1984 isn’t just the name of a great book by George Orwell. It was also a year when many significant events happened in the country, albeit good and bad. Ronald Reagan was re-elected in November, Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh, and the Cold War was still sorting out its effect on worldwide events. The AIDS epidemic was a dormant monster, and Van Halen dominated the airwaves with a career-shifting album. In terms of pop culture, America was conservative enough to be afraid of changes, and everything ran on structure, regardless of nature and medium. Like in the rest of the 1980s, pop culture was being established under a veil of restriction, conservative values, and the solidity of the American dream.