Batman, Smurfs, and Spam: Nostalgia Makes a Comeback
Familiar things comfort us in a time of recession.
Kitchens throughout America are serving up Spam, that gelatinous pink pre-cooked meat product that has been a symbol of economic hard times since it first hit store shelves during the Great Depression. Likewise, the one-dish wonder known as the casserole — also a staple since the Depression — is back in the culinary spotlight. Heck, even Schlitz beer is making a comeback.
On fashion runways, models sport jumpsuits straight out of the 70s, while fashionistas are reluctantly acknowledging that acid-washed jeans are back in style. So is big hair, but thankfully there’s no sign that massive shoulder pads are poised for a comeback.
Cocooning, the phrase created by Faith Popcorn in the 90s to describe the trend of socializing less in favor of becoming more home-bodied, is back stronger than ever. “Uber-cocooning” is what the company now calls the increasing popularity of spending our leisure hours at home. We’re buying board games and having family game night. We’re spending our evenings doing crafts. We’re even reading more, and that’s always a good thing. If it weren’t for how many of are also playing Rock Band or games on the Wii with our kids it would be hard to tell the difference between how we spend our evenings now, and how we spent them when we were young.
Given the economic doom and gloom we’re constantly bombarded with whenever we do turn on the television, perhaps this nostalgia is actually a good thing. Studies certainly suggest that occasionally recalling the “good old days” can counteract depression and provide a sense of stability in the middle of troubling times. When experienced as part of a group, as we’re certainly doing when we flock to the movies, fashions, and foods of our youth, nostalgia combats loneliness and isolation by creating the perception of social support.
Of course, there are pitfalls to nostalgia, too. By viewing our past through rose-colored glasses, we ignore the very flaws which propelled us beyond those times to new discoveries, explorations, and ideas. Those televisions we huddled around to watch ALF and Cheers in prime time also brought us the horrific vision of Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. The years during which gave birth to cable and MTV (back when the M stood for music) also brought us AIDS and Milli Vanilli.
But as George Santayana said (in a phrase that is too often misquoted): “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” This nostalgia in which our collective national consciousness is currently indulging proves that we have not forgotten. Rather, as we find ourselves made fearful and weary by the dire economic news, we are together instinctively reaching for those more tender times, days in which our lives were unencumbered by mortgages and the need to plan for (much less acknowledge) our impending old age.
Perhaps in doing so we are acknowledging our own resiliency, our own survival through previously desperate times from which we emerged still capable of cherishing certain bright memories, certain sweet things. Perhaps our nostalgia, in its many variations, is a reminder that this, too, shall pass.
If so, then let us revel in it, for within that nostalgia lies the bright spark of tomorrow that will light our way out of these difficult times.
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Katherine Berry writes about current events and culture at Electric Venom.
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10 Comments
1. Typewriter_King:“The permanent things,” Russell Kirk called them.
Perhaps you’re right that our culture is seeking refuge in nostalgia, but perhaps you’re reading too much into Hollywood harvesting the deep well of brands that work.
It’s easier to market an established brand than try to hype up a new one, and it makes perfect sense to keep going back to what works until the well runs dry.
You’ll notice every financial success must have a sequal, and you’re seeing that classic remakes have caught fire. It’s astonishing others don’t see the obvious connection, and instead try to diagnose a societal trend out of it. (Maybe Kurt Warner made it back to the Super Bowl because our society had a psychological need to revisit the Greatest Show on Turf)
Feb 7, 2009 - 3:49 am 2. eon:Nostalgia isn’t always a sure-fire seller for Hollywood, as the people who lost money on the big-screen versions of “Lost In Space”, “Starsky and Hutch”, “Miami Vice”, and “Get Smart” will tell you. Some things are simply too iconic of their own times to “travel well”, temporally speaking.
That said, a lot of nostalgia is not so much a search for comfort or a remembrance of an illusory better time as a notice served on the present that it needs to try harder. For instance, you know popular music is in trouble when groups that have been out of the mainstream for decades can begin touring again to sold-out arenas. Their modern day successors (who seem incapable of putting together actual coherent sentences as lyrics)might want to take notes of what the “geezers” are doing right even after all these years. (Hint; Try writing your own music, and lose the profanity.)
clear ether
eon
Feb 7, 2009 - 6:07 am 3. Roy M:“The Smurfs Begin” will be somewhat darker then the tv shows we remeber.
Feb 7, 2009 - 7:02 am 4. huxley:Yes! I’m rewatching all the Seinfeld episodes. A true delight.
Ah, the Nineties. After the Cold War and before 9-11. Better than the Fifties even. But other than Seinfeld, Titanic, Enya, AbFab and maybe one Oasis album, I don’t remember that much culture worth nostalgia.
Feb 7, 2009 - 10:32 am 5. Amphipolis:No, this is no virtue.
There is no imagination today. No new ideas. Our culture is getting stale.
Feb 7, 2009 - 11:09 am 6. Gozer the Carpathian:They’re remaking Romancing the Stone? Hmmm… good thing or bad thing?
Notice the Rock is doing the next “Witch Mountain” movie with Race to Witch Mountain? I feel old that I remember watching Escape to and Return to Witch mountain on VHS and on Disney Channel.
Honestly though I don’t read too much into this “trend” (if it is one) since everything happens in cycles anyway so we’ll be leaving our homes and rushing around everywhere again soon enough.
Feb 7, 2009 - 4:05 pm 7. ashok:I dunno. I always felt people were very nostalgic for the most part independent of economic distress. It’s just hard to see this for some of us because we work in fields that try to take stock of what people are consuming, and assign meaning. If everyone did that, they’d be less nostalgic and probably more learning-oriented.
As you point out, nostalgia isn’t a bad thing: within the arts, some can take the things people get more easily into or relate to, and use them to explore deeper, more interesting ideas. I wrote an analysis of Batman Begins some time ago, and was really amazed by how it carefully and thoughtfully developed a theme and threw away some of our more problematic assumptions regarding justice and fear.
Feb 7, 2009 - 9:27 pm 8. Justin:Interesting that AIDS and Milli Vanilli were mentioned in the same sentence as tragedies arising in the ’80’s.
Which they both were.
Feb 8, 2009 - 5:33 pm 9. Peter the Bubblehead:I’ve noted a trend that perhaps others here will confirm. Nostalgia seems to work on a 20 year cycle.
In the 70’s (the first decade I can remember clearly) people were generally nostalgic for the 50’s. (TV shows like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley being prime examples.)
In the 80’s we were nostalgic for the 60’s. (All those Woodstock recreations.)
In the 90’s we started getting nostalgic for the disco and clothing styles of the 70’s.
In this decade there has been a major resugence of 80’s nostalgia.
If true to form, starting shortly after 2010, we’ll start feeling nostalgic for the 90’s, maintaining the 20 year cycle.
Feb 10, 2009 - 5:54 am 10. kat:I totally agree with the whole 20 year cycle.
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:03 pmI was talking to my professor for sociology and we both noticed the same trend. Toys from the 80’s are coming back, fashion, tv shows.
I don’t think people really notice it, they just go along with whatever is out there.