Nostalgia is big business. The Netflix series One Day underscores that point, topping the TV streaming charts last month. The story about an on-off relationship, set to a Britpop-inspired soundtrack, provides a bit of escapism for viewers of a certain age.
Full disclosure: I was completely drawn into that world and two weeks later I’m still thinking about those last episodes. But if my brain is split into an emotional part and a rational part, the latter is now asking, “Did I just get played by Netflix?”
Drama plays on our emotions, but the business model of big screen producers is particularly calculating. From the 1980s retro-themed hit series Stranger Things to the popular reboots of Barbie and Wonka, the cash drive for nostalgia is firmly established.
Should this bother us? American author and critic Grafton Tanner believes so, arguing that nostalgia is being weaponized by powerful interest groups to “suppress sentiments that threaten the systems of oppression under capitalism.” .
What do you want to suppress? I hear you say that.
Tanner develops this idea in his book Foreverism. Nostalgia, he says, can be understood as “the feeling experienced when something that is not normally present in our lives momentarily becomes present.” Foreverism is the exploitation of this emotion for economic or political purposes, or more precisely the attempt to eliminate nostalgia in its purest form. Examples range from social media platforms monetizing nostalgic clips to opportunistic politicians touting the “good old days.”
Foreverism sounds like a conspiracy theory at first glance, but it attempts to capture something very real about technology and how it messes with our relationship to time. Thanks to digital media and the people who profit from it, we “live in a time when nothing ends,” Tanner says.
That’s certainly the case with TV productions. Just 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers were made in his 1970s before being archived in the BBC archives. Approximately 34 episodes of Stranger Things have already aired, and a fifth season is planned. Netflix has a habit of milking all good series to the point where I wish they would cancel them.
“I completely agree with this. It’s a great example of eternalism,” Tanner said in a conversation with The Irish Times.
“Digital technology fosters eternalism because it allows us to digitize and edit the past to make it seem not only new again, but also alive and growing.”Kurt Cobain died in 1994 Despite the fact that Nirvana could continue to release new music, or so that James Earl Jones could continue to voice Darth Vader in future Star Wars films long after his death, the past is still being explored. You can fake it.
[ In One Day, Em and Dex’s extended mixtapes tell you everything you need to know about their worlds ]
“Digital allows the possibility that the past will continue to exist forever. But some things need to end if we are to be nostalgic for them. If you do that, there will be less room for you to feel nostalgic.”
He argues that eternalism permeates not only culture but also personal life. This helps explain why we worry so much about making mistakes. We worry that tracking our past mistakes online will undermine our selective existence.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7RCYDIYTIBCZPNHB7ZTWBN7WRQ.jpg)
How is eternalism connected to reactionary political movements?
“It’s never enough for reactionary politicians to promote nostalgia; they also have to promise to reduce nostalgia by going back in time,” Tanner says.
“‘Trust me,’ they’ll say, ‘and I’ll take this country back to where it belongs,’ but that’s only in the past for now. A promise to return. Beneath this is the recognition that once this country becomes “great again,” there will be no more nostalgia. Everything will be right again, there will be no more bittersweet longing, just a single, elongated present that stretches into the infinite future. That is political eternalism. ”
Tanner said it’s no coincidence that Elon Musk, one of the most influential figures in technology, is also a prominent critic of U.S. immigration policy.
“Eternalists like Elon Musk benefit greatly from a tightly controlled social environment that ensures their wealth increases forever. … They are also highly skeptical of emotions. and see emotion as an obstacle to logic and reason… [or] It threatens civil order. ”
It contains both nostalgia and anger. Tanner, who teaches at the University of Georgia, says they have the right to express these feelings themselves, “but they get enraged when others are angry for reasons they don’t agree with.”
“Ultimately what they want is an emotionally neutral environment that allows them the freedom to express their feelings while protecting their interests forever, and immigration is a way to undermine that selfish dream.” I think it’s something we can do.”
Tanner emphasizes that nostalgia can be a force for good (i.e., don’t beat yourself up if you enjoyed “One Day”). It can make us question what constitutes progress, which is why “in older centuries, societies that worshiped progress hated nostalgia.”
“Companies have finally realized that they can make a lot of money by giving people access to the past while dispelling their nostalgia, killing two birds with one stone.
“Technology companies have taken this a step further and started promising that we can live forever in the digital realm. …But digital technology cannot and never will solve death. , nor can we suppress feelings such as nostalgia forever.”