The Triumph of the Lowbrow

In the Eighties, Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan were cultural archetypes — polar opposites in the moral cosmology of Ronald Reagan’s America. Hogan was a sun-bleached emblem of Reaganite virtue: a muscular TV superstar who conquered America’s Cold War-era villains on the wrestling mat, whether it was the USSR-loving Nikolai Volkoff or that avatar of the Iranian Revolution, the Iron Sheik. Ozzy, the Prince of Darkness, was cast as a goblin from Britain’s industrial underworld — an alleged devil-worshipper who haunted the nightmares of suburban parents, an arch-villain of the Satanic Panic era.