All language subtitles for cda06c3c5aef4635ad6beeb0fc48b982

The '80s.

A decade that looked forward.

There was a sense that we could
create the world anew,

and so there was
incredible brashness and self-confidence.

It was just a heady time
with a lot of flash and a lot of sizzle.

A decade
that looked backwards...

But wouldn't it be great
if we could go back to that time

when everything was so innocent?

...in order to
make sense of the present.

There was the sense
of social disorder.

America was in decay.

Reinventing
family values for better...

The '80s were the period

of the great homogenizing
and cleaning up of America.

...and for worse.

The '80s said, "We Americans are weirdos
and let's enjoy that."

Why you little...

It's morning again
in America.

Today, more men and women
will go to work than ever before

in our country's history.

By 1984,

Ronald Reagan is building
his shining city on the hill.

When he was elected four years earlier,
he made a promise...

I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear that I will...

...to shake off
the hangover of the '70s

and make America great again.

Starting with the economy.

He believed that the Conservative
revolution he was bringing in

was not just a revolution for the wealthy,
it was a revolution for Americans.

Starting about 1984, inflation came down,
unemployment came down

and we began to see growth.

Under the leadership
of President Reagan,

our country is prouder
and stronger and better.

And the summer of 1984

provides Reagan with
the perfect springboard for reelection.

The 1984 Olympics
was this incredible celebration.

It was this reason just to
almost rub it into the world's face

and also tell ourselves
that we were on the upsurge again.

Three months later,

Reagan wins more electoral votes
than any President in history.

I'm gonna do it just one more time.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

Reagan promises
not just an economic revival,

but a moral one as well.

Sometimes it seems
the allure of the permissive society

requires superhuman feats of self-control.

But the call of the future is too strong.

When you listen to Ronald Reagan,
what he's essentially saying

in so many different ways is,

"We have to go back to a time
before the 1960s ruined America."

Americans,
in a state of culture shock

since the hippies started
splashing around naked in public,

want normalcy,
as they define it, restored.

Just the general sense
that the 1960s,

everything became transgressive

until there was no standard
left to transgress.

Ronald Reagan believed
to secure America's future,

you need to rediscover the past.

Turning the clock back is the way forward.

And, coincidentally, Hollywood produces
a movie that does just that.

Back to the Future takes the audience
back to an idealized 1950s America

of mom and apple pie.

Why do you look so familiar to me?
Do I know your mother?

Yeah, I think maybe you do.

What made it work
was that it was by generations

and you could relate to the characters.

You could relate to their emotions
and their aspirations

and their disappointments
and their frustrations

on every generational level.

Jeez, you smoke, too?

Marty, you're beginning
to sound just like my mother.

Our storytelling,
it's always a product of the time.

Back to the Future gave us
the wonderful opportunity

to contrast the '50s with the '80s.

All right, give me a Pepsi Free.

You want a Pepsi, pal,
you're gonna pay for it.

Could juxtapose certain '50s values
with certain '80s values.

This conveniently left the '60s
and the '70s out of the cultural equation.

You'd had the '60s with the hippies,
you'd had the messiness of the '70s

and the country somehow
wanted to feel clean and fresh and new.

I'm George McFly. I'm your density.

I mean... your destiny.

Oh.

The movie even brought a smile
to the White House.

Reagan saw the movie
and he absolutely loved it.

Tell me, future boy, who's President
of the United States in 1985?

-Ronald Reagan.
-Ronald Reagan, the actor?

The actor?

It kind of reminded the audience
that it was, it was kind of crazy.

He laughed so hard at that joke
that he had the White House projectionist

stop the movie, back it up
so that he could see it again.

Portable television studio.

No wonder your President
has to be an actor

He's gotta look good on television.

Never one to miss
a connection with his audience,

Reagan name checks the film
in his 1986 State of the Union address.

As they said in the film
Back to the Future,

-"Where we're going we don't need..."
-We don't need roads.

Reagan was kind of
touting his idea of family values

and so I do think
that there is a political element

to Back to the Future and its success.

I know she's talking,
but I don't know how serious she is.

Reagan's shining
city on the hill

looks very much like a 1950s Main Street

with all the traditional values
that go with it.

We're seeing rededication
to bedrock values

of faith, family, work,
neighborhood, peace and freedom.

Values that help bring
us together as one people.

Ronald Reagan's position
can be put this way.

I do not want to go back to the past,

I want to go back
to the past way of facing the future,

with a spring in your step.

The future was looking so rosy

for the Reagan presidency
in the mid-1980s,

it was easy to forget
the event that almost killed that vision,

along with the man himself.

March 30, 1981. 2:00 p.m., Washington DC.

President Reagan is making a speech
to a skeptical union crowd.

...there's been a lot of talk
in the last several weeks

here in Washington about communication.

Only two months in office,

Reagan is still trying
to shore up his support.

Public was still very closely divided
on whether this former movie actor,

who talked so tough

hat the worry was you might get into
a thermonuclear war with the Russians,

whether he was really their cup of tea.

But the world was about to
witness Ronald Reagan's true colors

and an extraordinary demonstration
of grace under pressure.

2:27 p.m., outside the Washington Hilton.

The big three networks'
news cameras are rolling.

I saw the President
being pushed into his limousine,

and his secret service agents

did not immediately think
he'd been shot or hit.

They reported that they were
on the way back to the White House.

Rawhide is ok.

In those days, we didn't have cell phones

and I found a regular telephone
and called into my bureau.

We are informed by our White House
correspondent, Sam Donaldson,

who was there at the time,
at least three persons have been hit.

The President was not hit.

In the limousine,
the lead agent, Jerry Parr,

saw blood coming
from the President's mouth

and saw that it was frothy,

and he knew enough to know
that was a lung penetration.

Reagan's secret service agents
change course.

Minutes later, he stumbles
into George Washington Memorial Hospital.

Go, get out.
Step out of the way, move.

The first indication
that anything was going on

was when the PA system came on overhead

and said,
"Trauma team to the emergency room."

DR. It was about 2:00
I'd gotten back to my desk.

"Dr Aaron stat to the emergency room."

Some of the senior surgeons
being called individually.

Never heard that before.

When I walked through the emergency room,
the crowd sort of parted.

And it took about a microsecond
to realize that the face looked familiar

and then it took about another nanosecond
to realize

that that's the face
of the President of the United States,

which is completely wrong.

Presidents are on television,
they're in newspapers,

but they're certainly not
two and a half feet

from a surgical intern
with their shirt off.

I became aware that
the President was gonna be my patient.

so I knew that this was
gonna be kind of a big deal.

The President's life
lies in the doctors' hands,

and the whole world is watching.

So there's been a late development,
shots reported fired outside the hotel.

Across America,
newsrooms are in confusion.

Okay, my apology.
Details are very sketchy at this moment.

Old technology tries to keep up
with the breaking news story.

I want to repeat once again.
The President was not hit.

That's growing
'cause it wasn't a couple of minutes ago.

And it's not just newsrooms
that are confused.

Back in the ER, the doctors suspect
the 70-year-old President

may have had a cardiac arrest.

There were a lot of people
in the emergency room

trying to get an idea
what really had happened.

Then they find a bullet wound.

It was a very small entrance wound,
probably about seven or eight millimeters.

It looked like really a small cut.

The bullet's still inside.

A collapsed lung
and massive internal bleeding.

He lost overall something approaching
40% of his blood volume,

most of it by the time
he got to the emergency room.

The President's
in mortal danger.

Newsrooms are still trying to keep up.

Wait a minute. You say the President has,
the President has gone to the hospital?

But can you confirm that he's
not been taken to a hospital?

The general sense was that
this guy's hanging on by a thread

and the chances of surviving
were not great.

We're right in the middle of this thing
and everybody's wondering,

"Where do we go from here?"

The First Lady rushes to the ER.

She prepares for the worst.

Surgeons prepare to remove the bullet,
but they have to find it first.

After I came back to the Bureau,
I joined Frank Reynolds, our anchorman.

Thank goodness
that the President was not hit.

And suddenly,
someone handed us a piece of paper.

As I understood it, that was...

Frank misread it and said, "Well, no,
the President has not been shot."

The President was not wounded.

I saw that the words were different.

-But that he was.
-He was wounded.

Oh, my God, he was...
The President was hit?

His reaction, I think,
was what you would expect of a reporter,

but also of someone who was thunderstruck.

He is in stable condition.
All this information...

The President was hit.

The former actor was about
to be thrust into the role of a lifetime.

His eyes pop open and he looks around
at every one of us and says,

"I certainly hope
all of you are Republicans,"

then one of our party stepped forward

and said, "Mr. President,
for today we're all Republicans."

4:30 p.m.,
Dr. Aaron commences surgery.

The last word we had is that
his condition was described as stable.

My God.

The situation was not as stable
as reporters thought.

As we began to feel through the lung,
we could not find the bullet.

They need to
risk looking deeper.

Dr. Aaron asked me if I would gently
take the heart and move it over

so he could look behind it, and so I did.

So at one point, I had my hands
around the President's beating heart.

Nerve endings are tingling,
the hairs on end.

It just put everything into
the stark reality that this is big time

and you're here and you don't screw up.

We know very little

and the fact that they're setting up
a press center here...

Just to find out what is going on,
what President Reagan's condition is.

Dr Benjamin Aaron,
who is a thoracic surgeon...

So to recapitulate,
it's been one awful afternoon.

After an hour and ten minutes,

the medics finally find the bullet
deep inside a lung.

I thought to myself,
"Wow, what a day this has been."

All of us were much relieved

as soon as we were
on the way to closing the wound.

Wow.

The bullet was removed,
then the incision was closed.

As I say, he is stable
and in good condition.

The tube comes out, he coughs
and he turns around and goes,

"Does anyone know
what this guy's beef was?"

Oh, of course, it's just like, "What?"

It was great, you know?
It was just a human.

It was kind of classic Reagan
in my opinion.

President of the United States was injured
with a gun that was bought from me.

Why, do you think I can sleep?

Mr. Reagan could be out of the hospital

and back in the White House
by the end of this week.

His condition is described as good
and the doctors are optimistic.

April 11th,
the President comes home.

He'd proved to be
an authentic regular American.

He'd proved to be someone
that the public looked up to

and thought was a hero,

the way he had acted on that day,
and I think the public was right.

And productivity was down
for two consecutive years.

The average weight...

You missed me. The average...

- Reagan's affinity was with people.
- That's what Obama had with America.

They like him. Hard to fight.

Empowered by both
a personal and political resurrection,

the Reagan age
really begins that March day.

Through the '80s,
Reagan's popularity endures

and the economy starts to recover.

But in 1987, his goal
of a revival of traditional values

runs headfirst into a society
that's moved on.

And as far as anyone knows,
we're a nice normal family.

And The Simpsons are the death knell
of the conventional family.

Be normal! Be normal!

In the '80s,
Reagan wants America

to take its cultural norms from
white picket fence '50s Americana,

with faith, family and patriotism
at its clean wholesome heart.

Similarly, most family sitcoms
showed Americans' vision

of who they aspired to be,
not who they really were.

Hey, look who's here,
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

How was school, guys?
You guys eat lunch together?

'80s sitcoms were sort of famously,
like, silly and banal...

-Good morning.
-Good morning.

Can I make you something for breakfast?

...and completely out of the realm of,
I think, any logical experience of life.

You have a lovely home
and you're so pretty.

But the reality of family life
is rather different.

In the 1980s, you began
to see the spread of divorce

and a rapid decline of family formation.

Traditional families, father knows best,
all that stuff is under assault.

Then in 1987,
Americans got a big shock,

the shock of recognition.

Out goes apple pie and mom,
in comes The Simpsons.

-Eat my shorts.
-Pardon?

-D'oh!
-Ay, caramba!

Yeah, The Simpsons was just huge for us.

I was in The Simpsons.

Homer, you're the richest man I know.

I feel the same about you.

Hysterical, man. Just, like, hysterical.

The Simpsons embody
everything Reagan fought against.

The conventional American family
from the 1950s,

of the mom and dad, the 2.2 kids,

the two cars in the garage
and the white picket fence,

that doesn't work anymore

and The Simpsons are the death knell
of the conventional family.

All born in wedlock?

Yeah, though the boy was a close call.

Mm.

The Simpsons ditches
Reagan's desired return to '50s morality

and instead echoes
the subversive grunge scene

kicking off in the northwest.

At the same time,

a former Portland boy
is hatching his own devious plan

against the sacred cows
of American culture.

I wanted to take some of that energy
and some of that counter culture attitude

that I recall from the '60s
and from the punk era

and put it into animation

and see if we could invade pop culture
and see how far we could take it.

A generation is about
to meet the world's worst role models.

Hmm. How could anyone make a word
out of these lousy letters?

Oh wait, here's a good one. "Do."

-Id. Triple word score.
-Hey, no abbreviations.

Not ID, Dad. Id. It's a word.

As in this game is stup-id.

Hey, shut up boy.

Matt Groening
is an underground cartoonist

pitching his comic strip, Life in Hell,
to a new upstart TV network.

But as he waits, he has second thoughts.

I found out while I was waiting
to pitch the idea,

that whatever it is I pitched

would be owned by the new Fox network

and I was, "Oh my gosh,
I can't give them Life in Hell.

"This is my bread and butter.

"I gotta give them something that,
if it fails, who cares?"

In desperation,
Groening has an inspiration.

Simple, brilliant and close to home.

I came up with The Simpsons on the spot,
named them after my own family,

my sister Lisa and my sister Maggie

and my father Homer
and my mother Margaret,

and transferring that
into a sort of a sitcom world.

Bart! What's wrong with you?

But there's no family in real life

that is like
the traditional sitcom family.

For instance, most families
don't have the First Lady dropping by...

-I'm Nancy Reagan.
-Yes, you certainly are.

...to dispense
free medical advice,

like they did in Diff'rent Strokes.

You know,
I'm very concerned about drug abuse,

especially among the young,

and I was very impressed
at the way that you spoke out.

-What'd you kids get?
-I bought this cool pencil holder.

Far out, man.
I haven't seen a bong in years.

The soft white underbelly
of American culture

was about to take a punch.

D'oh!

I thought it'd be fun to embrace the idea
of people's insensitivity

and stupidity and cruelty
and still celebrate it.

Why you little...

You know, all families are dysfunctional
in the same or equivalent ways.

Look at that, kids.
No fighting, no yelling.

No belching. The dad has a shirt on.

These people are obviously freaks.

The Simpsons rewrites
the rule book for American values

in the modern world.

After basic training,
you'll only have to work weekend a month,

and most of that time
you're drunk off your ass.

Then I'll do it.

In a sick kind of sort of way,

it says everything
that everyone's afraid to say.

Lisa, if you don't like your job,
you don't strike.

You just go in every day
and do it really half-assed.

That's the American way.

It's today's freedom.
It actually defines it.

The power of The Simpsons
was to be simultaneously smart

and stupid, subversive,
an indelible graffiti...

Uh, yes, I'm looking for a friend of mine.

...on the walls
of that shining city on the hill.

Ah, hold on, I'll check.

Uh, Hugh Jass?

Oh, somebody check the men's room
for a Hugh Jass.

The Simpsons reflect
the kind of confidence that Americans have

in an ability to laugh at themselves
and get rid of some of our anxieties.

Yeah, what do you want?

A beer.

The '80s started
by setting the clock back

to restore traditional family values
and make ourselves feel good.

- Is everything all right?
- Oh yeah, everything is great.

But by the decade's end,
with the economy restored,

we had the confidence
to just be ourselves,

for better or for worse...

Sorry, Rosarita, I gotta
get to my birthday party.

The Simpsons says, like,
"We're family but we're not perfect..."

Ay, caramba!

"...and we're gonna
be dumb sometimes."

That's just the way real life is.

...the American family
who would never be the same again.

Huh?

If anyone wants me, I'll be in my room.