Nostalgia Pandering and Why I am Against it

 

Nostalgia Pandering and Why I am Against it

If you have been actively discussing media on the internet or even aware of the entertainment industry, you would know that for the past couple of years there has been many attempts at trying to "cash in" off nostalgia. Whether it'd be remakes, reimaginings, sequels, soft reboots, and so on. I am not sure where this whole thing truly originated from, the first time I laid witness to this whole ordeal was the movie Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods back in 2013, I can't think of anything that predates this film as far as "revivals" of older franchises go. There was Mad Max Fury Road afterwards, but then the nostalgia pandering would not finally get underway until the release of Jurassic World and Star Wars the Force Awakens. Once these two movies came out, the nostalgia pandering wave truly started to set off, everything from movies to TV shows, to video games to so many other media would be bombarded with constant "revivals" and "nostalgic" properties. There has been many including, Terminator Dark Fate, Matrix Resurrections, Ghostbusters Afterlife, Halloween 2018, shows like Stranger Things constantly referencing 80s pop culture and so many throwbacks to that decade in general, Spider-Man No Way Home shoving in Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, and Willem Dafoe, live action Disney remakes, and to some degree live action anime remakes like Ghost in the Shell 2017 and Netflix Death Note, there is so many to list I would be here for hours. The main point is the entertainment industry is so crazed with nostalgia that it feels like all it really wants to do is put in a bunch of depressed younger people in a dream world where they are kids again and have them not really have them move and look forward to the future. The entertainment industry just wants people to live in the past and appeal to the kind of people who go online and say, "everything sucks now, life was way better back in the day". A kind of thinking I am strongly against because it's a bunch of grown adults complaining about how life "sucks". Now, I get to what this whole write up is about, is this nostalgia pandering really what you want, does the entertainment industry really think pandering to these people is going to benefit them?

To help enhance my point, I am going to be using the trope in fiction where the protagonist of the story is trapped in a dream world and they have everything they ever wanted, they have all their desires and everything they asked for, you have probably seen this trope in one way shape or form. One example being Gravity Falls, "Mable Land" but the example I am going to be using is Alan Moore's Superman deconstruction, and also the Justice League Unlimited episode of the same name "the Man who had Everything". In both this story and the episode, one of Superman's villains Mongul infects Superman with a parasite known as the "Black Mercy" on his birthday. This parasite gives the person infected their greatest desires. In this story, you watch Superman finally live out what he always wanted, which in both the story and the episode, is to have a normal family life. Throughout both versions, Superman is struggling to figure if all this is what he truly desires and if he really wants it. In the end, Superman rejects the Black Mercy and removes parasite off of him and helps defeat the invading Mongul. So what was the point of me going over all this? There is a reason why this trope is used so much and why I really enjoy it. It's basically reminding the viewer that you could have your greatest needs fulfilled but is that really what you want? They are the heroes of the story because they choose to reject the villains' the false delusions that they are providing and they move forward, you could live in a dream world and have everything, but what do you truly gain from that?

This is what I feel the entertainment industry should do, instead of trying to appeal to young people who hate their own lives, maybe it should to give reasons to have those people move forward and enjoy the current predicament they are in.

The nostalgia pandering itself is getting really mixed results some are a huge success like Spider-Man, Jurassic World, Force Awakens, but then there are just massive flops like Terminator Dark Fate, Matrix Resurrections, and Mulan.

I am going to reveal some information about myself to help illustrate my next point. I grew up watching many cartoons and anime in the early to mid 00s. I have an attachment towards many of the programming blocks on YTV that I watched in that time. One in particular was one called "Bionix" where they showed various anime and cartoons examples being Full Metal Alchemist 2003, Death Note, Reboot, Beast Machines and even some animated superhero movies like Superman Doomsday and Ultimate Avengers among many others, there are times where I very much miss it and want it to come back and just sit on my TV like if it was Friday Nights again and just get immersed in the random stuff that was on. The more I thought about it however, I am glad YTV never thought about bringing it back. If the stars were to magically align and I was somehow still watching cable TV again, there are so many factors as to why I would not enjoy it returning, first of all, I would have to wait every Friday just to watch one episode of an animated show and then wait the next week, when now I have the internet and streaming services where I can watch these shows anytime I want. Back in the early to mid 00s, trying to watching anime and cartoons on TV was in many ways the easier option but now, TV as a way to watch entertainment has become obsolete. I have plenty of other shows to watch nowadays, so if I am waiting for a show to finish airing, I can watch tons of other stuff, play video games and keep myself busy in a dozen other different ways until it's done. Second, whenever I watch the shows on TV, I would have to sit through commercial break every 10 minutes, and looking back as a kid, I am amazed I even tolerated so many commercials of products I didn't give care for. If I watched them now, I would find it infuriating, I already get annoyed of constant ads when watching Youtube on my phone without adblock. Third, I don't like watching TV shows when all the episodes aren't available, it makes it harder to remember certain plot events and all the plot details making harder to judge a show of any kind. Forth, if every show I watched as a kid were to come back and I mean all of them including the ones I don't remember that well or the ones I remember not liking, it doesn't really matter because my child like eyes are gone and I am viewing them through an adult lens, so any feelings I got those shows as a kid would  evaporate, and I am completely different person now. New experiences will either make you appreciate or detest a story you liked before.

This is where it all comes full circle, if you want the entertainment industry to appeal to constant nostalgia, here's the thing, the nostalgic effect is going to last up to a minute at most and then you will judge the story as a story. The new experiences you have gained over the many years since you viewed that media will create new eyes for you to judge the story. The childlike wonder will be gone, so in many ways modern media trying to emulate the past will 9 times out of 10 will not have the same level of effect as the media it's emulating because there isn't many decades of attachment. In the end, it's a pale imitation and it will ultimately be disposable because it is trying to appeal to a specific audience that has a high chance of really not caring or disliking it. Without the nostalgia that the modern media is emulating, the story will be put under more scrutiny due to the fact that older audiences don't care and newer audiences won't care about the pandering.