Can you think of ANY movie that epitomizes the 1980s more than this one?
What Miami Vice was to TV, what the drum machine was to popular music, what honking saxophones were to soundtracks, so was St.Elmo's Fire to the movies. It helps that it came out right smack dab in the middle of the decade, but can you think of any other movie that so emphatically captures the 1980s zeitgeist, that sense of, "It could ONLY happen in the 1980s"? The only one I can think of that comes close is Quicksilver (1986), but almost no one saw that.
Can we also lay the blame for Friends (the 1990s TV show) at the door of this movie?