The Anti-Nostalgist Debate
Dear readers, I once had a dream where I was with my family in a shopping/activity center-type place. Somehow, I managed to leave my family and came across a little shop with a neon sign which read “Nostalgia” in cursive lettering.
It looked like a grocery store that you could only see in creepy liminal space images, with a cooler placed in the center and produce lining the walls. There was another section of the store where you could find old, secondhand items. It was an old-fashioned grocery store and antique shop all in one.
This dream was so comforting to me because I am a nostalgist at heart and I love the concept of a grocery store that looks like it came straight from my childhood. I still remember what Thorne’s Market in my hometown looked like on the inside, and it closed almost 10 years ago.
I know there are a lot of anti-nostalgists out there who think it can only do harm. So today, I want to share my perspective and why nostalgia is more than just idealizing the past.
To begin, I want to say that nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool, and it is often used in political propaganda (and it works!) Some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry use nostalgia to sell their work. For example, Taylor Swift leans heavily into the cottagecore aesthetic in her albums folklore and evermore through imagery in her music videos and album covers.
Nostalgia has become very popular on the internet as well. Searching “nostalgiacore,” “dreamcore,” or “liminal spaces” will give you images that remind you of the late 1980s to the early 2000s. These are times when the majority of social media users grew up, so it makes sense that those are the times they are nostalgic for.
That being said, there is also anemoia, which is nostalgia for a time you weren’t alive for. In my essay “No-Clipping Out of Reality: Entrapment and Nostalgia in Liminal Spaces,” I called this type of nostalgia “displaced nostalgia.”
Anemoia is very common, even in popular culture. The movie “Midnight In Paris” is all about the anemoia felt by Owen Wilson’s character, Gil. His fiance and her friends critique him, saying, “Nostalgia is denial” and a “flaw in the romantic imagination.”
They go on, saying how nostalgic people imagine things were better in the past. I would like to point out that this is a flawed argument. Many, at some point in their lives, imagine they would be happier in a different situation. This is not exclusive to nostalgia.
For example, Gil’s fiance, played by Rachel McAdams, cheats on him with her friend. When she admits to doing so, she claims it’s because “he’s romantic, and he speaks French,…and maybe it’s the mystique of this corny city.”
She has no good excuse for cheating on Gil, but I bet in the heat of the moment, she justified her infidelity because she imagined her life would be better with someone else.
By the way, I’m not defending any of the characters in this movie, because Gil also cheats on his fiance throughout the movie. The entire premise is that all of the characters think their lives would be better in a different situation or different time period, and they can be inconsiderate of one another because of it.
Also, those who say nostalgia is a lie must think that life is terrible all the time. And yet, to feed off the cliché, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
I, for one, think it’s better to use nostalgia to appreciate what you had in the past rather than brushing it off as a lie your brain tells you to escape your current life or situation.
We all need to escape sometimes, and if it’s done in moderation and doesn’t harm anyone, it is unfair to call that “denial.” Nostalgia is a useful tool for the occasional escape and is much less harmful than alternatives, like drugs and alcohol. Thank you.