Hot take: Nostalgia is trash, you love overrated nonsense.
- Vladislav Kasyanenko
- Oct 15, 2020
- 4 min read
I was throwing tons of trash out of my room. I mean, damn, It’s been three months since I barely got up to have breakfast. I found an old VHS player, my dad bought it in 1998, he told me about, back in the days it was me, the VHS player, an old Sharp TV, Disney cartoons and I don’t know why, but Fast & Furious 3. And somehow, I still keep this VHS player and a TV in my room for no reason.
So, I came up with the idea of why I do care about that stuff? What is the particular reason for loving old, even useless pieces of trash? How it lights up me with emotions, makes me sort of nostalgic?
How come that we indeed experience nostalgia for a phenomenon that encountered a long time ago? Don’t know about you, don’t know about anyone, but I know that every time I feel nostalgic, it reminds me of the experiences which formed my identity. Not kidding, I have no idea who I would have become if I didn't watch Fast & Furious 3 for about 50 times during my childhood, probably an unemployed dropout. Funny to know that the most amount of memories that form identity and make one feel nostalgic are formed either during childhood (up to 10 years) or, which is more respected among researchers, during our 20s, while our brain experiences a reminiscence bump.
Some theoretical background and context are needed to explore such a vast topic. Let us start with the term “nostalgia”. It is relatively young - around 300 years old and emerged in Switzerland. General practitioner Johannes Hoffer came up with this name while working with swiss mercenaries that experienced this kind of “illness of the heart”. This illness manifested in deep melancholy resulted from homesickness: men far away from home sang traditional Swiss ballads in which all this longing and alienation was shown. Fun fact: in the 17th-century nostalgia was qualified as “neurological pathology summoned by demons”. Aside from demonic theory, another version was widespread among Helvetian doctors: the constant and everlasting dwelling of cowbells harmed their eardrums and thus affected their brains. That is why the Swiss mercenaries went bananas.
Patrick Metzger in his article “The Nostalgia Pendulum” argues that we live in the society in which mass consumers of popular culture began also the creators of it. Imagine a young girl in the 80s growing up listening to Hot 5 acid house mixes on Chicago radio stations and loving comic books about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No wonder it affected her preferences in popular culture. The feeling of childhood safety affects the choices she makes in her adulthood. Feeling of safeness is widely exploited by creators. That is why every year we see the posters of thematic acid house parties in the local night club and go to already annoyingly creepy CGI reboots of our favourite turtles. And that girl would probably go both to the party and to the theatre. This thirty-year “nostalgia pendulum” can be easily proved by the intervals between the original movie and its reboot. For example, critically acclaimed musical Fame was out in theatres in 1980 and was remade in 2009 by dancer Kevin Tanchroen who was born and raised in the 1980s. Another example is that J.J. Abrams really was a kid during the summer of 1979 in which Super 8 is set. It just so happens that 1979 was 32 years before the film’s release in 2011. What unites these directors is that the zeitgeist of their childhood finds the embodiment in their works. That is precisely how the consumer of culture transforms into being its creator.
I mean, it seems somewhat logical, when one feels anxious, depressed, it is even therapeutic to look back at good times, to remember everything that gives you positive emotions. I guess it is somewhat of a cognitive mistake to attach positive experiences and emotions with a certain timeframe. No time can be perfect with no regrets, no disasters and bad days. Not many people, who didn’t witness the disastrous tsunami from 2004 remember and think about it now. However, you might remember the songs from billboard top 100 in 2004. I sincerely wish to forget about Usher’s hit “Yeah”, but it hits harder every day. Especially after looking at the music video a few days ago.
It is crucial to not claim any nostalgia or nostalgic attitudes towards anything straight-up bad or escapist. There is one thing I hate more than nostalgic comments on videos with live concerts from the 1980s, claiming that the music was better than and zoomers don’t get it or straight up wishing to be born in the 1960s instead of whatever timeframe. It’s the people who say that something actually good from the past was not even good in the first place and everyone praising it are just ‘nostalgic’. Open up Google, type top songs/games/films/shows overrated -- the amount of articles with ‘hot takes’ on popular things is absurd. Fortunately, I didn’t get offended that Buzzfeed wrote that Brittney Spears’ “Hit me, baby, one more time” is “100% BAAAD”, but it felt weird, as I don’t want to agree with that. I guess sometimes nostalgia can overestimate the importance of ‘goodness’ of something, but at the same time, when something is perfect, nobody can argue with that. I didn’t manage to find an article or even a mention that Need For Speed Underground 2 is overrated, I guess it just shows how good it is and I’m not just nostalgic. Thank god, at least Need For Speed doesn’t let me down.
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