No wonder Philip K Dick’s stories have become so popularised in cinematic form - in the guise of Minority Report (2002) and A Scanner Darkly (2008), which are both paranoid paeans to the past, and to the future. And no wonder Danny Dyer’s fake cockneyism has become popularised in a time when we all long for the ‘good old days’ when West Ham, Millwall and Chelsea fans could kick the shit out of each other. No wonder the backward-looking Life On Mars was a success. Even Dr Who has a decidedly retro feel about it. Yesterday and Dave and various Discovery and History channels have become successful avenues, and with good reason. The Noughties has been an epoch of endless re-remembering.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
That was then, this is then as well
I just posted this at the Noughties blog, but I’ve allowed it to come out of its box and run around for a bit, since it doesn’t have school tomorrow or anything. It’s by Patrick West at Spiked, discussing the extent to which the current decade will be defined by its nostalgia for previous decades:
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3 comments:
Do we blame the Great Recession for this? Or is that just one in the panoply of miserable realities making us long for a theoretically better time?
I've definitely noticed the nostalgia thing, because the kids have it -- the college students I hang with are all about nostalgia for times they haven't lived through. It makes me feel good as an oldster, because they are always asking me thing and actually listening to my stories, but I fear that aspect is temporary...
I think it's as much to do with the fact that technology (YouTube, Torrents, multiple TV channels, DVD box sets, iTunes, etc) has meant that we can access the subjects of our nostalgia much more easily. We don't just remember Grange Hill/Gilligan's Island/The Singing Ringing Tree fondly, we can watch it whenever we want, probably for free.
I blame Gordon Brown. And the Magic Faraway Tree.
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