Decade nostalgia

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Decade nostalgia, the feeling of nostalgia for certain aspects of a past decade, is common in contemporary popular culture. This article mainly considers the phenomenon in modern US culture, where it is largely focused on the period from the 1950s to 1980s, a time of relative peace and prosperity and hence a likely source for nostalgia. There has of course been similar nostalgia for previous times (for instance, for the "Roaring 20s" or the "Rockin' 90s" or the folk revival of the 1960s).

It is notable that in Great Britain the popular "nostalgic" view of the 1950s is that of post-war Americana, rather than (for example) the austerity and then recovery of 1950s Britain. In contrast, there is a widespread nostalgia in France for the "trente glorieuses", the 30 years of prosperity and progress in France that followed the war.

It is not yet clear whether decade nostalgia for the 21st century or even the 1990s will emerge (although there is a nostalgia toward Nickelodeon cartoons among teens), and if so, what form it will take.

Contents

[edit] 1950s nostalgia

The Fifties remain a popular nostalgia decade even as of the 2000s and are often seen in America in simplified terms by both proponents and detractors.

Diners, jukeboxes, doo-wop music, and low budget sci-fi movies are considered staples of 1950s nostalgia, and the decade is seen by many as an idealistic, calm time. The '50s were not without their share of turbulence in the US, as the civil rights and women's rights were suppressed in the conservative time which would have backlash effects in the 1960s and the Cold War weighed on the public conscience.

The Fifties have been considered nostalgic since the mid-1970s.

Examples of 1950s nostalgia films:

  • American Graffiti (1973)--It takes place in 1962, but most of the fashions, cars, and songs are from the Fifties.
  • American Hot Wax (1978)--DJ Alan Freed and the birth of rock 'n' roll.
  • Grease and its sequel, Grease 2 (sequel takes place in Kennedian 1961-'2 with 1950's motorbikes, cars and music in background and as prize in the June Moon Talent Show.
  • Porky's (1982)
  • Back to the Future (1985)--Travelling back in time to 1955.
  • Pulp Fiction (1994)--for the Jack Rabbit Slim's sequence

Examples of 1950s nostalgia TV series:

[edit] 1950s nostalgia, from the Sixties to the Oughts

In the United States, different decades have approached Fifties nostalgia differently.

Few people cared for Fifties nostalgia during the 1960s. The vast societal changes of the Sixties, particularly during the latter half of that decade, made the Fifties look repressive and square. Underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb satirized Fifties middle-class culture,[1] while Frank Zappa's 1968 album Cruising with Ruben & the Jets spoofed 1950s doo-wop.

During the 1970s, some people started viewing the Fifties as a calmer, more innocent time, a time devoid of the scandals, wars, assassinations, riots, and racial strife that had marked American life during the Sixties and early Seventies.[2] Thus the success of mostly idyllic Fifties-themed entertainment such as the movies American Graffiti and Grease, and the TV series Happy Days and its spinoff Laverne & Shirley. Also, John Waters' 1972 gross-out classic Pink Flamingos takes place in the present but uses Fifties music, fashions, cars, and decor as an ironically "innocent" counterpoint to bestiality, incest, murder, cannibalism, and especially coprophagia; Patti Page's 1953 hit single "(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window" plays over the final, infamous sequence of the drag queen Divine actually eating dog excrement.

During the 1980s, the Fifties started losing their golly-gee image, turning sexier and more dangerous--e.g., the teenage sex comedy Porky's trilogy, the 1985 movie Back to the Future (with its incest angle); and rockabilly revivalists such as the Stray Cats.

Eighties hipsters and other nonmainstream sorts, possibly as a reaction to Ronald Reagan's presidency and a resurgent Fifties-style social conservatism, started depicting the Fifties as a goofy, cornball, and clueless era with hidden perversion, violence, and paranoia. The science fiction film boom of the '80s echoed the same scifi boom of the 50s and referenced that time frequently. The 1982 remake of The Thing to its 1951 counterpart The Thing from Another World, a resurgence in the small-town monster movies with TVs in the films usually having an 50s scifi movie on. Results of this revisionism include the 1982 Cold War/nuclear documentary The Atomic Cafe; David Lynch's 1986 movie Blue Velvet (which, as with Pink Flamingos, uses clothes, music, and decor from the "innocent" Fifties as an ironic counterpoint to present-day crime and degeneracy); Daniel Clowes's proto-lounge comic book Lloyd Llewellyn;[3] and the character Pee-wee Herman. Donna Deitch's 1986 movie Desert Hearts, a lesbian love story set in the 1950s, examined the sexuality and homophobia of that decade in a way similar to how 2000s movies would cover those and other aspects of the Fifties.

The 1990s brought lounge culture, a somewhat ironic reaction toward allegedly constricting political correctness; lounge revived Fifties manly-man drinking, womanizing, and consumerism. The 1992 book CAD: A Handbook for Heels and the 1996 movie Swingers remain the best documents of lounge.

2000s filmmakers tend to avoid turning out American Graffiti-style fantasias or Pee-wee Hermanesque campiness, instead examining Fifties racism, sexism, sexual repression, and political repression in a realistic manner; the results often are allegories for the present day. Oughts Fifties movies include Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven (2002); George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck (2005); and Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) .

[edit] 1960s nostalgia

The Sixties are considered by many, especially baby boomers, the greatest decade of the 20th century.

Interestingly, what is thought of today as the "Sixties" actually took place from about the end of 1963 to as late as 1974; much of the early part of the decade was actually similar to the Fifties.

Staples of Sixties nostalgia include Hippie culture, rock and roll, The Beatles, and Woodstock.

The Sixties are often called the "Swingin' Sixties" for the great cultural changes during that decade, and also for the popularity of swinging.

The Sixties have been an object of nostalgia since the 1980s.

Examples of 1960s nostalgia movies:

Examples of 1960s nostalgia TV series:

[edit] 1970s nostalgia

In the US, the Seventies, in a nostalgic sense, do not so much mean 1970 to 1979 but more so the latter half of that decade as the first half of the Seventies was very much blended in with the late 1960s. Thus, the Seventies are often called the "Disco Era" as that type of music was very popular during much of the decade.

In the UK, the nostalgic view of "the Seventies" covers the decade somewhat more evenly. Punk rock and disco (the latter not as all-encompassing as it was in the US) were most closely associated with the second half of the 1970s. However, it is the image of glam rock (which peaked during the first half of the decade) that is arguably most strongly associated with the "Seventies" stereotype in Britain.

Things considered "Seventies" include smiley faces, disco music, funk, Afros, the AMC Pacer, and The Beegees

Examples of 1970s nostalgia movies:

Examples of 1970s nostalgia TV series:

[edit] 1980s nostalgia

The Eighties were ridiculed during most of the Nineties, although began to be seen as nostalgic as early as 1997 because of how radically different the Eighties were from the Seventies and the Nineties.

The period that is nostalgized as "The Eighties" more or less coincides with the 1980s decade, but is often considered to have started with the fall of Disco in 1979 and have ended with the advent of Grunge in 1991 in a pop-cultural aspect.

The Eighties are often called the "Decade of Decadence" because of the obsession with getting rich during the decade and the rise of huge companies such as Wal-Mart.

In recent years, 80's nostalgia has been growing among some video game fans, Who enjoy the video games of the time. This has lead to the magazine Retro Gamer, and record prices on ebay.

Things associated with the 1980s include:

Films associated with the 1980s include:

TV series associated with the 1980s include:

1980s nostalgia movies include:

1980s nostalgia TV series and videogames include:

[edit] 1990s nostalgia

As of 2006, Nineties nostalgia is only in its infancy as the decade is so recent.

Things considered "Nineties" include:

Music considered "Nineties" include:

Television shows considered "Nineties" include:

Films considered "Nineties" include:

In the United Kingdom, phenomena associated with the 1990s include Britpop and Trip hop music, the Rave scene, and Loaded-style "lad culture", but there is not yet a strongly-defined form of Nineties nostalgia. Notably, although dance music was the single most dominant form of popular music in the country from the late-1980s to the early-2000s, it has not (yet) become associated with the decade in general.

Examples of 1990s nostalgia include:

[edit] 21st century nostalgia

21st century decade nostalgia is obviously nonexistent as of now, but it arguably may not work the way 20th century nostalgia did as the 2000s and 2010s lack totally accepted names, thus making nostalgia less marketable.

Things associated with the 2000s include:

Music considered "2000s" include:

Television shows considered "2000s" include:

Films considered "2000s" include:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Crumb, who grew up during the Fifties, feels no nostalgia for that decade. In the 1994 documentary Crumb (film), he calls the Fifties "suffocating and so dreary and depressing" due to the adults who had lived through the Depression and World War II and now wanted an "unthreatening and flat" life, an "Ozzie and Harriet shell" that ended up having "a kind of creepy, nightmarish, grotesque quality to it".
  2. ^ Johnathan Rodgers, "Back to the '50s," Newsweek, October 16, 1972, p. 78. Also see Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 5-6.
  3. ^ In a 1992 interview, Clowes says he created this comic book series as a way of "rebelling" against his avant-garde upbringing. Similar to the way lounge devotees would embrace a long-gone, anti-PC culture, he became "really obsessed with all these old men's magazines and this whole weird vision of the world in the '50s that never came to fruition", a world of "weird space age machismo". Gary Groth, "Daniel Clowes Revealed!", The Comics Journal, November 1992, pp. 61-2.

[edit] See also

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