People: Celebrate the ’80s!
The Stars, The Fads
The Moments You’ll Never Forget
edited by Cutler Durkee
People Books, 144 pages, 2008
In all likelihood, any book published by the people behind People magazine is not one I’d go out of my way to purchase. But while I might not seek it out intentionally, a book like People: Celebrate the ’80s! is just the kind of thing I find impossible to resist as an impulse buy at a thrift shop or charity book sale.
Like People — the magazine — Celebrate the ’80s! is heavy on photos and celebrities (and photos of celebrities, naturally), and light on content and analysis. It’s all Princess Diana, Duran Duran and Dynasty. It’s full of ’80s clichés and everything you’s expect. It’s like a fatter version of the magazine, but packed with ’80s images. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
There may not be much depth here, but anyone who’s ever sat waiting in the dentist’s office flipping through a copy of People wouldn’t assume there would be. Sometimes it’s fun to simply look at the pictures and scan the cutlines.
If you remember the 1980s at all, Celebrate the ’80s! will surely bring back memories — whether you want them brought back or not. There’s a dedicated fashion section, but it’s impossible not to notice the styles throughout. Alyssa Milano sports a bedazzled denim-on-denim ensemble, U2’s Bono wears black leather boots with studded straps, David Hasselhoff shows of his chest hair in a pastel pink shirt. The first two-thirds of the book are chock full of this kind of cringy eye-candy.
The book’s final sections take on a more serious tone, summarizing the biggest (mostly American) news and scandals of the decade. Then there’s the requisite and typically maudlin “In Memoriam” pages and finally a few short “Where Are They Now?” pages to perk things up a bit before closing out the book with celebrity flashback pictures of 21 Jump Street era Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza and George Clooney’s impressive mullet.
Celebrate the ’80s! is, as I am inclined to say yet again, everything you’d expect. It’s no more, no less, just the 1980s, People-style.