A bit of a white pill. Yes the online right is stuck in nostalgia mode but, here's the white pill, the left is even more so. Everything about the left is ossified. Their entire ideology is rehashed boring 1960s boomer nostalgia for WWII Spanish Republicans and their obsession with a 150+ year failed philosophy that has proven to be a failure for humanity over and over. Conservatives want to LARP as 1950s Mad Men, but Libs larp like the 1880 Paris commune over and over.
Think about it this way, shitlibs dominate all aspects of culture yet they haven't been able to make anything knew in decades. No new great music, no new great writing, nothing, just nostalgic pastiche of old Boomerism. They go on and on about how they will make Equity in film, it's been decades now and not one decent female director has made a good movie... Where's the new and interesting lefty philosophers, the last good one was Mark Fisher and he swallowed a bullet meanwhile they regurgitate pedophilic french continental garbage about sexual identity. Our side might be dazed with nostalgia but theirs is frozen on a path to nowhere. We just need to make sure we don't let them take us with them.
They really do hold a different kind of nostalgia, even older than what our sphere tends to line for. I don’t know if I’d say they produce NO great art, but the gold-to-garbage ratio certainly doesn’t look good. I’d argue that most good stuff is made by accident.
This is mostly by the mainstream political die-hards. There are still so many who get it and are into art for art’s sake and not as political propaganda. I think that’s the left’s besetting vice: everything to them is political and I mean that in the most crude and crass sense of the term. You are correct that it’s a pretty old and discredited form of politics. They pine for Lenin and Mao, two men who’d likely have them killed.
The problem is that the progressive form of nostalgia is bankrolled by massive amounts of money provided by the highly influential and powerful people in charge of everything. They can afford to create expensive ugliness because some sugar daddy or other will always pick up the tab. They don’t have to be good, they just have to push the right message. Conversely, we have to be on our A game all of the time because those with any power or money on our side view everything like a spreadsheet or investment portfolio.
This is rather timely as I myself (as I think you know) am working on a book about nostalgia and memory. For me, it isn't just the popular culture of the 90s, but rather the feelings of magical freedom that I got at the time. But aesthetically I am mostly influenced by people like T.S. Eliot and Goethe. Nostalgia as longing for for the old days and such is one sort, but then there is also the Sehnsucht that Eliot and Goethe were dealing with, and that also pervade many other works, such as the writings of Tolkien. Just recently I have been thinking of that short cartoon, Puff the Magic Dragon, and how it creates this same feeling of longing.
That sense of longing is very powerful. Longing for the feelings of freedom really is the key. I’ve said before that what I miss is the sense of optimism for the future and the endless possibilities. These naturally constrain as we get older and it does create an understandable sorrow. Like you said, it’s not the trappings of an era or the stuff, but the feelings the stuff evokes. My issue with 90s nostalgia is that too many pretend it was a golden era worth emulating while those of us who lived it recognize it as the decade in which everything people say they hate about now came to fruition.
Quite right. And in my own thinking I have begun to divide Cultural Nostalgia from Personal Nostalgia. Sometimes the two can be mixed, but they are also distinct. I am also interested in the way nostalgia has been artificially created and marketed. What I've found with Cultural Nostalgia is that it grows in direct relation to the lack of stability in a society. When uncertainty grows, people look for a perceived more stable time. I often think of the song "Brown Eyed Girl." Morrison wrote that song in 1967 when he was only 22 years old.
Sometimes I wonder if your generation's nostalgia is just a way to protect itself against Millennials or Gen Z. Gen Y gives the impression of being scared of young people.
I think there’s more of an aspect of being scared of the future. Young people are a part of the future. Honestly, every generation is scared of young people to a degree.
The constant nostalgia I find bizarre. I grew up in the 90s and early 00s. Some things were good, some were bad and tacky. I don't pine for it like some my age do, and really if you're pining for the past at age 30 there's something wrong, hell at any age. Though given the sludge of "content" (a crass word for art) coming out from the mainstream it's no wonder nostalgia is high. And when older franchises aren't left alone it confuses nostalgia and the new. Constant reboots and remakes stagnates art. Star Wars is the obvious example where the new and old are clashing to such a point that something new and different would be better. I grew up with Star Wars but I would be happy if no more were made, I can still enjoy the old, and they can influence some future story instead of being warmed up and rehashed.
We all seem to agree the true, the good, and the beautiful are the goals and I think that is broad enough to unify. We don't need a unified aesthetic and we shouldn't want one as it would limit the appeal. Someone can write gory space opera while another can write period romances and another can write gritty crime but all can be aimed at the true, the good, and the beautiful in their own way.
Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad you liked the post. Nostalgia is on a lot of people’s minds because we recognize the problems we have, but driving in reverse isn’t going to solve them.
Here’s an aspect of endless franchises that I didn’t address: money and risk. I wonder if, due to the high production costs of most everything, the lack of artistic risk-taking is due to purely capitalistic concerns. Something may make money, but if it “disappoints” or “underperforms” compared to the 837th Marvel thing, it’s considered a failure, irrespective of whether it’s actually good art or not. Far safer for the investors and bean counters to just churn out stuff based on recognizable properties. This might be why we have not advanced much: no risk-taking.
It’s just a hypothesis of one of many possible causes for our cultural stagnation. The nostalgia overload is partly driven by audiences and partly driven by producers of culture trying to earn a buck on the principle of “Hey, remember this?”
Excellent post.
A bit of a white pill. Yes the online right is stuck in nostalgia mode but, here's the white pill, the left is even more so. Everything about the left is ossified. Their entire ideology is rehashed boring 1960s boomer nostalgia for WWII Spanish Republicans and their obsession with a 150+ year failed philosophy that has proven to be a failure for humanity over and over. Conservatives want to LARP as 1950s Mad Men, but Libs larp like the 1880 Paris commune over and over.
Think about it this way, shitlibs dominate all aspects of culture yet they haven't been able to make anything knew in decades. No new great music, no new great writing, nothing, just nostalgic pastiche of old Boomerism. They go on and on about how they will make Equity in film, it's been decades now and not one decent female director has made a good movie... Where's the new and interesting lefty philosophers, the last good one was Mark Fisher and he swallowed a bullet meanwhile they regurgitate pedophilic french continental garbage about sexual identity. Our side might be dazed with nostalgia but theirs is frozen on a path to nowhere. We just need to make sure we don't let them take us with them.
They really do hold a different kind of nostalgia, even older than what our sphere tends to line for. I don’t know if I’d say they produce NO great art, but the gold-to-garbage ratio certainly doesn’t look good. I’d argue that most good stuff is made by accident.
This is mostly by the mainstream political die-hards. There are still so many who get it and are into art for art’s sake and not as political propaganda. I think that’s the left’s besetting vice: everything to them is political and I mean that in the most crude and crass sense of the term. You are correct that it’s a pretty old and discredited form of politics. They pine for Lenin and Mao, two men who’d likely have them killed.
The problem is that the progressive form of nostalgia is bankrolled by massive amounts of money provided by the highly influential and powerful people in charge of everything. They can afford to create expensive ugliness because some sugar daddy or other will always pick up the tab. They don’t have to be good, they just have to push the right message. Conversely, we have to be on our A game all of the time because those with any power or money on our side view everything like a spreadsheet or investment portfolio.
This is rather timely as I myself (as I think you know) am working on a book about nostalgia and memory. For me, it isn't just the popular culture of the 90s, but rather the feelings of magical freedom that I got at the time. But aesthetically I am mostly influenced by people like T.S. Eliot and Goethe. Nostalgia as longing for for the old days and such is one sort, but then there is also the Sehnsucht that Eliot and Goethe were dealing with, and that also pervade many other works, such as the writings of Tolkien. Just recently I have been thinking of that short cartoon, Puff the Magic Dragon, and how it creates this same feeling of longing.
That sense of longing is very powerful. Longing for the feelings of freedom really is the key. I’ve said before that what I miss is the sense of optimism for the future and the endless possibilities. These naturally constrain as we get older and it does create an understandable sorrow. Like you said, it’s not the trappings of an era or the stuff, but the feelings the stuff evokes. My issue with 90s nostalgia is that too many pretend it was a golden era worth emulating while those of us who lived it recognize it as the decade in which everything people say they hate about now came to fruition.
Quite right. And in my own thinking I have begun to divide Cultural Nostalgia from Personal Nostalgia. Sometimes the two can be mixed, but they are also distinct. I am also interested in the way nostalgia has been artificially created and marketed. What I've found with Cultural Nostalgia is that it grows in direct relation to the lack of stability in a society. When uncertainty grows, people look for a perceived more stable time. I often think of the song "Brown Eyed Girl." Morrison wrote that song in 1967 when he was only 22 years old.
Sometimes I wonder if your generation's nostalgia is just a way to protect itself against Millennials or Gen Z. Gen Y gives the impression of being scared of young people.
I think there’s more of an aspect of being scared of the future. Young people are a part of the future. Honestly, every generation is scared of young people to a degree.
Makes sense!
Great post.
The constant nostalgia I find bizarre. I grew up in the 90s and early 00s. Some things were good, some were bad and tacky. I don't pine for it like some my age do, and really if you're pining for the past at age 30 there's something wrong, hell at any age. Though given the sludge of "content" (a crass word for art) coming out from the mainstream it's no wonder nostalgia is high. And when older franchises aren't left alone it confuses nostalgia and the new. Constant reboots and remakes stagnates art. Star Wars is the obvious example where the new and old are clashing to such a point that something new and different would be better. I grew up with Star Wars but I would be happy if no more were made, I can still enjoy the old, and they can influence some future story instead of being warmed up and rehashed.
We all seem to agree the true, the good, and the beautiful are the goals and I think that is broad enough to unify. We don't need a unified aesthetic and we shouldn't want one as it would limit the appeal. Someone can write gory space opera while another can write period romances and another can write gritty crime but all can be aimed at the true, the good, and the beautiful in their own way.
Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad you liked the post. Nostalgia is on a lot of people’s minds because we recognize the problems we have, but driving in reverse isn’t going to solve them.
Here’s an aspect of endless franchises that I didn’t address: money and risk. I wonder if, due to the high production costs of most everything, the lack of artistic risk-taking is due to purely capitalistic concerns. Something may make money, but if it “disappoints” or “underperforms” compared to the 837th Marvel thing, it’s considered a failure, irrespective of whether it’s actually good art or not. Far safer for the investors and bean counters to just churn out stuff based on recognizable properties. This might be why we have not advanced much: no risk-taking.
It’s just a hypothesis of one of many possible causes for our cultural stagnation. The nostalgia overload is partly driven by audiences and partly driven by producers of culture trying to earn a buck on the principle of “Hey, remember this?”
This is what I needed to read. This topic is occupying my mind lately and I'm glad you could help address this in your piece. Thank you. God bless.
I’m glad you enjoyed the post. These are the two problems I see in our sphere and they’re both easier to overcome than it appears at first blush.