Via WETA.
The ’80s were awesome. The ’80s were terrible.
Talk to most anyone that lived in D.C. in the 1980s and they’ll probably describe the city as one or the other. Or both.
Tonight at 8 p.m., WETA will premiere Washington in the ’80s; a new documentary special that explores the culture of D.C. in the ’80s: the AIDS epidemic; go-go; Marion Barry; crack-cocaine; the burgeoning media scene; chronic homelessness; the punk scene; and more.
“We tried to cover a lot of things that people [living] here today might have heard about but don’t really understand, which is how [D.C.] could be so awful and so good at the same time,” Glenn Baker, the documentary’s executive producer tells DCist over the phone. But trying to boil down an entire decade—arguably one of the most turbulent, but vibrant, in the city’s history—was a challenge.
“You think of it and you think ‘God, what an awful time,'” Baker, who moved to D.C. in the early ’80s says. “But then you talk to people who were here then and they’re like ‘well, when you put it that way, I guess, but I had a great time.'” Featuring interviews with longtime native Washingtonians, and other noted local personalities, like Kojo Nnamdi, Carol Schwartz, Ian MacKaye, Tom Sherwood, Maureen Bunyan, Washington in the ’80s covers the more well-known issues of the decade—like the AIDS epidemic, crack, the murder rate, and homelessness—but also focuses on aspects of Washington life that hasn’t been chronicled as much.
One such element was the local media scene, and how television transformed the nature of reporting for local journalists. “Media itself was going through such a transformation during that era,” Baker says. “The Washington Star went under and we had cable television taking off, and D.C. was sort of a center for a lot of that, particularly for Black Entertainment Television, which realized that legislation affecting media would be written in Washington.”
The documentary, which is narrated by TV journalist Gordon Peterson—a household name for anyone that lived in D.C. in the ’80s—discusses how the transforming media landscape paved the way for such iconic Washington news personalities like Jim Vance, Glenn Brenner, George Michael, and Arch Campbell.
Baker refers to it as “golden era of local television,” because of the freedom for TV stations to branch out creatively. “There was a spirit of ‘we can do anything;’ there was a lot more freedom,” he says.
But at the crux of Washington in the ’80s is, of course, Marion Barry, the “mayor-for-life” who served as such for the entirety of the ’80s (his first three terms lasted from 1979-1991). Barry’s mayoral tenure in the ’80s, Baker says, wasn’t marked by the personal problems that would plague him in the ’90s.
“Marion Barry was a widely respected politician for much of his first two terms,” Baker says. “Whites helped elect him, he embraced the gay community and was very wise about developing that constituency. He had gay members on his staff and in the city government, and as a result, D.C. became known as a gay-friendly city, and grew to be one of the most vibrant gay communities in the country.”
While Washington in the ’80s might seem like the ultimate nostalgia trip for longtime residents, it aims to educate the new generation of recent transplants on not only the history of the city, but what makes that history so unique. “And, of course, to remind people of a time when we had a good football team,” Baker jokes.
Washington in the ’80s premieres tonight on WETA, channel 26, at 8 p.m. and will re-air multiple times until November 26. You can see all listings here.
