The smell of freshly mowed grass? That reminds me of spring soccer practices.
A song? I have a few, actually. “Letting the Cables Sleep” by Bush takes me back to my senior year in high school, sitting on the hood of my car, watching the planes take off and land at the Indianapolis International Airport. “Cat’s In the Cradle” by Harry Chapin, one night driving from Minneola, Iowa, to Omaha, Nebraska, when my father said he hoped I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps, that he wanted better for me, but I was too young to understand. “Trying” by Lifehouse was the first and most important dance I ever shared with my wife.
An open car window on the highway? Yup. I can actually feel the heat of Joshua Tree National Park as a buddy and I drove from Indiana to California and back in college in a car with no A/C.
A musical artist sung with parent(s) that evokes positive emotions? Psh…easy: John Mellencamp, counting pennies for groceries that week, sitting on the living room floor with my mom and older brother, the afternoon sun shining in through the sheer curtains that blew in the wind that ebbed and flowed through the open windows.
There is nothing quite like the power of nostalgia. What is the appeal of looking back on our memories? Is it a positive thing for the long term or does it simply set our expectations for the future too high? Nostalgia is a psychological resource we employ to elicit positive emotions based on memories. Nostalgia has the ability to pull us out of some serious darkness, especially if our present is, shall we say, less than ideal.
Robin Williams, he made me laugh through some times in my life that laughing wasn’t a go-to option. Every time I listen to him, I realize his biggest lesson to me was it was more important for other people to laugh than myself, and I’m instantly brought back to the memories I have of making my family and friends laugh and relax, even when I didn’t really feel like it.
The novel “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline centers around this idea of nostalgia. Cline was coming of age in the 1980’s, a time of teenage confusion and big hair and rock gods singing at higher octaves than their female counterparts. To give credit where credit is due, the 1960’s and 1970’s introduced the idea of youth agency in politics and culture, but this decade ushered in an age that would ripple throughout the coming two generations (and counting): the idea of teenage agency in politics and culture. Saturday morning cartoons, and teenagers defeating invading Russians, taking down ruthless criminals and uncovering a centuries-old pirate mystery, and defying authority figures from stuffy principals to the FBI. Move over Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, it’s time for Matthew Broderick and Robert Downey, Jr. Step aside “Mod Squad” and “Kojak” and make room for “Knight Rider” and the “A-Team.”
Don’t misunderstand me, though, this decade created some of the most indelible characters, songs, stories, personalities, and artistic styles in our collective minds: Ferris Bueller, SynthWave, the mohawk, Chester Copplepot, Axl Rose, Madonna, graffiti, Bret Easton Ellis, the skateboard, Judd Nelson and his famous fist pump, the Moonwalk, Marty McFly and Alex P. Keaton, Alf, “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!” This list could go on for pages and pages, but suffice it to say, we are currently going through an interesting time in our culture when those who grew up during the 1980’s and early 1990’s are approaching their 40’s and 50’s and, as we know, when anything creeps toward a noticeable ending, one begins to appreciate the beginning of whatever it is much more.
“Don’t Speak” by No Doubt takes me back to my best friend in high school telling me that she, after we both were dating other people, felt like we were drifting away from each other. She was going to graduate a few months later, too, and move away to college.
Cultural transitions are tough and celebrating the past isn’t altogether a bad thing, is it?
Enter people like Ernest Cline’s celebrations of 1980’s culture in “Ready Player One” and his second novel “Armada.”
Enter Ross and Matt Duffer, creators of the wildly popular science-fiction series on Netflix called “Stranger Things,” which takes place in the early-to-mid 1980s in rural Indiana…complete with Trapper Keepers, jean jackets, and mullets!
So. Many. Mullets.
Enter the remakes and rebirths of 80’s juggernauts such as the Star Wars saga, IT, Ghostbusters, and Dune.
Is it healthy to keep our focus on the past? Our culture seems to always be thinking forward. An ideology that has defined the last century is literally “progressive,” implying progress toward a certain type of society is the ultimate goal. Art, literature (such as the explosion of sci-fi), movies and television, and political rhetoric constantly push us to think about changing today because, well, reasons. Ironically, most people today, I might argue, have a preoccupation with shunning the past (in fact, outright destroying it like they’re Anakin Skywalker in a nursery) yet simultaneously looking back at it fondly. Or at least look back on the parts that fit their vision of the world, but I guess that’s how nostalgia works: those memories that are conveniently suitable for delivering positive emotions.
Is nostalgia, then, a fair tool to use? Does it give the past a chance at all? Or is the “Cameron Frye” of the past simply pushed aside for the more attractive “Sloane Peterson” by the Ferris Bueller’s of today? I mean, let’s be honest: Cameron Frye had the most growth in that whole movie. To label him as worthless, well…that’s just shortsightedness, right?
The past cannot be separated from itself. The 1980s, yes, were an awesome time to grow up. I could run the streets until sundown; I didn’t need some silly pre-planned “play date” like my kids “need” today. I could knock on a friend’s door – get this! – unannounced. Crazy, right? I didn’t need my mom to call ahead. I could walk to school and cross roads with another kid telling me when was safe, and we didn’t need an adult at the corner with us. In fact, I was that crossing guard when I was in sixth grade. However, as nice as all these memories are – and I do look back on them with great fondness – there are other things about the 1980s we cannot just erase.
Our president still ran illegal arms deals to our enemies. There was a war between Bible-beating parents and kids who wanted to expand their imaginations with games like Dungeons & Dragons. The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. CNN was created.
Ally Sheedy’s line from “The Breakfast Club” rips the heart out of every single kid watching it: “When you grow up, your heart dies.” This is in relation to their fear of growing up to be just like their parents. “It’s unavoidable,” she says.
The very parents who began that whole “youth as cultural and political force” movement nurtured a cultural trend that continues to this day: parents lost their roles as wise dispensers of advice and protectors and were relegated to the butts of jokes and obstacles to love and dream fulfillment. All of a sudden, the 1980s ushered in an age of teenagers being the center of attention and this idea that the world should revolve around their needs. Principal Rooney was maniacal in his attempt to capture the ever wise and evasive Ferris Bueller; Sam Baker’s parents forgot about her 16th birthday completely; Darth Vader cut his own son’s hand off. Not exactly great models parenting being portrayed in 80s cinema.
Is this an essay bashing the 1980s? Not at all. Like I’ve mentioned, I grew up on idolizing Ferris Bueller’s antics, watching Molly Ringwald being awkward, relating to the Ducky’s of the world, wondering how Marty McFly would fix his family, and wishing I was on the Oregonian coast watching a long-forgotten pirate ship drifting freely into the Pacific Ocean. I listened to bands like Guns & Roses and artists like Run DMC. I even had hair down to my shoulders for a short spell. I ran freely around my neighborhood and I knocked on doors unexpectedly to ask if a friend could play.
But the 1980s still saw divorce, it still saw violence, it still saw the Cold War. We cannot pick out certain things about the past and erase others. Nostalgia is fascinating to me and I love that an entire novel focused on the decade that I most associate with, but we cannot move forward without all those others things that made that decade uncertain and scary and transitional. When we read or watch a celebration of childhood like “Ready Player One” and “Stranger Things,” we need to be vigilant to bring context to what we’re remembering. The Cold War itself, the music albums, the movie collections, the artwork, the volume of books, that insanely creepy old librarian lady from Ghostbusters, and the experiences – both positive and negative – are statues and monuments that stand as testaments to and proof of how we as a community both enjoyed as well as overcame that decade. Those who love this new trend of 1980s nostalgia should remember it as an incredibly interesting time in world history chock full of celebratory moments and works of art, however, they should also remember the negative aspects.
I caution not to tear down cultural monuments, even in the name of nostalgia and renaissance movements. Tell me, what would happen if the Cold War was forgotten because it was too painful to remember? Shortly after, we would also forget 1983’s The Day After, starring Steve Guttenberg and John Lithgow, that sent the nation in a fearful frenzy the day after it aired on network television due to the graphic depiction of a nuclear attack on America. After decades of economic and global uncertainty, would the collapse of the Berlin Wall have been as sweet? You cannot celebrate that event without a context of what made it so special.
Nostalgia must work both ways.
Books Over Beer 