TV tip
How the 1980s shaped our present
“Déjà vu – a new look at the 80s”: The moderator Frauke Ludowig (r) and her daughter Nele in a roller skate disco. photo
© Moritz Münker/ZDF/dpa
Many people think of Walkman, Rubik’s Cube and Neue Deutsche Welle when they hear the word 1980s. But it was also a decade of crises and challenges. What we can learn from it.
AIDS, forest dieback, Chernobyl catastrophe and a world on the brink of nuclear war: The The 1980s weren’t nearly as carefree as many believe. A new documentary on 3sat takes a fresh look at a decade whose crises and upheavals are still having an impact today.
The new 3sat documentary “Déjà-vu – A new look at the 80s” (Wednesday, 8:15 p.m.) not only has a wealth of archive material to offer. She also relies on the comments of celebrities from two generations: Some experienced the 1980s as adults, such as comedian Ingolf Lück, singer Heinz Rudolf Kunze and presenter Frauke Ludowig. The others only know these years from television: comedian Torge Oelrich, singer Ivy Quainoo and presenter Nele Ludowig. How do you view this decade?
“There were always, especially in the 1980s, issues where large numbers of people thought the world was going to end,” explains Kunze right at the beginning of Sophie Apelt’s documentary. But the earth still exists.
Based on this mood of doom and the issues that moved people four decades ago, the film draws parallels to the present. The documentation is divided into several subject areas: Cold War, turbo capitalism, environmental crisis, digitization and role models. Our present is also a decade of upheavals. For example, the topics of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, housing shortage and gentrification or the climate crisis are contrasted.
The documentary aims to show how German society has changed over the past four decades and which problems have also persisted. The film says that it is possible to see what course was set back then, but also what opportunities society missed.
“Déjà-vu” only scratches the surface, which is probably due to the brevity of the documentation. Nevertheless, many bitter truths are spoken, such as that the effects of global warming were partially known as early as the 1980s. The overall picture shows that the crises in Germany largely overlap.