In Defense of Bowling for Soup's 1985

Wooohooohooo!!! 

That's the opening lyrics to Bowling for Soup's song entitled 1985. 

And then the song goes on to describe the pathetic existence of Debbie. Debbie thinks 1985 is the year to be in and is too preoccupied with it. She reminisces about her dreams back then. How she planned to be an actress. Of course, she was young at that time and was enjoying everything...the rock scene...the golden era of MTV...the movies that defined the 80's which included Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo's Fire.

But things have changed and so did her life. All the fun things seemed to have disappeared and were considered classic, or even obsolete, by many people. The things that she love are now deemed uncool by her own kids. Her preoccupation with 1985 seemed like a pretty simple predicament to be in but she wanted to stop the time anyways and bring back 1985.

Now allow me to nitpick on both Debbie and the song itself before I defend Bowling for Soup and the song itself. I'll be talking about its remote connection to HIV which I allowed my mind to configure. I may not have been the first to have thought about this actually.

When I first heard 1985, I was caught off guard by how well-written the song is --- lyrics-wise and melody-wise. There are hints of that 80's rock vibe in this pop punk rock song. But the lyrics was what made it a stand-out. Its references to the mid-80's pop culture was sweetly written and punctuated with a rocked-out attitude. And of course, it was easy to identify with the frustration which the song portrayed. In 2004, the song reached no. 23 at US' Billboard Hot 100.

But that's as far as I'm going to praise the song...or Debbie.

So how does the song or Debbie connect with HIV anyways? They don't and that's the fault or  not really the fault of the song. I didn't really expect the songwriter to put in HIV in the song. But at about the same time in mid-80's, HIV has just been relatively newly discovered. 

In 1981, people were dying of PCP and Kaposi's Sarcoma and nobody knew what was causing this but they knew that gay men were mainly affected with it and that severe immune deficiency was common in all the afflicted patients. 

In 1982, CDC coined the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Task forces, research groups and communities started to come together in order to do something about this health crisis.

In 1983, the virus that was causing AIDS was discovered by two research teams. Dr. Gallo from NIH named said it was the HTLV-III and Dr. Montagnier from Pasteur Institute said it was Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV). At about the same time, WHO started international surveillance.

In 1984, LAV and HTLV-III were confirmed to be the same virus that was causing AIDS. It was announced that a blood test can detect this virus and can be used as a diagnostic tool for doctors.

In 1985, actor Rock Hudson dies of AIDS-related illness and leaves a 250,000 USD donation to set-up the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Ryan White, then a teenager and a hemophiliac, was refused entry to middle school on the grounds of his HIV (+) status which he acquired from blood transfusion.

In 1986, it was finally agreed that the virus causing AIDS be named Human Immunodeficiency Virus as mandated by International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. Cleve Jones creates the first panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. 

In 1987, Emmy-award winning pianist Liberace dies. In the same year, Federal judges force Florida to allow entry to school for three HIV (+) hemophiliac teenagers named Ricky, Robert and Randy Ray. Outraged, residents of their town in Florida pulled out their children out of the school. Several days later, someone set fire to the house of Rays.

In 1988, the AIDS Memorial Quilt would now grow into 8, 288 panels representing all those who have died as a result of AIDS-related illness. 

Now if you were HIV+ would you have chosen to stop the time and remain in the 80's? Probably not. You would've kicked Debbie for choosing to live in 1985 rather than today. Needless to say, the 80s was a tumultuous decade for PLHIVs.

Around this time, PLHIVs live in a far better condition than it was in 1980s. Anti-retrovirals are no available for treatment of HIV. Scientific research has achieved a lot to understanding the disease. A cure may be introduced publicly sooner than we know. Why would you want to be stuck in 1985 if you were HIV+?

I am not about to make a lengthy outline of HIV's history. People have lovingly created this timeline. If you want to learn more about it you'll have to a lot more time to know how far we've come from that desperate time for PLHIVs in the 80s.

Of course, this won't be an apologetics if I end without an excuse. So let me defend Bowling For Soup's seemingly ignorance of HIV in the 80s. First, it wasn't really Bowling for Soup who wrote the song. Hence, they're already absolved. The original lyrics was lifted from the song of SR-71. But there were few changes to the lyrics to make it current.

But the real excuse is that, during the 80's nobody really knew much about HIV. And about that time, the mere mention of HIV would cause such a ruckus that only the courageous activists talked about it and only the pioneering expert scientists and health practitioners dealt with it.

The year now is 2012. It's been a really long time since HIV was first identified. On December 1, we'll celebrate another WORLD AIDS DAY. If any, that day would be a perfect time to remember the 80s and celebrate the progress our predecessors have accomplished. Click on WORLD AIDS DAY to know more about the activities geared up for this year's celebration.

In the end, it is not really Bowling For Soup or any rock band who should be heralding the message about the fight to eradicate HIV. It should be us PLHIVs. Now who's up for a RETRO fix? Not the RETROVIRUS but the 80's lookback?

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References:

The History of HIV by Mark Cichocki, RN for www.about.com.

A Timeline of AIDS from www.aids.gov

Music Review: Bowling for Soup, "1985" by Dusk411 for JoeUser.com

1985 (song), A wikipedia article.

The youtube video does not belong to me. It was only linked here for my readers to get an easy grasp of the song's lyrics.