Topic Five: Yuppie Cinema Dr. Richard Nowell Department of Film Studies & Audiovisual Culture, Masaryk University ¨ ¨To develop a demonstrable understanding of: ¨ ¨ ¨1. The Figure of the Yuppie ¨ ¨2. Yuppies-in-Peril ¨3. Die Yuppie Scum ¨ ¨ ¨Newly emergent social types have long since provided culture industries like Hollywood with novel content to reinvigorate formats ¨ ¨Sometimes they have even inspired sufficient confidence to have films built around them, oftentimes aimed at audience identifying this way ¨ ¨Examples have famously included the Hollywood hippies of the 1960s, Gen-X slackers of the 1990s, and LGBTQ+ folks of recent times ¨ ¨Such conduct reminds us these groups are often nurtured – invented even – by industries to create new market niches to target products at ¨ ¨Such conduct was pronounced in the 1980s, as marketers tirelessly worked to create groups as figures of consumer aspiration and profit ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨Above all other social trends, 1980s America is associated with a celebration of wealth, consumption, and materialism ¨ ¨As a hierarchical pyramidal system, capitalism may ensure that the minority posses the majority of financial resources ¨ ¨Still, 1980s popular media is typically remembered for output that celebrated the winners in this neoliberal dog-fight ¨ ¨Such depictions spanned media, from TV docuseries and sitcoms, to pop and rock, to fashion and films, even wrestling! ¨ ¨As if often true, a distillation of social, political, and media history is exemplified by a social-type: here, the Yuppie US election 2020: Trump and Biden pictured through the years - BBC News ¨Before Austin explores some of their cinematic manifestations, he offers a helpful overview of what Yuppies were… ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨1. What was the Yuppie? ¨ ¨ ¨The Yuppie was a newly coined social type that reflected the economic success and lifestyle choices of some baby-boomers ¨ ¨They were imagined as middle-class hippies grown up, having abandoned their progressive political idealism of the 1960s ¨ ¨Having lived through the me-decade therapy culture of the 1970s, they had adopted a self-serving financial pragmatism ¨ ¨This supposed shift in values had generated a large number of thirty-somethings enjoying visible economic upward mobility ¨ ¨As well paid workers or entrepreneurs, they were imagined to commute from suburbs to lucrative urban service sector roles ¨ ¨ ¨1980s socio-cultural type: narcissistic, young, urbanite, professional, flaunting wealth/status ¨ ¨Yuppy horror cast yuppies as normalcy; their money status, possessions, and lives are threatened by Others ¨ ¨Grant argues some were Reactionary, fantasizing the protection of yuppie values by quashing threats to them ¨ ¨He suggests some are quietly progressive though, subtly ironizing yuppiedom to horrify us by yuppie values ¨ ¨As a product of the advertising industries, it is unsurprising that the Yuppie would soon became became a cinematic staple ¨ ¨Austin examines the ways Yuppies were placed in peril in a series of Hollywood thrillers in the 1980s (and early 1990s) ¨ ¨ ¨2. What were the yuppy nightmare films? ¨ ¨ ¨Austin suggests that these films came close to scary movies due to their thematizing Yuppy concerns for Yuppie audiences ¨ ¨He argues the films represented expressionistic “Mindscapes” visualizing these anxieties much like waking stress dreams ¨ ¨Security, predictability, and the material rewards of financial success – homes, cars, property – are presented as vulnerable ¨ ¨In this way, the films depicted Yuppie values and lifestyles as a form of normalcy that is jeopardized by external threats ¨ ¨He argues the films are ambivalent about yuppiedom, inviting some viewer-joy at destabilizing yuppies’ ordered worlds ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨1. How does this film depict yuppies? ¨ ¨2. To what extent does it celebrate them? ¨ ¨3. To what extent does it critique them? ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨The film uses a “Mindscape” to showcase the escapist fantasies of a yuppy housewife who yearns for exciting new experiences ¨ ¨It imagines Yuppies as thirty-something suburbanites whose social economic upward mobility has left them alienated ¨ ¨She finds fulfillment by temporarily swapping the security of married suburban life for thrills of urban bohemian decadence ¨ ¨This liminal space is imagined largely through white urban post-punk culture; exoticized here as a playground for the rich ¨ ¨Its dream-like nature links Roberta’s escape with cinema itself, promoting consumption of films over radical lifestyle changes ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨The Yuppie initially represented a commercially appealing way of constructing and targeting movie-watching audiences ¨ ¨As young people these middle-class Americans had saved Hollywood from near-bankruptcy in the late 1960s and 1970s ¨ ¨They had the economic resources for the new domestic media hardware needed to maintain movie-watching into parenthood ¨ ¨They were reachable as audiences who shared the self-serving conservative values as middle-aged Hollywood decision-makers ¨ ¨They promised to maintain the profitability of mid-budget prestige family melodrama that had reached blockbuster levels ¨ ¨ ¨A fertile arena for criticism of Yuppiedom was the teen film, which offered scathing treatments thereof ¨ ¨1. How does this film depict yuppies? ¨ ¨2. To what extent does it celebrate them? ¨ ¨3. To what extent does it critique them? ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨This film also competing mindscapes to depict characters coping with their situations, esp. regarding cross-class relations ¨ ¨The rich are cast as narcissistic apparitions who abuse the poor; less real people, more phantoms haunting their subconscious ¨ ¨This film promotes cultural over economic capital, fashioning hip indie bohemia as a retreat from yuppies not their playground ¨ ¨This universe represents an escape into hip youth culture; in much like the film itself is perhaps meant to do for audiences ¨ ¨The ending is empty and ironic; the couple is doomed due to irreconcilable class differences: this is a horror film after all! ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨https://ww2.m4uhd.tv/watch-tvseries-the-goldbergs-2013-224167.html ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨A broader cultural vilification of yuppies as Country Club republicans, incentivized Hollywood to aim yuppy monsters at middle-class viewers ¨ ¨After some commercial success, Yuppie films offering sympathetic depictions of yuppies for this demographic struggled commercially ¨ ¨Yuppie targeting worked for television economics, as this was built less on attracting viewers per se than linking advertisers to affluent viewers ¨ ¨Cinema’s reliance on attracting large audiences was undermined by the Yuppie really representing a prominent minority amid economic crises ¨ ¨The yuppie as narcissist enabled the creative industries to insulate their actual middle-class viewers from confronting their own privilege ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨The two variants of Yuppie Cinema pioneered in the 1980s ¨have lived on in American media albeit in quite different ways ¨ ¨Tales of young professionals material lives being placed in jeopardy have continued, albeit shorn of the “yuppie” marker ¨ ¨Perhaps more significantly though, the figure of the Yuppie as monster has remained more prominent thanks to films like … ¨ ¨American Psycho (2000): a satire on 1980s Yuppiedom, in which the protagonist Patrick Bateman is a serial murderer ¨ ¨Crucially, it depicts Bateman as culturally ignorant, thereby distancing Hollywood and its audiences from the evil yuppie ¨ ¨https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruw9fsh3PNY ¨ ¨ ¨Hollywood’s engagement with the most prominent 1980s social-type – the Yuppie – has tended to be misremembered as largely celebratory ¨ ¨Yet, Hollywood’s initial depictions of these young, urban professionals usually imagine this new demographic as alienated and unfulfilled ¨ ¨Some of these self-promoting allegories targeted affluent middle-class Americans with tales of their like embarking on urban adventures ¨ ¨Later films transformed the yuppie from under-stimulated success story into malignant narcissists; greedy, superficial, cruel, selfish, and violent ¨ ¨These were initially aimed at young people, but by decade’s end shifted to thrillers aimed at an American middle-class suffering financial strain ¨We will reconsider Hollywood’s engagement with a group oftentimes thought of as overlooked by American media of the 1980s ¨ ¨Topic 6: LGBTQ Cinema ¨ ¨Reading: Doty, “Queer and/as Gender in Pee-Wee’s World” ¨ ¨Home Screenings: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) ¨ A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) ¨ ¨[Preparatory Questions on MS TEAMS and in the Syllabus] ¨ ¨Meeting: Thursday 5 December ¨