"Nostalgia, and Remembering The Bad Times" Transcript
16 Jul 2022
The Strange Dangers of Nostalgia
Nostalgia Danger (Thumbnail)
The Dark Times of Nostalgia (Thumbnail)
Stranger Things
Star Wars
Downtown Abbey
Austin Powers
Grease
Ayn Rand
The Sound of Music
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Auto-transcribed by YouTube, downloaded by TerraJRiley.
Thanks to LVence for tracking down and highlighting various sources.
Additional thanks to Todd in the Shadows (also here) for finding various sources.
- Hіll, K. M. (2021). ‘Wе lie beѕt ѡһeո we lie tο oυrselνes’: Steρhen Kinɡ’s It аnԁ the horrors oꬵ nostalgia. Horror Studies, 12(Reappraising Stephen King), 249–263. doi:10.1386/host_00041_1 https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/host_00041_1
- Grοѕkρ, V. (2014, Sеp 17). Doѡոton Abbeу’s сlаss nostalɡіa is anotһer toхic British export [Article]. The Gυarԁian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/17/downton-abbey-nostalgia-british-export-stereotypes
- Tеlυѕһkіո‚ S. (2018, Jul 16). Whу ‘Dοѡnton Abbey’ Wаs the Fruⅿmest Show on Teleνision [Artiсle]. Tablet Maɡazine. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/why-downton-abbey-was-the-frummest-show-on-television
- ԁеGrοot‚ J․ (2011, Seρ 19). Doѡոton Abbeу: Noѕtаlɡіa For An Idealised Past? [Artiсle]. History Today. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/downton-abbey-nostalgia-idealised-past
- Wеіѕs‚ J․ (2019, Seρ 24). Tһe Strаոɡe Appeal οꬵ Doѡnton Abbeу-Style Aristoсracy [Article]. Politico Magazine. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/24/downton-abbey-movie-inequality-228171/
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Jul 16, 2022
First published.
Dec 07, 2023
Privated post-callout.
May 8, 2024Channel deleted
Jul 16, 2022
2023-00-00
Dec 03, 2023
As of Jul 16, 2022
Nostalgia can be fun and whimsical... but it may also lead to the downfall of society.
PATREON: [link]
00:00 Prologue
04:24 Chapter One
13:59 Chapter Two
26:51 Chapter Three
46:35 Chapter Four
59:38 Chapter Five
01:09:03 Chapter Six
01:14:09 Chapter Seven
#strangerthings #nostalgia
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this video is brought to you by my patrons if you'd like to support my channel and get access to extras like audio commentaries a patron exclusive podcast and uncut videos you can join by clicking the link in the description nostalgia has this weird grasp on our society it always has really but recently it's gotten particularly prevalent movies tv shows books even politicians have been using nostalgia to warm our thoughts to the good old days make the days we very well may not have been alive to see seem like this perfect world we should all wish to return to one of the biggest shows to come out of the last decade stranger things has been attributed by viewers and media analysts alike as being a huge catalyst for wave of 1980s nostalgia holding on to our member berries with an iron grip stranger things is set in the fictional rural town of hawkins indiana during the 1980s the nearby hawkins national laboratory performs scientific research for the united states department of energy but secretly does experiments into the paranormal and supernatural including those that involve human test subjects such as the show's lead character known as eleven inadvertently they have created a portal to the hellish alternate dimension the upside down and the influence of the upside down starts to affect the residents of hawkins in calamitous ways the first season begins in november of 1983 with the disappearance of will byers who is abducted by a creature from the upside down that his friends name the demigorgon his mother joyce and the town's police chief jim hopper lead a mostly off-the-books investigation into his disappearance meanwhile eleven who has psionic powers escapes from the laboratory and is found by will's friends with everyone working together they eventually rescue will and defeat the demigorgon but not without some of the upside down finding its way into our world the second season is set a year later when will begins having premonitions of the fall of hawkins caused by a creature in the upside down that dwarfs the demigorgon of season 1. when it is discovered that will is possessed by the entity his friends and family make a mad attempt at rescuing him once again in the process discovering the grave dangers that lurk just below the surface of their small town season three expands the mythology as we learn more about the creature believed to be heading the forces of the upside down the mind flare which makes its way into our dimension by possessing and destroying bodies its defeat is only a momentary relief though as season 4 introduces us to the real big bad of the series vecna an evil force 11 once fought before but has grown much more powerful since then it takes the combined efforts of every lead and supporting character on the show to fight him only to end in a loss as his plan comes to fruition as the upside down begins to invade the real world completely so from this albeit brief description of events you might be asking yourself where's the nostalgia in that who wants to remember going through possession child abduction fighting interdimensional demons and trauma with a topping of more trauma good question it's one i've been asking myself because while some people love reliving the 1980s via the show a lot of other people have sworn off the show because of it so let's make like a cnn news anchor and look at both sides figure out what exactly is nostalgia and if stranger things is in the right side up or the upside down of it [Music] [Music] [Music] if we're going to talk about the morality of nostalgia that is its moral implications on our media landscape and culture as a whole we need to clearly outline what it is but when it comes to nostalgia it's the clarity part that's the problem when it comes to words most people would agree that consulting a dictionary is the easiest way to define one the merriam-webster dictionary defines nostalgia as one a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition also something that evokes nostalgia and two the state of being homesick the cambridge dictionary defines it as a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past neither of those definitions are inherently wrong but dictionaries often lack two things first a description of how these definitions ought to be applied in colloquial language and second an awareness of a given society's emotional associations of the word take for instance the word ultimate according to traditional dictionary usage something that is ultimate is the last entry in a long and perhaps epic catalog the ultimate letter of the alphabet is z but in common uses it means something like the best or the most powerful something game-changing and dictionaries are often very slow to catch up on expanding a formal definition of a word to include common uses however when it comes to nostalgia we throw this word around a lot the problem with these aforementioned definitions is that they treat nostalgia as a feeling when it seems to be used to describe a thing this thing is nostalgic i would argue that especially recently nostalgia can be seen almost like a literary device something that creators and producers especially use in order to hone in on an audience that is dissatisfied with the current state of the world roughly speaking in spite of nostalgia's focus around a bittersweet recollection of the past in most examples it's often used to describe media that celebrates a particular era in a culture's history getting back to the question at hand is stranger things nostalgia it does take place in the 1980s and therefore as historic fiction it is naturally going to include aesthetics and objects from the decade and therefore will automatically remind people of the 1980s and most people tend to have fond memories of their childhood so yes it can inspire that feeling but there is a question about to what extent the series leans on nostalgia as a reason to watch his finger looking good is a glowing rose-tinted depiction of the 80s all it has to offer see back when season one first came out i dodged it i read some people saying they couldn't get through the first season because they said it was just nostalgia bait and nothing more it wasn't until the second season that i picked up on the series and now i watch it when it drops at 4am every season in spite of whatever nostalgia it may inspire before reminding people that the 80s was her thing it's just an exceptionally well made show on nearly every front but it wasn't until i re-binged the series going into season 4 that i really struggled to figure out where to find the nostalgia in the first chapter of this stephen king esque kids on bikes supernatural horror the show points out several brands that don't exist anymore reminds you of the role that modern brands had in contributing to the cultural atmosphere of the 1980s and the plot takes you to places that have mostly died off when you get down to it that's really where the nostalgia is a celebration of narrative tropes and characters that were frequent in the 1980s specifically those commonly used by stephen king the duffer brothers were actually in discussion to spearhead 2017's remake of it but warner brothers didn't want to hire people only known for streaming shows and now warner brothers is desperately trying to get their streaming service off the ground however is a reprisal of narrative tropes alone indicative of nostalgia i would struggle to justify that even per the dictionary definition especially as far as these instances were meant to reprise these tropes and find ways to fit them into the larger context of cultural awareness tropes themselves are not limited to a particular point in time and when it comes to the second season there really isn't that much more in the way of the feel-good rose-tinted lens we expect of media about the 80s again the reverence here is a reverence for tropes and narrative devices that were popular in the day if season 1 is a love letter to stephen king and steven spielberg with the likes of e.t season two is a love letter to the exorcist gremlins whether or not a piece of historic media is out to sentimentalize the past depends on what it's trying to get you to remember and what it's encouraging you to overlook compare and contrast with ready player one ready player one references the 80s incessantly with allusions to video games and cultural icons but does absolutely nothing to depict the cultural context from which it was removed for instance ready player one almost cluelessly makes the principal villain an executive who is trying to gain ownership of a public commodity this element juxtaposed against the positive depictions of scrappy kids fighting the man and reverent treatment of 1980s iconography establishes a narrative language things from the 1980s are good we want these things to save the day and be heroic but things shown to be from our modern culture that being corporate takeovers commodification financial exploitation these are bad things and the implicit messaging is things today are bad so don't you miss the 1980s when things were good but these are things that started happening in the 1980s with reagan's campaign of deregulation the rose tinted goggles allowed the reader viewer to pretend they didn't pop up until recently through a viewer's emotional investment in media a producer can associate positive feelings with the 1980s you want what the characters you identify with want you want eggos and when a producer wants you to turn away from something like secret government laboratories they can associate negative feelings when your main characters interact with government agencies that's called subliminal messaging when nostalgia is described as toxic it's referencing media which seeks to use this subliminal process to redevelop historic realities in this instance forming positive emotions around cultural landmarks of the 1980s the more this process is repeated the more the negative aspects of 80s culture are diminished and there was plenty about the 1980s that was horrible and that became more true the less white the less straight the less male and the less rich you were the thing is i can't really say that stranger things does anything to really engage with this kind of nostalgic celebration season one spends most of its episodes going out of its way to remind people why stranger danger was such a big deal stranger danger while you may have heard the phrase used comedically has an incredibly dark history back in the 80s there was a massive rash of child disappearances to the point of nearly becoming endemic stranger danger was a propaganda campaign and in this context propaganda is used positively to condition children to be wary of strangers even if and especially if they claim to know your parents and tell you to get into a car stranger things season one revolves mostly around the disappearance of will byers and hinges on his mother joyce played by multiple oscar nominee winona ryder who thanks to this series is finally getting her career back after shoplifting god it didn't take much back in the day anyway winona carries the first season as a mother experiencing an emotional breakdown over the disappearance of her child the first season also dealt with severe bullying to the point of knife violence double standards regarding sexuality among boys and girls extreme prevalence of casual homophobia and a complete dismissal of trauma from almost literally everyone with stranger things one as an exclusive reference in conjunction with will buyer's hair the 1980s is not a period of time i would ever want to live in and given that the social climate of the first season is focused entirely around bullying slut-shaming and casual homophobia i'm not sure what about season one made so many people write it off as mindless nostalgic drivel season two seemed to have even less to say about the 1980s specifically aside from featuring a local arcade as a setting for a handful of scenes and an unmentioned albeit obvious racist sentiment coming from a secondary villain elements that can be considered to be nostalgia based i feel like in a lot of ways they're just there to frame the characters as being people who existed in the 1980s the ghostbusters halloween costumes may be a hollow reminder of the franchise's origins but it's also not at all out of the question that a group of four nerdy friends would opt to make costumes out of one of the most popular movies of the year not that they need help to establish these characters but it would make less sense if they dressed up as anything else for halloween if creators go out of their way to avoid cultural references in historic media there's a point where it becomes more apparent than if they just let their characters exist in the time period where a discussion about popular movies would inevitably find its way into a conversation season three stands out in the series however whereas the prior two seasons do very little to engage with the celebration of the era season three seems to want to dive right in without any prior build up in the first two seasons the key element of the third season revolves around the nostalgia of shopping malls malls seem to hold a place of particular prominence in 1980s media my guess is that first of all there was a glut of shopping malls constructed in the 1980s secondly they became prevalent as teenage safe hangout zones with only cursory adult supervision capitalism says get em young so a lot of adults today have collected a large number of teenage memories that take place in shopping malls as they grow up and become creators and audiences like all generations they favor media which revisits their childhood whereas the prior seasons were referencing a rash of missing children that nobody likes to talk about as well as a mysterious virus beset on people who may or may not be homosexual again that nobody really likes to talk about season three features a lot of hell yeah the mall there are two overlapping shopping montages a strong positive association between teenage freedom of identity and consumerism and a plethora of product placement which feels more like a 30 rock joke wow this is diet snapple i know it tastes like regular snapple doesn't it but wanton references to products aren't the only methods this season has to evoke nostalgic feelings all seasons stranger things feature a number of 80 songs that have stood the test of time with specific songs taking the center stage as pivotal moments for plot developments which in itself is not altogether uncommon for other media which focuses on the 1980s or any decade for that matter and while prior seasons of stranger things tried to latch onto one or two songs season 3 kicks it up a notch the show cuts from one song to the next at a dizzying rate over the first half it begins to feel like a jukebox musical like i said season 3 stands out in this regard and i have to wonder why it's reported that eggo had a huge business spike following season 1 so you'd think that if there was going to be a glut of product placement finding its way into the show it would have been in season two and there were a few more brands openly depicted in that season namely pringles and dr pepper steve drives a bmw but it's really nothing more than you'd expect from any other television show and when a piece of media establishes patterns which it then begins to change we the audience are implored to wonder why the easy answer is that netflix knows that this show is printing money so they want to double down and sell ad space in the show itself things like the michael bay transformers movies are infamous for doing this do you like music the pill which is a cynical albeit all too common occurrence but i'm not convinced the stranger things sold out like that because if that was the case it would have kept it up with season four in which it goes back to the normal amount of brand references and even then these references aren't always the shallow holding the can at the right angle to see the whole logo instances of brand display that we're so used to that we just ignore now using hey remember eggos as an example they are significant to the plot insofar as they're meaningful to eleven whereas other characters including other kids cie goes as entirely unremarkable they are remarkable to eleven because she has never had food like this to this remarkable young girl eggos are a symbol of her freedom which if you feel like it you can read into it as this very nostalgic and downright patriotic depiction of consumer products as evident of american capitalist freedom for which eleven's freedom to purchase and consume her favorite brand of waffles is at odds with the government that wants to control her which in itself is nostalgic for reagan-era anti-government propaganda as per his quote the nine most terrifying words in the english language are i'm from the government and i'm here to help this sentiment coming from the executive branch no less established an ideological battle between the american government and american industry and if we're presenting nostalgic tropes and stranger things we must also be aware that a massive component of american pop culture from the decade conformed to this ideological conflict touching on ghostbusters again probably among the principal pieces of 1980s corporate media it was all about a group of entrepreneurs providing a needed service which the government was hell-bent on shutting down due to ambiguous government regulation this movie was not at all the cause but symptomatic of a successful propaganda campaign launched by the reagan administration propaganda with the intent to erode public trust for the government in order to garnish the public support needed to remove regulations and safety checks placed upon the economy that had existed since the new deal regulations and safeties which ensured that the great depression would not happen again and that america would have the ability to endure smaller recessions without decimating the economy but these regulations also cut into profit and it's interesting that season three the season that takes place almost entirely in a mall is the only season to engage in any kind of political economic or ideological debate about american culture within the written text of the script so perhaps what can be read as nostalgic longing is actually a very specific point being made about the kind of consumerism that sprung up in the 1980s because for all the freedom the mall affords the cast of teenagers it's not a picnic for everyone on a textual level small businesses around hawkins are drying up this is a brief part of the story that exists more in establishing shots and it's dropped early on but on a subtextual level look at what's going on the shopping mall a temple to american capitalism was funded and constructed by a cell of soviet agents to conceal a secret base deep underground where they could open a portal to hell with the intent of moving an army onto american soil undetected furthermore the final battle takes place in the maul against a giant flesh monster constructed out of the liquefied remains of the members of the community this could alternately be read as the heroic defense of this quintessentially american capitalistic space against soviets and flesh monsters however keep in mind that the season does go out of its way to talk about political ideology which means that the writers want you to think about it not even in the america good rush a bad kind of way but actually diving into the mechanics of these different economic systems you know what i love most about this country capitalism it means this is a free market system which means people get paid for their services depending on how valuable their contributions are even though erica is aware of the institutional and ideological separation between the political models there are some bits of information that are being omitted namely the reasoning for why either system is greater than the other if we are living in reagan's america we have to realize that this was a period of time when the economic philosophies of iron rand if you could call them that began to be applied on a federal level rand left russia for the west where she truly felt that capitalism was a superior form of culture her primary philosophical contrast was that she felt that soviet communism resulted in collectivism where the population is conditioned to conform into a singular ideology the people like what the state says they like they eat what the state says they act how the state says the state commissions music and film for the people to enjoy individuality and expression is repressed in order for each citizen to behave and act in accordance with what the state needs the state needs a farmer you're a farmer granted in larger urban areas like st petersburg and moscow there was a bit more freedom in what venues you had opened to you but because the kremlin had to govern so much territory if you were born to farmers in rural latvia it did not matter how talented a musician you could be the state needs you to be a farmer in contrast to collectivism rand lauded the west for its promotion of individualism in her perfect little world where actions have no consequences and ironically everyone behaves as she expects them to capitalism affords the opportunities for people with radical ideas to rise up and belly flop under the free market those ideas which people want will thrive those which people do not will fade away the primary selling point of capitalism is meritocracy where there is a system of capital which rewards diligence or innovation and this process rand argues is the crux of the individual's ability to express their individual personhood shopping malls slightly off topic but not really i'm not entirely convinced that rand wasn't a soviet sleeper agent sent to america to speed up the downfall of decadent capitalism with her own even more toxic version of capitalism now her thought process is flawed for a number of reasons chiefly the naive insanity of assuming that those who refuse to innovate will simply bow their heads and gracefully fade away from the market to make way for the new innovators and that corporations and individuals with sufficient wealth will not flex their wealth to shut down competition and for all rand blamed the government for restricting glorious freedom the corporatocratic oligarchy of america influences the government to protect their interests these interests include the hidden copyright vault in general electric nokia and big pharma in general which each house the technology to throw us into a utopic age because their largest yearly expense is buying a patented technology developed at universities to make sure they never see the light of day in order to foster the consumer public's dependency on their existing profit-driven products and because this always comes back to disney this also includes their influence over american lawmaking to chronically extend the date of intellectual property ownership expiry suddenly capitalism isn't a meritocracy anymore it rewards people of wealth with more wealth and everyone else do they get to be individuals there is a possible reading of season three that discusses this examine hawkins almost everybody who isn't in the main cast each season depicts a clear through line of groupthink you are to like what society expects you to like you are to eat what you are expected to eat you are within an established expectation of behavior you are expected to listen to a certain kind of music and you face public ridicule if you do not conform as closely as possible the government doesn't it was how to convince a population to enjoy something they may not otherwise enjoy tip if you present your product as if everyone already likes it people will decide that they want to like it because they want to like what everybody else likes and suddenly popularity and being liked by others boils down to a matter of who can exemplify the most archetypal version of american that a given population has decided upon thanks mccarthyism and this has social feedback as well skip ahead to season four where hawkins goes on a vigilante spree against a dungeons and dragons group you're not supposed to like nerd things you're supposed to like basketball so if you like dungeons and dragons there must be something wrong with you something delinquent and if there's one delinquent thing about you then it's not a stretch to say that you are a ritualistic demon worshiper funny thing is this actually happened there really was a widespread component of the satanic panic which zeroed in on dungeons and dragons but also bled over into the 1990s with things like magic the gathering and maybe not specifically tied to d and d but there were public vigilante mobs that targeted people who were accused of living outside christian normativity just look at the story of the san antonio iv but back to season three you have a giant flesh monster made up of good capitalist toms and jains attacking our heroic group of weirdos a capitalist collective trying to murder a bunch of social outcasts the statement here is that this american freedom brought about by capitalism doesn't really exist all consumers are just part of the same flesh monster at the end of the day where they continue to consume but now they consume you but the problem with season three is that while this discourse is going on we get sucked into situations where the plot is stopped to remember something from the 1980s and it's also worth mentioning that the day was saved in part due to dangerously unregulated fireworks crafted into improvised explosives there's a reason this warning label says 18 or older this sucker is filled with 150 grains of black powder aka gunpowder play this you ugly piece of [ __ ] which establishes two conflicting languages one which subverts nostalgia and one which promotes it so i question whether the subversion was the intended reading or just an incidental inclusion as a result of half the season needing to take place in a shopping mall confusing and inconsistent literary language makes for messy analysis and i feel like because season three contains so much nostalgic content leaning in one direction or the other could definitively answer whether the series as a whole is using nostalgia as a selling point or whether it's subverting it but once again we're at a troubled spot a definition or description of the uses of nostalgia is not very helpful for telling us how to identify it the tricky thing about nostalgia is that sometimes media just takes place in a bygone era historic fiction another thing is that younger generations who never lived in the 1980s say can be found reminiscing about the decade for the sake of aesthetics community values and longing to be part of a specific social movement that lived and died before the clinton administration the latter case is problematic because people in these instances often overlook the unflattering components of the past cue a bunch of gay people my age and younger who wish they'd been born in new york or san francisco a few decades ago so that they could have been a part of proper gay society without acknowledging the terror the queer people lived under every day and the reason this culture was so vibrant was because we desperately needed counter programming to the gloom of everyday existence and so it's not always the 80s for some it's the 70s with disco and experimental rock for others it's the 60s with soul and woodstock my question being how can nostalgia be used to describe these feelings of people my age if a definition of nostalgia requires memories or lived experiences another question is when is nostalgia intended for take a book like the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald these days it's held up as a token of literary canon and taught in many high schools to frame a discourse around the 1920s and modernism in prose literature at the time it was considered to be a failure next to fitzgerald's other successful novels and was largely ignored however it was rediscovered after the second world war and held up as a relic that described the cultural mindset of the roaring 20s at its peak even though it was intendedly written for a 1920s audience could we say that this is nostalgic media because it offered a sense of nostalgia to an audience in the 1950s it's difficult to find media that's celebratory of the day and age that it's made in creators as per their nature are often critical of social conventions and use fiction as a way to highlight these frustrations can we say then that nostalgia as creators may use it to depict the past is used to contextualize criticisms they have about contemporary society but again is there a clear line between nostalgia and historical fiction can you have one without the other you could even say that something like the medieval fantasy or even dungeons and dragons itself is nostalgic because the dungeon master doesn't make a point of killing off half of the sidecast from dysentery which honestly is probably why things like game of thrones typically focus around the wealthier classes who had the privilege to afford things like medicine and basic hygiene but it does contribute to a concept of nostalgia in which the inconvenient embarrassing or harmful elements of the past are forgotten in exchange for the ability to frame a particular story in an aesthetic setting the end result of nostalgic fiction seems to be the argument wasn't this time in history kind of great wouldn't you want to be alive then for me personally not a day before penicillin and air conditioning but where is the line drawn in general and how do we identify this kind of nostalgia well it's probably best to go over some examples we've already touched on ready player one and the consequences of the framing devices it uses to moralize contemporary culture versus those of the past but it's far from being the only one of its kind [Music] downton abbey is one of the most successful english shows of all time appealing to audiences of all stripes by using the centuries-old upstairs downstairs dynamic of telling stories of the rich and the poor's who support them again with the emotional support boards you can watch the show in french german korean russian persian and it had an estimated global audience of 160 million viewers at its peak in 2014 yet downton abbey is just the newest in a long line of conservative propaganda that gets lapped up by audiences yearning for the good old days of yore from merchant ivory films to notting hill much of england's media exports have been reinforcing old world class stereotypes that we modern people seem to love for some reason doubting is a world where rules matter how you dress for a meal which spoon you use the right time to visit a new neighbor the life of downton's characters is a choreographed dance punctuated by seasonal celebrations daily and weekly rituals and celebrating a lifestyle that has been regulated by the same chain of tradition rules and expectations for centuries the sanctity of the country house as ordered harmonious and class bound was never really challenged and the audience cheered when the various selfish and evil characters usually amongst the poors were sent on their way by nice loyal poor's who knew their place whilst the series did toy with things like irish politics the suffragette movement homosexuality and middle class identity it shied away from any real critique of english society at the time heritage television like this is regularly criticized for engendering nostalgia about an idealized past in a classic critique the film scholar andrew higson suggested that such work serve to present a conservative englishness that never really existed it is inarguable that downton abbey presents a kind of lovingly rendered unquestioned version of the past in the first down movie lady mary crowley a key member of the family was wondering whether the time had come to sell the grand british estate home to a handful of aristocrats in their army of servants maybe the family should move to a more reasonably sized large manner and turn downton into something useful like a school but her maid begged her to keep downton in the family forever a symbol of glory and honor for the staff and surrounding town don't you see all the poor people ever really wanted was more aristocracy the show and the movies that have followed have always taken a romantic view of the old economic hierarchy we're supposed to be moving past yes this is a period piece written by julian fellowes the most periody of british period writers he's also a conservative member of the house of lords and yet so much of actual 1920s history goes unseen at the time the british labor movement was gaining traction while british newspapers were breathlessly covering the social lives of the aristocracy some people were pushing for the abolition of hereditary titles and demanding that noble's land be taxed in 1928 working-class women would get the right to vote within 20 years the entire system would fall apart and domestic service would go from being one of britain's largest sectors of employment for women to being virtually non-existent few working-class tears were shed for the end of that era but if you've done little research into this history and only know it the way julian fellowes wants you to know it you wouldn't know that in fact you'd think it was damn near the downfall of england as a whole and that even the poorest of the poor were heartbroken to see the ultra rich losing some of their titles and land so why do so many of us watch this show with a romantic feeling in our hearts the servants have been stuck downstairs long enough yeah it's time we go upstairs wait what do you mean i'm talking about a revolt i'm talking about a worker uprising others among us myself included layer aspiration with resentment on fictional shows like hbo's succession about a family that owns a global media empire luxury porn goes down with a chaser of self-satisfaction those grand summer homes and helicopter rides are symbols of moral decay in real life we lap up the college admissions scandal and the nouveau riche ostentatiousness of real housewives taking satisfaction when the rich people's self-serving tackiness catches up with them and we know that the wait staff is watching with clear eyes and the power to topple the system from within like the bartender whose secret 47 video helped to doom mitt romney's 2012 run for president in downton abbey there's no threats like that the worst case scenario is a valet spill some soup and there's a stability in that kind of thing that makes us nostalgic for a time when one small mistake one missed payment one forgotten appointment wouldn't lead to you being homeless or without a doctor but the nostalgia portrayed in downton is a fantasy there's this portrayal of a kinder set of relationships between people of different economic classes the servant characters in downton like the dressing lady mary feel a bond to their masters that isn't just economic but emotional and the aristocrats feel an obligation to their servant's welfare and appreciation for even the dressing and polishing skills that they bring to the table priya sasha a stanford university history professor said of this we're wise enough to know that this is a romantic very idealized depiction of servant and master relations but we just find it so attractive if we're going to have inequality can it at least be nice can the dignity of every kind of work be acknowledged this is it's true the difference between downton style inequality and the transactional relationships of today's economy gone are the days of benevolent corporate paternalism a social compact that ranged from pension funds to full-on company towns now pensions are outsourced to 401ks healthcare costs are passed on to the employees and within the confines of the gig economy employer-employee relationships don't exist at all so nostalgia for those good old days can creep into our mind while watching the show even though those good old days never really existed the poor is lucky enough to land jobs with the riches who didn't treat them like crap were almost always white christian straight cisgender and spoke english as a first language everyone else could die in a hole and often did and for those who did have work there wasn't a whole lot of camaraderie and love for the upper classes it was a business arrangement where both parties resented the other for their existence there's a reason the servants were in the basement or in another house altogether and no amount of bbc programs where the rich and poor celebrated christmas together will ever change that yes it was likely true that some of the staff would become attached to their patrons usually those who worked closer to the patrons and whose responsibilities weren't so degrading also the ones who would be paid considerably more i can also see it being a trend among rich people the ones educated enough to write logs to be kept for historic record for them to imagine having been much kinder to their servants than the servants may have felt laughing at your boss's bad jokes is a great way to get a raise or promotion after all i've seen modern media where rich ladies will start to see their hispanic housekeeper as their real friends and i've seen people on twitter report how bonkers weird it is to be on the receiving end of those affections the servants in downton abbey were employees not family the poor's survival depended on them being able to navigate the nuances of that relationship the more they started to think of them like family the more cutthroat things would get in the kitchens and it's very telling i think that the story of downton abbey at least as of now ends in 1928. the year before the lords and capitalists of the day destroyed the global economy but no one really has nostalgic yearnings for the great depression so i doubt we'll be seeing lord julian fellowes tackling that anytime soon greece is a 1978 film adaptation of the 1971 musical of the same name taking place in the autumn semester of high school in 1958 this film itself is indicative of a nostalgic longing for that decade which would define the cultural sensibilities of the 1950s greece features an archetypal plotline of a girl and a boy in high school the boy is afraid to be sensitive with the girl because he faces social ridicule for being a boy with feelings and the girl struggles to find a way to convince him to open up to her the resolution of this boy and girl heterosexual dilemma is that the girl decides she's going to completely shift her aesthetic to be a living pinup poster and while she rocks the look it's a terrible message to send to girls wondering why boys are jerks no dangling cleavage on a string like a carrot from a fishing pole in front of a horse will not get him to shape up greece's main appeal is the entire environment of presenting the 1950s having spoken to older people about this movie they claim it is very accurate to capturing the social environment of the day and age rumor mills drive-ins milkshake diners boys with their cars and broken hearts at high school dances and outside of redeeming girls who are unashamed of not being like the other girls in school like rizzo there isn't really that much in greece that offers a social commentary greece kind of functions like this museum exhibit a recreation of a dilapidated temple of eisenhower era america and as this is eisenhower's america a discussion about the desegregation of schools is never mentioned there are no black or asian characters of note there is nerium mention of homophobia severe bullying nor any other kind of social problems which plagued the 1950s as per the depiction in greece the 50s seemed like an absolute bestest ever time to be alive the positive elements of the decade are removed entirely from the cultural reality of the era and what we have is this dreamlike 50s fantasy where everyone is having a great time 16 year olds can have amazing cars smoking doesn't cause cancer and pregnancy was the worst possible outcome from sex and you may say but james can't you just let people like happy things to which i say i really like greece i performed songs from greece at talent shows for three years straight in elementary school nearly every song is an absolute banger and even the side characters have stuff to do namely the girls but i digress the problem with media like this is when i ask what's a piece of media about the 50s you think of greece or other media like greece whereas media set in the 50s that points out how it wasn't a party for everybody often gets pushed to the wayside i don't have a problem with fun whimsical media about the past especially if like greece the framing devices of the film highlight that this is a very dreamlike and fantastical depiction of the subject matter the problem becomes when a given public actively ignores and forgets media which depicts a given time period a little more earnestly and that's not to say that you can't have a dreamlike whimsical musical media that doesn't incorporate systemic social issues john waters hair spray is a gay old time dripping in nostalgic love for the 1960s and yet it also contains woven into the plot itself reminders of the systemic social issues that were still prevalent in the 60s and today which to the advantage of the musical film genre you can trick people into absorbing social commentary a whole lot easier if the songs are catchy most people never knew that the sound of music one of the most famous and well-regarded musicals of all time is actually about resisting nazis but that's because they didn't know the movie kept going after maria gets married to georg von trapp and how it's exclusively about the family fighting nazis with music and passive resistance because it was released on two vhs's and we pretend take two didn't exist fun fact if you are a commanding officer in a military where you are being encouraged to commit war crimes you can actually leave your country that's an option and it is ethical there really isn't a just following order's argument that turns out well for the person using it the sound of music follows the musical journey of maria a young woman studying to be a nun unfortunately she's got her head in the clouds and not in the kind of way the catholics appreciate with the intent of giving her something productive to do the convent sends her to the von trapp estate to be the governess of a retired naval officer's seven children the children reeling from the house being run like a navy vessel since the death of their mother struggle to open up to maria but through the sound of music she wins them over and eventually their father keep in mind this is actually a true story however as georg von trapp is a renowned austrian officer and a baron the rising nazi party desperate for military legitimacy commands him to return to his post georg does not at all like the idea of the nazi party and loads how the austrian government handed itself over to hitler he and maria agreed to flee the country by traversing the alps and relocate to america where they have more children and become a sensationally famous family choir now when it comes to the musical a lot of the nazi stuff is kept on the periphery it's really only brought up early on through the eldest daughter louisa and her teenage love interest rolf because of course they named the pretty boy nazirolf i was born in dusseldorf and that is why they call me rolf so with the nazi stuff in the background a lot of the sound of music is about a callback to when life was good and simple living in an era like the weimar republic the natural historic beauty of an austrian city that had not been decimated by the first world war and when family values fought against rigid conformity and if you stop watching the sound of music at the wedding this is the nostalgia you get it's not until george gets back from his honeymoon and rips down the swastika that's hanging over his manor that you start to clue in oh [ __ ] and they really filmed a portion of this movie in the square where nazis held book burnings in salzburg but as were the chronology of the film maria would have no idea that these things would take place while she's singing about the confidence she needs to muster which is considered to be one of the better songs in the movie but was not actually in the original stage version some gay theater trivia for you the fact that so many people report that as soon as the von trapp wedding happened their parents hit the pause button on the vcr and quickly ushered their kids to bed is a perfect example of how various media frames nostalgia the abridged sound of music tells the story of freedom and love overcoming rigid social expectations it's about the power of song and expression having the ability to erode and overcome grief sorry tearing up a little at that and that alone is a very positive glowing depiction of social values as they existed moving out of the classical values of europe from the 1800s embracing a more liberated social climate that can be found in the turn of the century and especially into the 1920s and without the social framing of hey the nazis are coming we don't really realize that this cultural mindset was juxtaposed against a very different social climate that existed in europe at this very same time which is an important part about nostalgia and media oftentimes it removes cultural reality in lieu of feel-good fantasies playing off of memories of the good old days we take negativity for granted and as we get older and bitter we see negativity mounting pessimism is present but if we hate where we are today we tend to look back for a frame of reference for when times were better and if we cannot find one we will usually reinvent our past to become the utopia we want and so we look on the good times we had learning how to sing and play guitar from our nanny and we reject the memories of fleeing from the hugo boss germans with guns which i would like to point out how difficult it would be to make the sound of music today and how people would be asking why are musicals all of a sudden so political when resisting nazis was never really considered political beyond being a for granted civic duty until recently remember when republicans flocked to glenn beck because he accused every democrat of being hitler and given studio's reluctance to really lean politically in any direction including a direction that involves telling kids it's okay to punch nazis if sound of music was being made today it would likely entirely omit the nazis altogether and instead feature the von trapp family traveling to america to pursue fame and fortune like abba or something and be no more than two hours long which is another problem with nostalgia it seeks to remove the political reality from a cultural climate and this is the problem with people complaining about star wars or ghostbusters or whatever as suddenly being political where it wasn't before telling yourself that certain media is suddenly political when it was not is yep an element of nostalgia upon examination there comes a time in every 30-year cycle where the intellectuals of a generation begin to critically think about the droves of feel-good reprisals they who were also alive in these nostalgic times are willing to recall things with a bit more honesty and yes that may mean the film is a bit off-putting to right-wingers but for this group of creators what they have to say is more important than saying anything for a buck i know what you're thinking what's this doing here damn it there's gonna be a whole generation of you who have never even heard of this movie okay so austin powers was a comedic movie that was a spoof of james bond the 90s and 2000s were popular for this kind of comedy taking an existing plot format the spy thriller and making a farce out of it in this case focusing on the suave sexy super spy austin powers is cryogenically frozen so that he can be youthful and at the top of his game pending the return of his rival dr evil a large section of the comedy in this movie is derived from the very large gap in sex appeal as it existed in the 1960s and sex appeal as it existed in the 1990s and though he was at the peak of sexuality in the 60s austin does not adapt to fit 90 sensibilities very well this movie itself is a commentary on the 30 year cycle that hit the 90s with a wave of groovy psychedelic 60s nostalgia however everything that is pulled from the 1960s feels out of place and uncomfortable and at odds with 90s cultural sensibilities and for all the culture of the 1990s nostalgized the 60s the film highlighted many elements where certain parts of the 60s were left behind namely social liberties i could make a case for arguing that perhaps the movie is mocking the 90s for wanting that 60s aesthetic while holding on to that post-reagan social and fiscal conservatism the 60s after all existed in a pre-aids world of what we describe as free love as in you give your love freely she's the village bicycle everyone's had a ride coinciding with the sexual revolution that would continue ramping up through the 70s and would come to a halt when aids began to spread through a population that had abandoned condoms for birth control medication austin powers the movie is also not shy to be critical of people of the 60s either for establishing these practices without foresight enough to anticipate a venereal fallout but as long as people are still having promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection well at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment i'll be sound as it found of course true to those 1960 sensibilities this is a comedy movie designed for audiences who take to herbal inebriation so as much as i feel these readings are there i think the primary objective here is simply to present highly structured absurdity that said the movie does take the time to point out that a fixation on a decade 30 years prior is a little absurd in itself there is a certain selective memory when it comes to even venerating a single subculture of a given decade for everyone building their identity around a watered-down 1960s aesthetic mike myers says hold my mint julep and shows up with frills square glasses and a bowl cut suffice to say given the success of this movie and the sequel there's a strong case to say that subverting nostalgic sentiments of the day and age is also part of the cultural mindset granted austin powers too premiered in 1999 and by the time the franchise got a third installment they had to bump it up to the 1970s presumably because the 60s got stale and beyonce perhaps by this time a nostalgic subversion of the 60s had worn out and you couldn't really make a mockery of it more than had already been done which suggests to me that the point at which nostalgic tropes become a mockery is an indication that we are as a culture coming to terms with the problems of the era we had spent the prior 10 years longing for hi georgie the 2017 adaptation of stephen king's it captures what so many modern 80s set or 80s influenced horror films rarely achieve it doesn't just attempt to recreate the 80s through clever pop culture references instead it brings back the genuine wonder that our grasping nostalgic quests often seek while at the same time reminding us that horror is more than recognizable aesthetics it's facing the temporary nature of time and innocence like a balloon these moments are fleeting destined to lose air or as pennywise would say it was a success because the film takes place in the 1980s instead of its original novel timeline in which the kids section takes place in the 1950s it was successful because it takes place in the 80s where kids recognize that the worst horrors of the world aren't mummies werewolves or clowns but a world where adults have left them their own worst failings as an inheritance it taps into one of modern society's greatest fears the endangerment of children but unlike most nostalgic stories that look back at bygone eras and gloss over the negatives of the time especially for children it focuses on them the real horrors of childhood like fear of the unknown violent bullying abusive parents and for many of us feeling like a complete outcast it doesn't use a metaphor to show us the horrors of growing up instead shows us the true horrors plainly alongside the demonic pennywise there's a nostalgia within the film that is rarely used the nostalgia of being afraid this idea traces all the way back to some of the earliest stories told to children fairy tales and nursery rhymes witches in the woods waiting to devour lost children predatory wolves pretending to be someone you can trust in order to take you away forever something terribly prescient in 1980s america when stranger danger was such a prevalent fear georgie meet pennywise now we aren't strangers the 80 saw a rash of child disappearances across the country which the 2017 version of it plays into unlike the book in which unsolved murders are taking place the film roots us firmly in the real world by making the threat into children vanishing without a trace and then reinforces the stranger danger by making every adult in the little town of derry maine come across as a toxic force terrifying in their own right they're not monsters or pennywise in disguise they're just grown-ups but little was more terrifying than a non-parental grown-up in the time of stranger danger this time period during which stephen king originally wrote the doorstop size novel was rife with nostalgia for the 1950s a movement spearheaded by ronald reagan who won both his presidential terms on the promise of restoring america to the glory it had displayed during those post-war years but as the character of mike hanlon says in the book we lie best when we lie to ourselves and lying to ourselves is what we do when we engage in nostalgia not only does it devote ample narrative to illustrating how the past is not as perfect as many choose to believe but forgetting and sugarcoating the past is what allows most of the bad things in this story to happen if nostalgia is our tendency to remember and long for a past that never quite existed the nostalgia could be said to protect it in it children see things for what they really are but when they get older when they find power and privilege they forget what life was like and do not see as clearly as they used to the tendency of those with power to forget or refuse to believe is what allows natural and supernatural horrors to occur it is relevant that much of the horror in it is perpetuated by human beings rather than the titular interdimensional monster it is a story full of bullying domestic violence and hate crimes against minorities while king is telling a story about a monster that is protected by people's desire to misremember the past he is also telling a parallel story about history and the conditions that allow the more terrible moments in human history to repeat themselves through its cycles of feeding and dormancy king almost anticipates this nostalgic view of history as a cycle itself and it makes the message relevant all over again as yet another u.s president donald trump won favor through selling a false version of the country's history and formed a tribe out of believers in that false past it is about a supernatural horror but also about the human habits that allow natural horrors to happen it also suggests the remedy looking at the past with clarity becoming aware of how privilege and power alter perceptions of the past it lends itself to examination through the lens of nostalgia because it is a novel literally about returning home though not the safe and better home visited through memories but instead a terrifying and dangerous home the losers club's lives depend on seeing what the town at large prefers to forget one could argue that pennywise itself is nostalgia every 27 years it returns it comes back into our world with a great act of violence and then leaves a little while later with more blood spilled only to sleep for 27 years and then repeat the process mirroring the 30-year cycle of nostalgia it reflects a societal habit of going through these cycles and of forgetting the horrors when they're not happening even though the threat persists in the real world but just as stan refused to be charmed by the pleasant sounds and smells of the circus it serves as a warning that we allow privilege to distort our perception of the past at our own peril we let the horrors repeat because we'd prefer to forget they ever happened in the first place i'm gonna do something a little different and talk about a book so excuse the lack of b-roll my best friend's exorcism was written by grady hendricks in 2016 and is actually set for a film adaptation from amazon prime it follows the story of abby in her sophomore year as her best friend gretchen goes missing briefly and when she is found she isn't quite the same abby lives a relatively normal life until then at least as far as she describes it holding down a number of friends but gretchen is the only truly close friend she has and it may even read a little sapphic the story is a retrospective look at the culture of the late 1980s for all that high school students would actively engage in pop culture there are abundant references to the go-gos to madonna to 80s heartthrobs and all those other warm fuzzy things that are worth remembering however hendricks uses this to lull the reader into a rosy acceptance of 1980s culture you know me i love a good demonic possession a close friend or relative wreaking havoc upon a community but my best friend's exorcism does it a little differently yes there are supernatural elements that clearly facilitate that gretchen is in fact possessed by the demon andross one of the demons listed in the goaesha a grand marquis of hell demonologist colin de plancia writes of him he appears to have the body of an angel and the head of a wood owl and to be riding a black wolf and carrying in his hand a pointed saber he teaches those whom he favors to kill their enemies masters and servants he stirs up trouble and dissension he commands 30 legions while in possession of gretchen andros does stir up trouble but none of the poltergeisty kind of floating furniture stuff andros uses relatively mundane practices to destroy lives one of abby's friends he tricks into drinking a weight loss shake which turns out to have tapeworm eggs and this friend nearly dies because she did not realize that she was loading her body up with parasites tapeworms have been used as a weight loss fad since the victorian era but have a number of very serious health consequences and yes it was very available in the 1980s another friend is catfished by gretchen into believing a teacher was madly in love with her and driven kind of crazy by it whereas the tapeworm girl was body conscious this girl is romance deprived andras preyed on the natural insecurities that teenage girls have and then used readily available tools in fact while abby is relatively upbeat and likes to engage in the frivolous elements of 80s culture andros a proxy of gretchen is a grim reminder of the things that we choose to not remember about the 80s weird racist rituals that were left in the past emotional abuse from parents zealotus christian values imparted on homes that kept you from engaging in culture an entire community's refusal to even talk about sexual abuse none of these things are caused by the demon but he uses all of these things to manipulate the world into being quite worse for everyone involved in the end the evangelical exorcist they recruit fails and flees the sight of the exorcism the demon torments abby until she conducts an exorcism of her own casting the demon out in the name of the gogos madonna and all the things that she and gretchen love which is a very charming way to subvert the exorcism horror genre and all in all this is a very balanced depiction of the 80s and when i hope that more nostalgic media will engage in because for all we may have fond memories of the past or fondness for the past we can't lose sight of how these things fit into the whole culture of the day and it's important to have media like this which explicitly reminds us that things weren't always so great in the past because even outside of media there are forces in the world who want to try to convince us that things were always better back in the day this is funny because while i've mentioned that nostalgia in media often involves a process of removing political realities it turns out that the political reality of today is heavily rooted in nostalgia even the biden campaign in both the primary and general elections was marred in messaging that urged america to go back which is even more hilarious because history indicates that the most successful democratic winds are earned off of iconography and slogans that encourage americans to look forward to tomorrow in most cases where nostalgia in politics is to be found it's used in conservatism conservatism itself is focused on conserving a particular national identity so it makes sense that this is a frequent tactic from these politicians the ideological objective of right-wing politics is indeed focused on presenting a mythology that a culture has lost something good and that in order to become a great nation they must rebuild the nazi party for instance loathed the social climate of berlin in the weimar republic and urged germans to believe that it would be possible to rebuild the holy roman empire however the holy roman empire itself was not cohesive with the political structures that the nazi leaders wanted to maintain before its collapse it was a complicated network of nobility of varying titles controlling vastly disparate swaths of europe yes there was an emperor to whom these nobles swore fealty but it couldn't have been easy appeasing all of these rivals the nazis wanted more consolidation of power so even there the promise of reconstructing the empire was misleading these promises were an idea that presented feelings of greatness but were divorced from the historic context similarly how american conservatives and republicans chronically pine over the 1950s as presenting this kind of white dominant simple living gender conformist aesthetic you'd get from norman rockwell paintings while dancing around the fact that the highest tax bracket at the time was set at 90 and someone working retail could buy a house for a single income family again when it comes to nostalgia enforcing selective ignorance is part of the game because you want people to remember the good times as a frame of reference for what you a politician can bring to the table but when you offer change there is the question of into what will we change change in progress is an easy pick for people who live under the boot if you want things to get better the only way for that to happen is change but for people who believe that they're doing fine change is scary even though when we talk about taxing the rich we're not talking about you and your 200 000 a year salary in your mcmansion and this is especially true for a group of people who can be convinced that they were once doing fine but have fallen upon hard times thanks to whatever scapegoat is hot in media discussion hey you were all doing great and america was doing great but then all those gender identities showed up and now america sucks yes an expanded understanding of gender and gender identity coincides with the recent collapse of the american economy that's called a coincidence unbeknownst to most people conservatism is a tool to consolidate power conservatism is not to conserve the good things in life because when it comes to the use of conservative politics the last thing they want is to return to a wealth distribution as it existed under the tenants of the new deal they need their voting base to remain angry and disgruntled enough to believe that the root of all evil is immigrants or queer people or feminism so that their votes will ignore the ways that their politicians will hurt them oftentimes this politically nostalgic process is much more subtle though reagan's famous morning in america campaign ad never explicitly talks about going back it presents the notion that america is doing great and that they need to preserve this though with the likes of trump this messaging is far more overt specifically his infamous slogan make america great again not make america the best it can be today or tomorrow instead make america reprise a kind of greatness that is said to have existed in the past and unlike other political campaigns trump brilliantly though absolutely unintentionally does not evoke any kind of imagery of what prior greatness we are calling back to instead of picking a specific era he leaves it up to each of his supporters in their own particular idea of american greatness this culminates in a vague cloud of gender archetypes and cultural sensibilities which are all too indiscernible to really be aware of and this process of groupthink develops a vision of america by a committee of voters an america that only was ever meant to exist in the imagination but hey it worked and it will keep working in fact this sentiment was so successful that it has even managed to skew perceptions of progressivism people who occupy a moderate or centrist political space are becoming increasingly irritated by just how many rights they have to fight for they see a life-or-death struggle of certain people and decry it as a distraction from what the real issues are when an interviewer asks hillary clinton democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by elevating activist causes notably the transgender debate which are relevant only to a small minority what sense does it make to depict j.k rowling as a fascist which first of all is a loaded question just write a [ __ ] think piece instead of using a clinton interview to prop yourself up on a soapbox however hillary clinton responded we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window look the most important thing is to win the next election the alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority okay so if the whole of the left needs to make their sole purpose winning so the bad guys don't make it worse then what's the point of getting elected in the first place what are we going to bring to the table aside from keeping republicans away from it never mind that the only democrats losing are centrists who campaign on moderation and mediocrity progressive democrats when they get past the democratic party roadblocks tend to win their elections we were told growing up that democrats are the party you vote for if you want to protect vulnerable people that's what they pushed and now apparently there is this sentiment among the democrats that even that's passe that the republicans are just too strong or that the establishment democrats are too spineless to fight for the people we've been siphoning votes out of for decades and that the best they can do is just stop it from getting worse making it worse how could it be worse rampant police violence ongoing use of the trans-panic defense regressive book banning laws targeting people of color and queer creators and the loss of federal protections for abortion services including forcing women to carry stillborn children before term and all of this is happening while the democrats control three out of the three branches of the federal government what needs to happen for democrats to even be competent at stopping the other guys from winning and yes things can always get worse but who's going to be left to vote blue as the party platform procedurally forgets its voter base and what's going to be left on the democratic platform after that tax breaks but not quite as much as the republicans deregulation but not quite as much as the republicans hearkening back to clinton's sentiments the objective of the democrats being stop things from getting worse itself is conservatism we need to conserve what is good and stop what's bad we don't need progress we need to make sure things revert back to a comfortable time nostalgia but not quite as radical as the republicans and in the illusion that political choices boil down to picking one of two candidates american society polarizes not on how to move forward but what version of the past to which we must regress and so because political leaders are clamoring for regression many people who want to fight for progress are seen as a distraction persecuted group a gets mad because group b is taking the discussion away from them people from group c are most at risk but sub group b2 claim that their needs aren't as important because they're a small demographic and people who want to fight all these things at the same time are decried as traitors by all parties people left of center long for the good old days of the 90s or 2000s before the blm stuff and this gender woke stuff hearkening to an imaginary period of clinton or obama presidencies where everyone just got along there are people who are so gaslit from this that they just reject nostalgia wherever it may appear either in media or political discourse there's this knee-jerk reaction to anything that may even slightly indicate that the past must be revisited because even when it comes to frivolous depictions of nostalgia that statement alone carries a great deal of baggage among people for whom their memories of the 90s are not focused around ace of base but surely we're not at the point in society where every piece of media whether it's fiction or not needs to be developed for the sole purpose of raising the alarm to the regressive tides sweeping across the world spelling disaster on a social political economic and apocalyptic scale right right [ __ ] as a feeling and as a word with a definition nostalgia is relatively neutral if not entirely inescapable it's reflexive triggered something that you can't really control but as it is now often used to describe almost predatory tactics used in media and politics it's hard to really gauge the use of nostalgia because in spite of the many ways that nostalgia in media can be tied to racism misogyny and bigotry in general i don't feel that media that allows you to relive the past is entirely invalid i feel as if the fact that nostalgia itself is such a divisive tactic is indicative of the way that it is controlling our society whether you love to see it or if you avoid it the prevalence of nostalgia both in media and discussion of this media show me that we are a culture that is stuck in the past even if we have conflicts over how the past ought to be depicted because while it is important to recognize the tragic and unjust elements of the past it's also important to be aware of what was good about the past two an entirely pessimistic and bleak depiction of the past leads us to similar problems in the instance of queer culture this is especially true i find some within the community and allies too put down their arms in certain situations they see the progress that is made and feel that things are progressing towards equal treatment at an alarming rate what work needs to be done when things are so much better than they were 20 years ago it's hard to help these people compartmentalize progress and realize that rights are not a monolith and while rights may be progressing in some areas they are regressing in others to say nothing of the values within the queer community itself the situation of our equal treatment is kind of all over the place but the way right's progression is framed in media discussion it makes it seem like everything is coming up roses compared to what it used to be this is a struggle because a even if things are better that doesn't mean things are safe or comfortable b our rights and community needs are an evolving shifting landscape that's largely reactionary to political and social movements within the hegemony and see while certain areas of the queer experience are improving others are stagnating if not regressing rights for some but not for all is a double-edged sword that has splintered the queer community and soured inter-community relations with other social groups as a for instance the black panther party used to run security detail for early pride demonstrations but a schism developed in the 90s when the clinton campaign of the 91 primary latched on to a very white depiction of gay men and women as their poster children for gay rights didn't help that gay leaders of the time really leaned into this whitewashing and what we got out of it was the defense of marriage act and don't ask don't tell which destroyed the lives of countless gay people who were victims of predatory recruitment tactics and if they managed to survive getting shot at and blown up in iraq and afghanistan were dishonorably discharged losing their pensions just as their tour of service was coming to a close the lesson we should have learned was to not trust political bodies that pit us against each other to play who's the most moderate among us but a blanket description of things are better than they were doesn't take this nuance into account it sees the forward-facing rights battle and views progress based on a reference of what things were rather than what things need to be we are told we should just slow down and appreciate the rights we already have or else we won't make any friends a natural response of anger to obvious systemic injustice is met with indifference and annoyance why say things could be better when we can just say things could be worse and let everyone live their lives tone policing is a tactic frequently used against marginalized communities the privileged who do not necessarily need to get angry over anything dismiss whatever we have to say because we are not saying it in a way that makes them feel comfortable and god forbid they feel uncomfortable what they don't see is how much of our lives we have spent attempting to do exactly what they said we should do engage and debate with civility come to the table with our hands folded and follow the proper channels to go about change and because the greater body of the population does not see us do that because we are roundly ignored when we do all they see is us getting passionately angry and assume this is an automatic first response what they see and what the media depicts us as are raving lunatics who can't control their temper and that people who can't control their emotions may not deserve rights because in the political climate of today like in the past some who call themselves allies would really like to go back to an era where we go to our graves silently perhaps rather than a tool or device that creators and producers use to develop media nostalgia has a clearer use as a tool we use to analyze that media instead of presuming direct intent on the creator's behalf to moralize the nostalgic depictions we can pinpoint the ways in which a creator is framing the past as a whole what message is the creator trying to convey about the past what elements are they overlooking in order to favor others is there any textual evidence to indicate that they are deliberately favoring certain details or is this incidental and are there any influencing factors like a publisher network or studio that may be encouraging a creator to project these messages in the end nostalgia isn't a good or a bad thing it's just a thing a strange thing because it's an emotional feeling for a time that never really existed a phantom that clouds our memory with rose-tinted goggles a defense mechanism that assures us that surely times weren't always this bad once upon a time things were great but there's a danger in that because it makes us think that we can make things great again but what we remember are the good things because our minds have a habit of sanitizing the bad like i said it's a defense mechanism we paint over the rot and cracks of the past so it looks nice but that's really all we're doing painting over it so that we can forget about it but it's not really gone it's still there spreading ever further while we pretend it doesn't exist so being nostalgic for the good old days is fine but looking at those days uncritically and wanting to go back to them anyway basically means we want to return to the uncomplicated lives we had as children when things were simpler and less messy when politics didn't exist for us when our biggest worries were about math tests and hanging out with our friends but we can't go back to being children and many of us don't have such fond uncomplicated memories of childhood because our childhoods weren't these rockwell-esque picturescapes of kids on bikes in small towns some of our childhoods like the kids on stranger things have trauma connected with them abusive families bullying and the absolute terror of being rejected by everyone because of who we are we remember the good times but we're seldom allowed to forget the bad because the bad times shaped us into who we are now because we lived through the upside down of childhood trauma and made it out the other side we were lucky enough not to get lost in that dark place so now we don't want anyone to ever ever even have to enter it again we do what we can to keep people aware of the darkness and by doing so we're accused of forcing politics into things others don't see as political because their uncomplicated nostalgia allows them to see it as apolitical but we can't bend to their whims we can't let nostalgic memory loss take over our minds we should be nostalgic for the good times yes because we all deserve a momentary escape but we can't let that nostalgia erase our memories of the bad times the bad things that have defined our lives just as much as the good because if we don't remember the bad if we don't remember those battles and how we won how will we ever win the battles that have yet to come because they are coming and we need to be ready for them [Music] 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