I Love the 80s: The Pleasures of a Postmodern History

In this analysis, I examine VH1' s television program I Love the 80s as a form of postmodern history. I Love the 80s functions as public memory that is "pure'' intertextual pastiche devoid of any coherent narrative form. The show's celebrity respondents and the viewing audience share an affective relationship to the rapidly edited objects of media "consumption'' (television shows, movies, songs, etc.) encouraging identification. In addition, pleasure emerges from the playful intertextual bricolage of I Love the 80s. With a morally detached and irreverent perspective toward these memorialized mediated texts, the television series represents an ironic history of popular culture created primarily for postmodern viewing pleasure. As an accelerated history, I Love the 80s navigates an economy of attention via play with intertextual pop culture. The essay offers conclusions concerning the rhetorical understandings of contemporary public memory.