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| Early nostalgia is linked with criminality and abnormality. Over the course of the 20th century the opinions of nostalgia changed, bolstered by nostalgic marketing campaigns. |
Nostalgia
First appeared in a 1688 dissertation by a 19 y/o medical student named Johannes Hofer. Conceived as a debilitating disease, physicians searched for a cure.
By the middle of the 20th century, it was de-medicalized and quickly commodified.
“Nostalgia Tail” was noted, a new trend where product sales increase after they declined.
Foreverism: Keeping the past present indefinitely.
Foreverizing: Expanding cinematic universes, cloud archiving all revitalizing things that would have degraded, failed or disappeared so they remain active in the present forever. Reboots.
The shift can be seen in the retirement of the Disney vault. Consumers flocked to purchase films when removed from the vault, since they would never know if they were to be made available again. When their streaming service came out, all of its classic titles became available again.
How can anyone be nostalgic for Star Wars when there is a new film or series released every year? If nostalgia is the emotion experienced when the past briefly appears in the present…
NOTE
This doesn’t seem true to me. It’s definitely possible to feel nostalgia for specific aspects of a property, such as an older film. The canon of SW might not feel nostalgia, but thoughts of an original film experience or even an action figure are tied to the franchise and nostalgic for some.
When persistent storytelling becomes standard practice, something crucial disappears: endings.
NOTE
I understand what is being said here, but subsequence endings and payoffs can still be present. Even beyond that, endings viewed in a particular light are mostly arbitrary anyway. You might seek resolution, and that might be the end of an arc or sequence but and most “endings” have the creative (though possibly unnecessary) potential for continuation. But, I understand a point here which is when viewing there’s is the presumption of a sequel or continued adventures. There’s no feeling it is the last moment, which you are experiencing.
One example, the “Before” trilogy, where I am invested in the lives of the characters and we are uncertain if we’ll see it again (last time I heard, we would not.) I had experienced this with another series of books by Jeff Vandermeer. What was expected to be a trilogy, is now a tetralogy. Now in static discourse such as messages and forum posts, you’ll see a segment of search history where the series is referenced as a trilogy, basically allowing it to be dated in the data layers. All variations of series with an expected end.
Critique of colorization of black and white film
Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference. It makes the past record all the more distant for rejecting what is honest about it. If we want to encourage a new generation to understand what war meant - we should be encouraging them to look at the films as they were made and through the effort to appreciate them for what they are… films that look like they were shot last week belong only to last week.
George Monbiot
There is no away on this planet. It just goes elsewhere.
The datacenters that hold our memories have about the same carbon footprint as the airline industry, and their energy usage is increasing each year.
Framing images and videos as “memories” isn’t a new phenomenon. Home movies on VHS are considered memories to many families who still own and have access to their tapes. What is relatively new is the rate at which memories are being saved in the cloud.
on social media… individuals are incentivized to brand themselves, exchanging a performance of inflexibility for likes, followers, partnerships, endorsements. Staying true to one’s brand, and unable to exercise much autonomy, a person trapped in a foreverist society can feel as though they are a character trapped in a cinematic universe, or an icon in a game played by someone else, or they are laboring in a simulation.
Note
When watching a video on youtube. I’ve seen it a few times, where the people in the video will be out experiencing life and they say “there’s the thumbnail” or on a podcast they’ll say “there’s’ the episode title.” In that moment it is if they are staring a screen, in the very moment they are living. Camera awareness
A tangent but that breach that occurs the other way, when you are watching a film and the title is mentioned… occasionally with bombast and a title screen, or occasionally only in passing.
There are versions of ourselves traced onto dying media, somewhere.
Ralph Harper:
Nostalgia reminds us of what has been known and loved. (and the only person to object would have to have proved) there’s nothing working having known and loved, and then that it is impossible to be made happy by returning
Foreverism cannot suppress nostalgia forever.