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[light piano music]

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I often discuss the negative impacts that pop culture media can have on people's attitudes and opinions.

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But, if entertainment can propagate harmful ideas, then it stands to reason that it can also have positive effects on our lives.

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So in this video, I want to focus on media that fosters empathy and solidarity.

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Now admittedly, that's a pretty broad category, so to narrow it down,

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I'll be highlighting a handful of my favorite movies from my most formative years: the 1980s.

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Looking at Hollywood today, it's pretty clear that the 1980s are back in a big way.

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The current nostalgia craze is largely driven by Hollywood's obsession with remakes,

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reboots, sequels, and loving limoges to popular 80's franchises.

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The apex of this wave of nostalgia comes in the form of the novel turned blockbuster Ready Player One.

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"I was born in 2025.

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But I wish I'd grown up in the 1980s."

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Ernest Cline's book, and by extension the film,

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is built around a long list of superficial and rather ostentatious references

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to geeky pop culture entertainment.

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As a boy who grew up in the 1980s,

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most of the media that's name-dropped in Ready Player One I remember well.

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The Goonies, Gremlins,

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Weird Science, Tron, Back to the Future; I watched them all.

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But thinking back to my childhood,

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the cinematic moments that had the most profound impact on me and my emotional development

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weren't necessarily from the most popular or iconic movies.

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The movie scenes that left the biggest impression on my young mind

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were unapologetically sappy and sentimental.

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"Goodbye Charlie. I love you."

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They're the moments that still put a lump in my throat; the ones that make my eyes water and my heart swell.

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"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they?"

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Movie critic Roger Ebert once said that movies are empathy-generating machines.

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By which he meant that we as viewers identify with the characters on the screen,

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and that helps us understand experiences and perspectives other than our own.

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Movies can also affirm the human spirit by showing us examples of what empathy and solidarity look like.

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Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings or emotions of others.

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Now, it's important to note that empathy

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isn't just feeling bad for the misfortunes of other people; empathy is about feeling what others are feeling.

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Solidarity is when people from diverse backgrounds find a common cause,

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and then work together to achieve social change.

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You can think of solidarity as empathy put into collective action.

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So with those two definitions in mind here's my personal list of 5

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lesser-known movies from the 1980s that helped shape our humanity

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The journey of natty Gann

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chronicles the adventures of a young woman and her canine companion as they hopped freight trains from Chicago to

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Washington State in a quest to find her father

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Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, this is a quiet film with beautiful cinematography

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That shows us the world through the eyes of characters living in poverty

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The filmmakers deliberately place us as the audience firmly on the side of the downtrodden as

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We see police evicting impoverished families and company bosses treating workers with heartless and difference

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But while this depression-era world is harsh, it's not defined by cynicism

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Acts of kindness and solidarity between economically oppressed people are highlighted throughout the movie

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The journey of natty Gann is also reminiscent of the classic a boy

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And his dog adventure story genre except here. The boy is a girl and the dog is a wolf

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it's especially important for young women to be represented as leads in their own adventure stories and

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I'd argue that it's just as important for young male audiences to see these kind of representations

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He's a wolf

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Boys need to learn to identify with female characters and see women and girls as fully human equals with their own stories

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Nausicaa of the valley of the wind is set 1,000 years after humans have destroyed

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civilization and the planet in a great apocalyptic war

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We follow the adventures of a young woman named Nausicaa

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princess of one of the few remaining human kingdoms as she struggles to understand and heal a world that's been overrun by mutant creatures and

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toxic forests

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The story centers on Nausicaa struggle to restore

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equilibrium to the environment and to end the violent conflicts between human tribes and the giant insects of the jungle

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We are not your enemies. We mean you no harm

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In group depictions of empathy for friends teammates and family members are relatively common in pop culture media

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Stories, built around expressions of out-group empathy that is empathy for strangers or Outsiders to your own group are more unusual

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and

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Expressions of empathy for one's enemies are especially rare

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And empathy for the enemy is really the guiding principle of this film

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He's so badly

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Nausicaa remains acutely aware of the danger posed by the gigantic bug like creatures, but she nonetheless

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Extends her empathy to these mutant beasts, and it's that act of empathy that ultimately saves humanity

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It has a range of 7,000 miles

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And a twenty Megaton warhead

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Amazing Grace and Chuck is about a small-town boy. Who refuses to keep playing Little League baseball

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because of the existence of nuclear weapons and what the hell is this about

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Just can't play

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Can't play because there's nuclear weapons

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SEC had to do with baseball

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Nothing, what's my best thing? I have to give up something I

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Feel real bad about this. You know that

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Game

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His protest inspires the professional basketball star amazing grace to join his strike and together they organize a global

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movement for nuclear disarmament

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Hollywood very rarely gets political activism right the depiction of activism in most movies is limited to raising awareness or

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personal acts of defiance

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Amazing grace and Chuck on the other hand manages to show how social change actually happens

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Social change is brought about when organizers raise social costs higher and higher until it becomes more advantageous

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for the powers-that-be

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To give in to people's demands than to keep opposing their cause

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In the movie we see this play out when so many athletes joined Chuck's strike that it forces all

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professional sporting leagues to cancel their seasons

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destroy professional sports most college athletics high school scores resume even such things as Little League

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So far it has made a shambles of the World Cup Wimbledon and events as far away as India and mainland, China

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These protests raise social costs to the point where the public the media and world leaders have to pay attention

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Hello, Chuck, and then bruh grudgingly take action

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In the end the world has radically changed

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But unlike most Hollywood movies this social

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Transformation is not brought about by defeating the bad guys or through the actions of benevolent leaders

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This social change comes from the bottom up it comes from people organizing and standing in solidarity together

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Harry and the Hendersons is about a typical white American family who accidentally hit Bigfoot with their station wagon

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The

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Family's relationship with this gentle giant who they named Harry ultimately changes their lives forever

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This one really is better than a campy Bigfoot movie has any right to be

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Over the course of the film the empathy that Harry demonstrates towards other living creatures inspires the family to rethink their worldview

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especially in regards to hunting and guns

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the father played by John Lithgow undergoes an especially striking

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transformation from avid hunter and firearms dealer to someone who over the objections of his own father learns to value

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Non-violence and embrace his creative side. Did you dress?

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Beautiful

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Depictions of men and boys who reject guns and violence as markers of their manhood are critically important in our current culture I

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Wanted King Kong you brought me a god damn giant gerbil. I told you exactly what to do

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Maybe it's right on the nose. I mean how do we know maybe it's not vicious at all

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Maybe it's gentle even has feelings. Where'd you dream of that shit?

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As this movie illustrates, there's no reason Hollywood can't present empathy as a defining feature of masculinity

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Batteries not included

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centers on the tenants of an old New York City apartment building who are resisting a real estate tycoons efforts to evict them in order

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To build a skyscraper

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The residents are a band of down on their luck

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But kind-hearted misfits who find unlikely allies in a group of mechanical aliens looking for a place to recharge

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our group of humans embrace their strange

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extraterrestrial visitors

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And they all work together to help their new friends by providing fuel and energy for the aliens reproductive process

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In return the mechanical life-forms help the residents by repairing damage done to their building by the tycoons henchmen

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This story is really built around solidarity on all sides

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The human tenants and the alien creatures come from very different backgrounds and have very different needs

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But they still feel for each other and work to provide mutual aid and support

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Going back and re watching these

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unapologetically sincere and sentimental movies feels like an antidote to the superficial or

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Ironic appeals to nostalgia that saturates much of Hollywood today

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Now I should say that none of the movies on my list are without their flaws like a lot of pop culture in the 1980s

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Some include racial stereotypes and the stories mostly focus on the experiences of white people

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Still the core themes of empathy and solidarity had a profound impact on me and my values growing up

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My list is of course a personal one and therefore specific to my identity and my upbringing

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Depending on your age your gender and your cultural background

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Your own list of movies will likely look quite a bit different

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If I were making a list like this one but for media from this decade there are a handful of excellent movies that I definitely

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Include I have made video essay is discussing a few of them like wall-e and fantastic beasts, which you can find elsewhere on this channel

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But entertainment, built around empathy and solidarity is still relatively uncommon in 2018

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Which is too bad because we really need more movies that embrace their role as empathy generating machines I

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Hope you enjoyed this look back at some of my favorite movies from the 1980s if you'd like to see more of these long form

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video essays that examine the messages in our media then please consider going over to patreon and helping to fund this project there

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There's also a link to PayPal in the description below next time

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We'll be talking about a rather disturbing action movie trope called abduction as romance