“What will remain of the 80s?” sang Raf, one of the idols of the youth of those years, at the 1989 Sanremo Festival. Diego Gabutti in his Ottanta (Neri Pozza, 2025, Euro 22.00, pp. 352. Also Ebook) seems to want to give an answer to the question, a few decades later.
An answer that distances itself from the classic imagery that has always accompanied the Eighties, considered the era of unbridled hedonism, of Milan to drink, of Italy as the fifth industrial power in the world. In short, the stereotype of a brief happy period born almost in contrast to the sadness of the previous decade marked by terrorism and the oil crisis. For Diego Gabutti, things are not so simple and so obvious and often the nostalgia of memory oversimplifies things. The Eighties were, in fact, damned more complicated than we tend to remember.
Religious fundamentalism, populism, aggressive capitalism, distorted use of technology: the origins of the present are to be found in the 1980s, when it all began with two attacks. One on the Pope, who survived and emerged victorious from the clash with the Soviet "monster"; the other on John Lennon, pierced by four gunshots to the back at the corner of 72nd and Central Park West. The world was beginning to change, and in an unexpected way. Let's think about it: after almost thirty years of growth that went from the post-war period to the oil crisis of 1973, everything changed radically.
Until recently, we lived in an era of full employment, with a flourishing industry, a functioning social elevator, early retirement and healthcare accessible to all. These were the years of rock 'n' roll, the sexual revolution, television, Woodstock, political commitment and decolonization. But with the arrival of the 1980s, the awakening was one that gave us a headache. In 1980, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, which turned out to be a real Vietnam for the Soviet empire, destined to leave only ruins by the end of the decade. The Khomeini revolution in Iran marked the emergence of radical Islamism.
Meanwhile, the West was first coming to terms with the ultra-liberal economic policies of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. The first signs of AIDS also emerged in these years. In Italy, the union and the workers' movement went from being protagonists to marginal. Mediaset was born, Berlusconi's future media empire, which within a few years would enter politics, becoming the model for all future populism. The Internet, the first computers and the very first mobile phones were developed. These years were also the theater of the P2 Lodge and the mafia wars.
One by one, the conquests of post-war Reconstruction were shattered: the economic boom sank into a sea of public debt; youth movements and pop culture were reduced to parodies; politics became a theater for dwarves and dancers, the eternal adolescents of the previous decades grew old, turning into shrewish and resentful figures. It was, in short, the arrival at the world we are living in today.