>>96835
>That makes me glad I lived in a smallish town in "flyover country" as a kid and ended up isolated from some of the newer stuff.
That's something I've always thought about as an anon from Bongland, and it's an effect I noticed even in my fairly large city during the early 00s. Watching TV with shows set in London or another major city, you'd notice their stuff was a lot more current than yours. Their constructions were all built/renovated using techniques we wouldn't see for a good few years thereafter. Their technologies and facilities, even stuff as inane as bathroom equipment? Likewise. They had silver Nokias while we were still using unwieldy Ericsson and StarTAC units, and even by the time the iPhone 3 came out most people I knew still used a flip phone, mainly those with full physical keyboards. Their cars were rarely more than 5 years old, when ours typically last for 15. A kid growing up in rural China or Russia right now would have more in common with a citydwelling compatriot from the 80s or 90s over one from the present day.
>One thing I've noticed is how there was a certain maturity to kids' or "family" movies then that was lacking in other decades…
From my research into nostalgia I've concluded it's all linked, and primarily to do with the fact that no-one was truly calm in the early-mid 80s. People were worried about AIDS, and they had good reason for it. They thought Russia would nuke their asses to kingdom come any day, and if you have the stomach for it watch When The Wind Blows or its Eastern counterpart both were animated by asians Barefoot Gen sometime. Stranger Danger was becoming a thing. D.A.R.E. was set up in 1983 to stop kids from getting addicted to drugs. The satanic panic which was a legit concern astroturfed by kikes to let them get away with shit like the Finders Cult took off.
The time between the Vietnam war ending/Nixon getting impeached and the wars in Lebanon/Argentina could be considered as a decade all of its own. Progressive rock cemented its position at the top, with the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie staying at the forefront throughout, from Meddle, IV and Ziggy Stardust to Final Cut, Coda and Let's Dance, and the only way Punk could even compete was if went more Progressive and toned down the angsty shite (i.e. The Police). Of course in the middle of all that you had disco go from an underground craze, to a mainstream powerhouse until the general public couldn't take it any more and destroyed thousands of records in a stadium. In Italy the genre never died, and I'm somewhat glad that Shadilay introduced thousands of anons to a thoroughly-underrated subgenre.
In a way, I guess the "burn brightly/die a hero" philosophy was never truer with the "80s" that everyone and their daughters romanticize over, whether they were even alive to experience them or not. Everyone associates the colors pink and cyan with the 80s, but not many know why. In reality it's simply what people saw when they tried to emulate early DOS and other home computer titles with the "CGA" graphics option enabled but lacking the necessary composite monitor to display them correctly, so instead of getting a blurry, 16 color game with all sorts of greys, greens, reds etc. they just got black, white, pink and cyan eyebleeds.