Nostalgia was 70's crap

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	ben.greenberg at hwy1.com

>If I may delurk for a moment...
>
>Why stop at the exact moment we're living in right now. Why not nostalgia for
>events that haven't occured yet. It disappears up its own aperture and comes
>right out the other end. Kinda like having a rocket land on your head and
>then
>you hear it.

Ooooh, this is _good_! 

My little daughter, age 5, and I were talking at the dinner table last
night, about TV shows that we share in common. She was quite
flabbergasted to learn that many of her favorite cartoon shows were
around when I was a little kid--but that others weren't. (The two shows
under discussion were Scooby-Doo and Freekazoid, if you're keeping
score.)

The thought occurred to me that when I was her age and a bit older, TV
was a _very_ new medium, and that it had already undergone an enormous
series of visual stylistic changes. When _I_ was a tyke in the
mid-Sixties, you could really _tell_ that a ten-year-old show was old:
it would be in black-and-white, the video would be crappy, the sound
bad, etc. It just _looked_ old. And there was no such thing as a
twenty-year-old show. But young Emily, tack-sharp though she may be,
can't tell--from looking at any rate--a Seventies Hanna-Barbera cartoon
from a Nineties one. 

And the more I think about it, the harder it is for _me_ to tell a
Seventies record from a Nineties one, or a book or a film or a dance or
a haircut or a shirt or a...a...thought.

The insight sent me off into a reverie about culture-death and the cycle
of nostalgia. I mean, shit, maybe it's already happened. Maybe when that
nostalgia-flywheel got spinning, that was It: End of Discussion. It gets
increasingly hard for _me_ to see a way out of it: Once a culture starts
feeding on its own detritus and finding the fare delicious, is it
possible once again to return to a state of vigorous growth and
originality? Can you get the snake's tail out of its mouth?

Or when I hear the word "culture" should I reach for my gun?
>
>And on a related note: If nostalgia is a "return" and we have a nostalgia for
>the future or the present for that matter, then would we be eternally
>returning? 

I think they've got laws about this, don't they?

Harrison

P.S. Related note: When I get declared King of the World (should be
sometime in August: wave when you see me on TV!) the first law I'm gonna
declare is, the next little black-clad ninny that uses, writes,
portrays, embodies, or even _thinks_ the term "detached irony" is gonna
get chained to the back of the Royal Conveyance and dragged through St.
Marks Place until the skin is flayed off, and then hung up in a gibbet
for the enjoyment of the kites and the crows on Broome Street as a
warning to all of the dangers of intellectual laziness in the Reign of
Good King Harry. This I promise unto you.
>
>
>Ben
>_____________________________________________________________________________
>__
>Subject: RE: 70s crap
>From:    "Sherwood; Harrison" <hsherwood at btg.com> at Internet
>Date:    7/10/97  1:25 PM
>
>
>2) I'm pretty sure the
>"nostalgia-for-nostalgia-for-nostalgia-for-nostalgia" merry-go-round has
>twirled enough times that finding irony in it is hopelessly passé. ;-)
>I'm waiting for the moment when the nostalgia-cycle gets so tight that
>it disappears up its own fundamental aperture, achieving (again trying
>to pull us back toward relevancy, here) a cultural heat-death, where we
>feel a constant nostalgia for the exact moment we're living in right
>now.
>
>(And _I_ want points on the merchandising!)
>
>
>Harrison
>