Now, I want you to just think about how pretty much
everything in the 1980s came to be defined either by, or in opposition to, the cultural shift that occurred whereby those conservative principles came to be held by a large plurality of Americans.
Here's what's in and what's out:
TV: Obviously, there's no
Family Ties, but I think we also lose shows that reveled in ostentatious greed, like the prime-time soaps (
Dallas,
Dynasty,
Falcon Crest, etc.). We lose over-the-top Cold War paranoia shows like
The Day After. Crime and legal procedurals are probably still popular, but I would expect them to be more socially conscious and message-driven, like
L.A. Law and later,
Law & Order, rather than the anything-justifies-getting-the-bad-guy mindset of shows like
Hunter. Violence on TV is probably more regulated, so you probably miss out on TV wrestling and later shows like
American Gladiators. On the other hand, sitcoms are probably largely unaffected, which means you still have
Cosby; I think you also still have sitcoms like
Diff'rent Strokes and
Silver Spoons that play to liberal tropes. Children's TV continues to be regulated, so the next wave of cartoons would look more like
Challenge of the Superfriends than OTL's toy-driven shows; you'd still have the
Smurfs, but say goodbye to
Transformers,
G.I. Joe,
He-Man and the like. That probably means that
Robotech breaks out even more so than OTL.
Movies: Like TV, only more so. Say goodbye to the do-what-it-takes cop movie (
Lethal Weapon and the like); bid a fond farewell to flag-waving Cold War films like
Red Dawn,
Rambo: First Blood, and
Rocky IV. I actually think you'd probably lose the
entire Schwarzenegger-Stallone mindless action hero genre -- no
Rambo, no
Predator, no
Cobra, etc. (Sadly, you'd also lose
The Running Man, an outstanding satire on the deregulation of television.)
Rocky and the
Terminatorwould still be hits, but producers would draw very different lessons from their success.
Back to the Futurewould be very different (if it exists at all); I doubt that neo-50s-nostalgia would catch on in the Carter-Mondale '80s. Nor would 80s excess films like
The Secret of My Success or
Wall Street. Of
the 50 most popular films of the 80s, I can only imagine a handful surviving in any fashion. What fills the void? It's hard to say; this is going to be a time of peace and prosperity without ostentatiousness and over-the-top-patriotism, more like
OTL's 1990s.
Porn: There's no Meese Commission, so there's no crusade to get
Playboy out of the local 7-11. The last word from the Justice Department on pornography will be the Johnson Commission, which essentially found that pornography was harmless and that access thereto may even serve as an "outlet" for otherwise would-be sexual predators. I suspect that attitudes towards porn would move more quickly towards where they are now, IOTL.
Cigarettes:
Huge. Without Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, cigarettes are never derided in pop culture as being 'low-class'; instead, the classic notion of the 'smoke-filled room' being integral to power continues, and cigarettes continue to occupy a parallel space alongside the martini.
Music: Totally different. Madonna isn't the "Material Girl" without Reagan, nor do we see the socially conscious rock of the 1980s of Genesis, U2, Sting, and (of course) Don Henley. We lose out on the bluegrass-inspired, patriotic-sounding (if not necessarily
patriotic, per se) "Born in the USA" album. Even though many Democrats are plenty horrified by heavy metal in the 80s, Tipper Gore never meets up with a powerful clique of mostly Republican wives and forms the PMRC, nor is there a Meese Commission on pornography. So I think you'd start off with a continuation of the trends of the 1970s with guitar-rock and apolitical post-punk acts like Blondie. The guitar-rock scene evolves similarly to
Dirty Laundry; rock goes harder, heavy metal is bigger, and so on. The post-punk scene transitions into the poppier New Wave/Britpop stuff while skipping over social-commentary-oriented New Wave acts.