse for a long time, until we found ourselves ready to consume (view, listen) today: the feeling of an explosion of new things (liberation of the airwaves, and appearance of free radio), with whole sections of what we were not yet calling pop culture that left the margins to become the norm.
“This notion of meeting”
And this in a France not yet archipelagoized as it is now, even if chapels already existed.
A pivotal period, rich in discoveries, certainly, but without falling into the unlimited abundance that streaming now allows.
“We are nostalgic for our youth…”
In the 80s, the novelist Fabrice Caro (Fabcaro for comic book fans) returned there with his latest book, The Last Days of Weightlessness (Gallimard, 2025), melancholy and hilarious chronicle of a final year, observed from the point of view of a high school student at the end of that decade.
But the Héraultais says he is not, “in the “it was better before†. I don’t think so. The problems have changed, but there were already some in the 80s. It was not better but different. Afterwards, everything depends on what you put behind the word nostalgia”. Fabrice Caro privilégie “positive nostalgia. I like looking for and finding old objects, I love walking through my childhood or adolescence. In fact, we are nostalgic for our youth, we remain attached to the decade of our adolescence. The generation that comes after mine, for example, remains attached to the 90s…
That said, he recognizes that “the 70s and 80s, it was special all the same… We often see them as neon, but there is a bit of that, this explosive, joyful carefree side. The music, I find, with the arrival of bouncy synths reflects this well…” Before putting things into perspective: “But everything was not happy. The 80s also saw conflicts, the arrival of AIDS, the rise in unemployment, the end of the Thirty Glorious Years… But, despite everything, I keep the positive.”
The comic book author and novelist Fabrice Caro expressed it in his own way last October on Radio Nova, on the occasion of the release of his latest novel, The Last Days of Weightlessness (Gallimard), which takes place during the 1980s that he experienced as a high school student: “Before the explosion of the media, we actually found ourselves on a much smaller number of things. And there was this notion of meetings: if there were two series in the week, we all talked about these two series, if there were ten hits, we all talked about these ten hits. It was more enriching.”
Since then, trying to rediscover the taste of the 80s seems to border on a tireless quest. One example among many, perhaps the most revealing: with the series Strangers thingsthe Duffer brothers managed to encapsulate in the same program the hits of Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Prince or Bowie, and the films of Spielberg or John Carpenter, and, therefore, to find the martingale: worldwide success on Netflix.
Unemployment and AIDS, too
All this posed and documented, the time has come to remember that the 80s were not all carelessness and fraternity. We had not left the Cold War, an ultra conservative actor reigned in the White House, an Iron Lady at 10 Downing Street, and the most chemically pure Soviet communism on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Oil spills regularly oiled beaches and birds, AIDS decimated a generation, unemployment reached historic heights, and, on March 16, 1986, the National Front obtained its first 35 deputies.
A few scattered examples so as not to forget that the fractures, or concerns of today, were already disturbing and dividing forty years ago. A right of inventory that even the 80s, and the nostalgia attached to them, certainly deserve.
