Here we are at the end of the 20 year anniversary of the last year of the 80s. In the next few years, retro 80s cool is going to give way to the 20 year anniversary of the 90s–90s fashions will get a face lift for a new generation, 90s music will make a comeback in commercials and movies, and VH-1 is sure to air marathons of I Love the 90s every weekend. So it’s quite melancholy that this final summer of 80s cool is putting such a harsh exclamation point on the 80s reminiscing finale. The media is not even done mourning Michael Jackson yet (this really has been the summer of MJ nostalgia), and now we lose Patrick Swayze at such a young age.
Of course Patrick is absolutely to be remembered for the pop culture favorites Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but to the purest Gen-Xers–those of us who were ten in 1980 and nineteen in 1989–Patrick Swayze was with us through that whole decade. We first saw him in The Outsiders, which was conveniently released in theaters the same year we were reading the book in junior high school. We watched him repeatedly in the constant airing of the box office bomb Grandview USA with Jamie Lee Curtis and C. Thomas Howell. And as teens, we could all cheer him on and imagine being him as he played one of a group of teens taking on the evil Soviets invading smalltown USA in Red Dawn. And then came the big moment when he got electronic pop loving 80s teens dancing to the 60s classics our parents grew up with in Dirty Dancing. To prove you could dance and still be a man, he played a tough bouncer in the unintentionally campy Road House before finally moving us to tears in Ghost as we were ushered out of the 80s with one last 60s classic, Unchained Melody. Thanks Patrick, for the movies, the music and being a part of the 80s.
