Super 8, 1979, & Pop Culture

The movie Super 8, directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, brought back to me vivid memories of the personally tumultuous year of 1979. The movie's writers were very careful, down to the month, to capture the culture of the era, including the dress and general appearance of the people, ongoing news stories, technological trends, and popular music.

One element of this which touched me (because I was keenly aware of it at the time) was the conflict escalating in 1979 between the disco era and the encroachment that the two emerging branches of rock music called "punk" and "new wave" were beginning to make on disco's supremacy. It all came to a head in the early summer of that year when an unknown British group called The Knack released a single titled My Sharona. Suddenly My Sharona was the biggest hit around, played incessantly it seems on the radio and sung, air-strummed, and thudded to by people (mainly young people). Super 8 captured this phenomenon perfectly.

Another trend noticed by this noteworthy film was the personalizing of music listening through the use of portable cassette players with headphones. Now, of course, we have the iWhatever devices, with the next logical step to this trend being cranial implants, I suppose (read Tad Williams' wonderful science fiction classic series Otherland to see where we're going with this). But back then, Walkman cassete players were the big novelty.

I saw Super 8 this past Sunday and would like to offer some more thoughts about it without giving away the story. So prepare yourself for more Super 8 analysis from me...