The Cold War was back in full swing after a brief hiatus. US President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) declared the Soviet Union to be "The Evil Empire," and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925), known as The Iron Lady, not only stood her ground in the House of Commons but intimidated more than a few men with her laissez-faire economic views and hard-line foreign policy..
There were no cell phones, and computers were clunky, slow and out of the price-range of most people. When someone mentioned the word apple, only fruit came to mind.
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Modern entertainment consisted of watching movies on a VCR (videotape) or trying to figure out Rubik's Cube (a big fad) or attempting to remember the sequence of lights and sounds on a battery-operated game called Simon - named after the old-fashioned game 'simon-says.'
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Sit-com TV shows were popular. One their respective nights, tens of millions of Americans could be found watching Cheers, Family Ties or the most popular program on television - The Cosby Show starring comedian Bill Cosby (b. 1937). On Saturday night, the entire nation seemed to hang on every word of the dialogue in the soap opera Dallas.
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There were no iTunes. If you wanted music, you went to a record store. If you were making a good salary, you might be able to buy CDs for your expensive CD player. Otherwise, you purchased music recorded on a wax album - to be played on a phonograph similar to the one invented by Thomas Edison (1841-1931) in 1877.
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Welcome (back) to the 1980s. The baby boomers (children born in the WWII era) were young, and their kids - were even younger.
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How Bruce and Monica Intersected
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If you liked Western rock and pop music, then you probably listened to bands such as Dire Straits, U2, INXS, The Pet Shop Boys, Men At Work and Duran Duran. American singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen (b. 1949) was in his 30s, and his album Born in the USA (1984) soared to the top of the charts. It produced several hits and music videos for Mtv (Music Television) - which was still quite new.
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When historians of pop culture write books on the 1980s in the future, they will have to include a fortuitous pop culture moment that occurred in making the music video for Springsteen's song Dancing in the Dark from the Born in the USA album.
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As Springsteen sang his song, he selected one bright face to join him on stage from a sea of fans. That face belonged to none other than Courtney Cox (b. 1964) - the very Courtney Cox who would play the character of Monica on the internationally popular American TV sit-com Friends (1994-2004).
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On stage, Cox or Monica (then only 20 years-old) replicated singer's dance moves and was thereafter seen as the girl who danced with Bruce Springsteen on the Dancing in the Dark video. That high-profile experience helped her get the part of Monica on Friends a decade later, and the rest - as they say - is history.
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The Bruce-Monica Pop Culture Legacy
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At age 62, Springsteen has just commenced a world tour to promote his recent album Wrecking Ball (2012) - which was inspired by the Occupy movement. The album (a much looser term than in the 1980s) is now #1 on the UK charts, and he remains popular all over the world.
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Although Courtney Cox has a far lower profile than ten years ago, Friends is still played in re-runs and purchased in DVD form in dozens of countries.
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There may never be a more popular TV series.
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In the 1980s and the 1990s, America projected and promoted its pop culture with incredible success across the globe, and it was partly due to a chance meeting of a rock star - and an unknown, female face in the crowd.
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(To watch Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark (1984) music video with Monica (Courtney Cox), please click onto the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs&ob=av2n)
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(Photo: Courtney Cox dances with Bruce Springsteen for his music video Dancing in the Dark. To view photos of popular items and people from the 1980s, please click onto kleostimes.tumblr.com to the right and check the postings for 25 March 2012)
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J Roquen