First Chapter

This thesis will explore the use of nostalgia in popular media culture in the West, focussing on the 20th and 21st century, leaning heavily on examples of film to illustrate the shifts of general belief, and tackle the effects of modernity and globalisation through marketing techniques using nostalgia. My arguments are informed through different fields transitioning naturally between physiology, psychology and sociology, marketing and art theory. Collective nostalgia affects people in many ways, a yearning for the Wild West or the roaring 20s, a nostalgia for an era no one alive has experienced. The implications of Modernity and globalisation on individual and communal experiences of geographical displacement and a form of communal nostalgia will also be noted.

Defining Nostalgia, its history and contemporary definition

I don’t like being an adult very much, so much happened at 25. Over the last few years I’ve begun to reminisce, the moments I remember are small fragments, of conversations, little looks, or views, or tastes. Laughing with a friend as we swung on a set of playground swings, having discovered that we both had mothers who taught us to wear underwear over our tights. Sleeping in the big bed between my parents, my legs entwined with my mothers, trying to understand the words in my father’s snores. A first-love pushing me against a wall, and us huddled on the pavement promising each other to never leave. Harsh words, angry fights and the consolation of the relationships that have sustained. My actions now, and my interpretations will always and continually be filtered by what I was taught and learned before, and when I seek out and delve into the past, it might be that I just need to find my place again in the world. To find the self I was before in the case that I don’t remember.

Nostalgia was initially thought to be a physical condition, a terminal disease, coined in 1688 by J. Hoffer, the term consists of the greek nostos meaning homecoming, and algos meaning pain, a suffix commonly employed with medical conditions. Hofer diagnosed the terminal condition in many Swiss Mercenaries, soldiers who were distributed throughout Europe serving various armies. Those struck with nostalgia became weak, and physically incapable due to an overwhelming sentiment of homesickness. In their condition the soldier’s were susceptible to death and for the sake of recovery, were sent home. Hofer and other physician’s of the time argued on the root cause of the sickness. Hofer’s studies into the disease concluded that the condition demonic in cause, “vibration of animal spirits through those fibres of the middle brain in which impressed traces of ideas of the Fatherland still cling”. Others argued that the illness was specific to the Swiss, resulting from atmospheric shifts in Alpine descents, or that nostalgia was a form of brain damage caused by frequent exposure to the sound of clanging cowbells.

The meaning of the term changed steadily through time, and by the beginning of the 20th century it was generally agreed that Nostalgia was a psychological condition more closely linked to depression or melancholia. The interpretation of nostalgia as part of the general suppression of the unconscious was extremely popular at the time. Freud’s writings on the Unconscious as well as on Melancholia, although not directly referred to as Nostalgia, are complicit in the reinterpretation of Nostalgia as a whole. In Freud’s essay on ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, a distinction is made between the inevitable and natural grief, where the ego detaches itself from the lost loved one as a means of self-preservation. In the case of Melancholia, Freud argued that the mourner pathalogically refused to remove themselves from their lost loved one, and ultimately direct towards their own ego, the confusion of unconscious conflicted feelings.

Continuing into the mid and latter part of the 20th Century, Nostalgia remained entwined with ideas of nationalism and homesickness. It was only in the late 70s that the conceptual status of Nostalgia separated from homesickness. Watching Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalghia’ (1983), in the opening sequence over the city of Rome, left off centre, hangs a red flag baring the Maltese cross. Being half Maltese I have always become very excited by even the smallest suggestion of the country. At the age of 18 returning to the island to rediscover the country I grew up in, the country I thought I might belong to. Our family had moved around for most of my life, international schools that gave me my closest friends and incomparable developmental experiences. Still, it was important for me to find myself, to find a country that was mine, a place of my people. Being foreign in every country makes you wary, cultural conflicts are exhausting and often not worth discussing, but it does make you envious of the ease of a mother or fatherland. The third-culture is increasingly common, to seek out their homeland in hopes to discover and ground themselves is considered to be a natural part of the cognitive development of a third-culture child. Having experienced this as a teenager, and the resentment I suffered for my naivety in the following year, has taught me that I think very little of nationality, or anyone who subscribes to even the most casual form of nationalism. Nostalgia and its definition as a condition had previously been linked to the geophysical, thankfully Davies’ redefinition separated Nostalgia from it’s misplaced nationalistic undercurrent. Bringing me back to Nostalghia, which functions as an illustration of this misinterpreted and archaic understanding of nostalgia. At its core it is a cringeworthy nationalistic narrative, as Tarkovsky’s protagonist wrestles with the nostalgia he has for Russia whilst in Rome, drowning in abstracted romantic dream-sequences of his homeland, ultimately leading him conclude that he cannot be happy outside of Russia.

Still: Tarkovsky’s Russia, Nostalghia (1983) (Perhaps more interestingly in Tarkovsky’s earnest portrayal of the nationalistic needs of his protagonist, he conjures a surreal and abstracted dream-sequence, which at its core is unreal, does not exist, and may never have existed)

On these foundations, we now generally agree that Nostalgia is more concerned with a time than a place. If I catch up with an old friend over coffee we’d let old jokes, and little scenes slip into every conversation, we’d talk about the emotional tint of an event, or how nice it was to once have been close to someone, and all our conversations always dipped into the past. Even if I fondly remember sitting beside that same friend on a bench in a park, watching a herd of deer graze, it is the sense of warmth and familiarity for which I yearn, the knowledge that aspects of my development, the structure on which I’ve built my personality has been witnessed and shared by someone else. In the case that I lose sight of myself, I can always look back on to who I was before, what I have learned through past experience to inform my decisions in the present. Davis suggested that nostalgia functions as a way of protecting personal identity against threats of discontinuity. In the chaos of an ever-changing world we look to our past to maintain a sense of self-continuity. By a handful of memorable exhibitions of my values, I have learned to reinforce my sense of self in moments of fear or confusion.

Nostalgia helps us to place ourselves in the world, give meaning to current events through the lens of our our past mistakes and victories. It allows us to build up a unique identity, based upon our past experiences we manoeuvre ourselves into the future. This is not to say that nostalgia is exclusively an exercise of reminiscing on positive past experiences, some expressions are extremely negative, memories of loss, separation or injury, and are often juxtaposed into a sequence of redemption. Wildschut gives the example of a family dinner starting off with a vicious argument but ending with the reconciliation of the family singing together at the end of the meal, the narrative concludes with family values overpowering the bitterness of the initial negative experience.

Wildschut argues the nostalgia serves four primary functions; the generation of a positive experience, enhances self-regard, strengthens social bonds, and gives meaning to our lives. The role of nostalgia as a positive experience, reenforces the individuals emotional health, in the span of a human life, various chaotic and traumatic events can cause instability in self-regard and happiness, nostalgia acts as a way to counter these diversions. Memories of a better time, or social construct can help balance a persons negative outlook, increase subjective well-being and fosters psychological resilience. Wildschut proposed that nostalgia serves as a store of positive affect as in his experiments it was shown to strengthen flexible, creative and efficient thought patterns.

Our connections with the past influence our present, and so put forward our future, in many ways these three aspects of time are interlocked. Out past experiences are unique to us as individuals, and it is on the foundations of our past that we move towards our futures. It is in our past that we begin to establish our priorities, our connotations and our expectations. The existential aspects of nostalgia are embedded in an understanding of mortality. According to terror management theory the anxiety of mortality is maintained by a two-part buffer that consists in a shared cultural worldview and a balance of self-esteem. Nostalgia acts as a mechanism which allows us to perceive the passing of time as meaningful, and the soothing of existential fears.

As a general rule of thumb it takes around two decades for collective nostalgia to take hold. It can be considered the period of time required for a generation to grow between childhood and adulthood. In keeping with the concept that nostalgia relates to a time that in all respects never concretely existed as a psychological mechanism for an individual to reorient themselves during a chaotic period. It can be argued that collective nostalgia occurs when a new generation of people enter adulthood, and become aware of their new-found social, political and personal responsibilities and so yearns for their childhood, a time when the individual was either not entirely aware of their context, or simply that their memories of the time have been formed with a positive bias. Collective Nostalgia is perhaps a household phrase but is very difficult to define. In the case of a shared appreciation for a time which was not experienced by anyone alive and so in many ways is limited to a fantasy world, a form of nostalgia inherent in play.

Nostalgia in other examples and more contemporary nostalgia

Upon considering, listing and arranging the films I’ve found concerning nostalgia, it quickly became apparent how many variables and forms of the emotion the term holds. In the following section I will make use of specific films to exemplify their form of nostalgia. Then move on to 21st century marketing theory which has begun to theorise the commodification of Nostalgia.