If one looks at the past decade, one interesting thread to pull on is what happens when a culture turns inward and insular against the tide of all the innovations of the modern world, which should be expanding experience. In an era in which people are seemingly more connected than ever in sharing moments of their lives with friends, family, and even strangers, where one can capture in an instant and revel forever in moments of the past, the same period has been marked culturally by the erection of walls, both figurative and literal. As the larger culture has become more polarized with regard to the big-picture issues of how we run a government, what we want tomorrow to be, or what it means to be an American, that same dynamic has been reflected all the way down the line in other aspects of life.
Just as we’ve seen those who have been resentful of changing norms and values decide that the best course of action is to attack any evolution of American culture that expands what it means to be part of this country, significant sectors of the culture have been invested in reliving a new version of the past. So things get sorted and placed in boxes to enforce a specific vision as a way to desperately cling to old magic, and make past memories great again, instead of creating new ones.
The result is perpetual fan service of the familiar and comforting, whether it be in the form of old characters in movies and TV shows, or “alternative facts” on a supposed news network, where entertainment and life as a whole are things to be molded to superficial whims of a romanticized past. And this is not just a feature of American culture over the past decade. It can also be seen in the views of Brexit supporters and remembrance of a fallen empire, or polling that indicates that two-thirds of Europeans believe the world used to be a better place, with it all usually being realized in authoritarian policies, anti-immigrant sentiment, and flawed memories.
Is it then any surprise that our movies, TV shows, music, and other works of culture have been a reflection of this tendency?
A popular tidbit of trivia that has seeped into pop culture is what nostalgia means, in both past and present. In its current usage, the word is associated with positive emotions regarding old memories. When someone is nostalgic for past things, it’s usually looked upon fondly as the cherishing of a simpler time. But the term “nostalgia” was actually created in the 17th century by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer, and referred to a psychiatric disorder (depression) based in an irrational longing to return “home” (or to an earlier stage of life).
While it might seem like a society feasts on its past like vampires devouring the young, how we consume memories of yesteryear is important in how we chart our future. In his 2001 book Metaculture: How Culture Moves Through the World, anthropologist Greg Urban argued that culture only moves forward when it navel-gazes and looks backward to ask questions. If a culture is an amalgamation of past traditions, norms, myths, and stories handed down from one generation to the next, then the culture can only move forward when it reflects on its past and deconstructs why those things existed. It’s the difference between accepting that, for example, marriage is only between a man and a woman because that’s the tradition one grew up with and was told to believe, and thinking of that as settled, and going further, wondering why marriage can’t appear in other permutations, and reacting by choosing a path upon which to build something new.
But can a culture stagnate in dwelling on its past?
Back in 2011, music critic Simon Reynolds released the book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past. Reynolds argued that the proliferation of media on the internet had caused innovation in music to come to a near standstill. In a world where every song is only a click away on YouTube or Spotify, instead of having a degree of distance as something on the radio or in a record sleeve on a shelf, it becomes much easier to dwell in the past and become too enamored with it.
In an interview with the website The Quietus in 2011, Reynolds said,
There are so many resources available to people … because there's so much available of the past, and other countries' pasts as well, it's very hard to get that pure hit of innovativeness, even from very clever groups … I think there's tons of good music. There's just not a lot that feels mind-blowingly new. I never have a problem at the end of the year coming up with a list of records I like. It's just this feeling that there should be something that's really foreign or unprecedented-seeming. And that did used to happen.
If one takes Reynolds’ argument about music and applies it to film, television, and other areas of pop culture, similar questions arise. Does a world in which almost every film or TV show may just be streamable in one click have an effect on dwelling in familiar things?
And a similar variation of this argument has been made before about the 24-hour news cycle’s effect on politics and the operation of government, given the glut of pundits and outlets that offer “resources” to the public but always seem to drive narratives down predictable paths.
Of course, even when a culture revels in nostalgia, there will be arguments about how faithful that revelry is to the past. Invariably it becomes a Kobayashi Maru situation between corporations that want to sell the same intellectual property over and over again every so many years to people who claim they want the same thing the same way (but sometimes don’t). And it’s here where people’s visions of what the past should look like become a problem, and the racists and sexists come in.
Two of the biggest franchises in science fiction, Star Wars and Star Trek, have gone through fan backlashes in recent years against changes and differences in form that segments of their fan bases see as a betrayal of the material’s legacy. The release of The Rise of Skywalker has been met by even more contentious criticism of the sequel trilogy after segments of Star Wars fandom had severe misgivings with both The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story, with much of the commentary arguing that Episodes VII-IX are a trio of films at war with each other, and are indicative that Disney has not had a well-thought-out strategy for its ownership of the franchise. However, at the same time, the reception of The Mandalorian on Disney Plus has been extremely positive from critics and fans.
Paul Feig’s 2016 remake of Ghostbusters was both a critical and a financial disappointment. It’s a bad movie made by people who are talented but didn’t seem to understand the property or its themes (e.g., the 2016 movie is silly and doesn’t really take things seriously at all, whereas Ivan Reitman’s 1984 film has everyone outside of the Ghostbusters play the situation straight, with an underlying idea of the victory of science over the supernatural). However, from the first moment the movie was announced, there was a certain amount of sexism in the mix as well, with an unhappy contingent of middle-aged fanboy assholes who think it’s their duty to protect their childhood from the cooties of an all-female reimagining of the story. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the extent of this misogyny extended to leaving nasty comments on the Facebook page for Tufts Medical Center in Boston after Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon visited sick children in their Ghostbusters costumes. Feig called the reactions to the movie “some of the most vile, misogynistic shit I’ve ever seen in my life.” And the trolling of Jones became so bad that she was almost chased off Twitter, after people repeatedly accused her of playing a racial stereotype—while Feig claims Jones’ role was originally written for McCarthy. Some of the negativity came from protectiveness against any sort of change away from the status quo of the original. That’s been true for almost any reboot. But it was also arguably about larger societal ideas of gender roles and the image of what women are supposed to be, which filter down into pop culture representations. And when the square pegs don’t fit into the preconceived round holes, some people immediately react against them.
And what happened just four years later, after Feig’s Ghostbusters flopped? They remade it again.