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.

Which they both were.

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.

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.

There is no imagination today. No new ideas. Our culture is getting stale.

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.

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

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)