TV and the Breakfast Club change the world

People who were teenagers in the 1980's (which was yesterday) quite probably know The Breakfast Club, but I was surprised to see a reference to it in Crash Course on Sociology. It's presenter refers to J. Coleman's study of adolescents in the 1950's ("the Coleman report"), summarized here. The subcultures that Coleman identifies correspond roughly to the stereotypes of The Breakfast Club.

There's another pop culture phenomena that I saw in an unexpected context: the somewhat sentimental and melodramatic TV series Holocaust that had some very good actors/actresses. Judt mentions in his book Postwar that it caused a sensation when broadcast in Germany in the very late 1970's.* For the first time, he says, there was widespread public discussion about the events. Judt explains that the baby boomers were eager to talk about the actions of their parents' generation. It may have helped that the TV series was foreign and had lots of Hollywood elements.

The superstar of TV series is of course Twin Peaks. Both the series and earlier films by Lynch have left a lasting legacy to narration and cinematography (I think). The industrial noises, deadpan expressions, endless zooms into a ventilation duct or someone's ear left us wondering if Lynch loved "strangeness" in the sense of existential philosophy. Many of the films had scenes of the actors/actresses way too much in their character: Laura Dern mouth wide open in Blue Velvet, Major Brigg's stiff army mannerism in Twin Peaks, Nicholas Cage's speech at the end of Wind at Heart. For young philosophy majors these were of course scenes of bad faith. In reality it's just Lynch's personal style.

* It was probably dubbed in German. I remember seeing it in English which made it sound a bit unreal.