WE'RE NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan & the Real Culture Wars of the 1980s

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Join the Salem State University History Department as we welcome historian Kevin Mattson as our first speaker of the 2020-'21 series: Public Historians and Artists Reckon with the 21st Century."

Mattson's latest book, “WE’RE NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN,” explores how punk culture emerged in the 1980s alongside a growing political awareness and spread far beyond urban centers like New York City and Los Angeles, surfacing in places like Kansas, Oregon, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Punk, argues Mattson, raged against the bloated entertainment industry, unleashing a culture war aimed at the Reagan presidency, corporate record labels, FM radio and eventually MTV.

Mattson puts the punk movement into a wider context, locating it in a culture war that pitted the blossoming punk scene against Reagan-era policies and politics. Punks rebelled against Reagan’s talk of "end days" and nuclear warfare and seethed at his tax cuts for the rich and slashing of school lunch budgets. Mattson explains how punk’s loathing of corporate culture pitted itself against Reagan’s previous career in Hollywood, his zeal for blockbuster movies and musicians, and his “entertainer in chief” persona and led activists to push against it, whether it was corporations marketing entertainment or those making weapons of mass destruction.

“When people read about Reagan’s ‘entertainer in chief’ persona, I think a lot of people will see comparisons with Donald Trump and how he, in his own way, channels Reagan’s entertainment version of governing,” Mattson has argued. “Few people know that Reagan’s slogan in 1980 was ‘Let’s make America great again.’ So not only can people learn about how punk rebelled against Reagan but can draw their own conclusions about frustrations the younger generation has with the current government.”