Of course many people did buy the American fantasy that John Hughes and the establishment were selling them. Many didn’t see the casual racism and sexism that was occasionally evident in many of Hughes’ most popular films. Some people clearly sympathized with the materialistic nature of many of his characters and I’m glad that so many have found some kind of joy in Hughes’ movies. But the fantasy world featured in John Hughes’ films was not representative of the ’80s youth culture that I came of age in and Hughes did not speak for me.

Thankfully some directors who actually came of age during the ’80s are now old enough to make films that truly reflect the decade as I remember it. One of those directors is British born Shane Meadows. Meadows’ unforgettable 2006 film This Is England takes place in Britain during the 1980s and attempts to show how the skinhead culture that took root there developed into an angry nationalistic movement. Many of the kids featured in Meadows’ film are fatherless and form a kind of family with other young people who share their taste in music and wear similar clothes. Much like Reagan’s America, Thatcher’s England presented British youth with a very bleak future and Meadows’ film skillfully chronicles the underlying frustration and resentment that so many young people were feeling at the time.

Shortsighted film critics often overlook how much of Meadows’ movie can be seen as a general critique of the decade it calls into question. And I think that is symptomatic of the increasing ignorance about what youth culture was really like in America during the ’80s. Point of fact; you could easily take Meadow’s terrific script, set it in San Francisco during the ’80s and simply call it This Is America.

In This Is England the main protagonist is haunted by his father’s death in the Falklands War. If you grew up in California during the ‘80s it wasn’t uncommon to know 2 or 3 kids who had lost their fathers in the Vietnam War and you often sat in classrooms with Vietnamese refuges. The Falklands War may have ended in 1982 and the Vietnam War may have ended in 1975, but both wars left my generation with fatherless kids and a whole lot of baggage. Many of the kids I knew also had their families torn apart by divorces or deadbeat dads who just walked out the door one day and never returned. Families were falling apart as fast as the economy. Reagan’s America might have looked financially sound if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but for many Americans it was a decade of increasing job losses, forced early retirements and an all out war against organized labor. College wasn’t an option for myself or most of the kids I knew. It was a luxury that few of us could afford. Without a supportive family and a college fund, the future looked incredibly bleak which often led to an increase in recreational drug use. Like the kids in Meadows’ film, we ended up forming makeshift families simply based on our musical tastes and wardrobes. But our clothing wasn’t just worn for kicks. What we wore often reflected our social class and attitudes. In other words, wearing an anarchy t-shirt wasn’t just a fashion statement. It was a social statement that could get you kicked out of school in the ’80s.

Many of us who grew up on the West Coast in Reagan’s America also faced our own skinhead crisis thanks to a group who called themselves the American Front. The American Front was an organization loosely based on England’s National Front that is prominently featured in Shane Meadows’ film. Older members of the American Front often preyed on vulnerable and angry young men that they recruited off the streets. A new and deeply disturbing form of Nazism encouraged these young people to engage in violence and proudly sport swastika tattoos. They naively started to believe that immigrants, homosexuals, communists and socialists were destroying the country and they blamed them for the failing economy. The American Front became a dangerous threat to groups of neglected kids who had come together due to lack of family and outside support. As the ’80s progressed music clubs that once represented a small oasis where you could hangout with like-minded individuals began to transform into war zones after these white power obsessed skinheads latched onto the punk and metal scenes. In this kind of environment you were forced to grow up fast and your political identity was often formed before your 18th birthday. You won’t see any of that ‘80s reality represented in the films of John Hughes.

John Hughes never spoke to me, but Shane Meadows does. Meadows is a truly talented filmmaker and if you want to know what the ’80s was really like for those of us on the fringe who were trying to make sense of the world that was left to us watch This Is America England. I should point out that This Is England takes some of its cues from other films about troubled youth such as Truffaut’s classic The 400 Blows and Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia (which also happens to be a better film about the ’80s than anything made by John Hughes), but Meadows’ packs enough punches and truth into his script to make it a truly original film and one of the best of the decade. This Is England also boasts some terrific performances from it’s two lead actors, Thomas Turgoose and Stephen Graham.


At a time when it has become increasingly clear to me that very few people actually remember what the ’80s were really like I take comfort in a film like This Is England. Shane Meadows obviously remembers the decade well. And although This Is England is a very British film, Americans would be wise to watch the movie with their own country’s history in mind because many of the problems we face today are just remnants of unfinished business from that often misrepresented decade.