Nostalgia IS Bullshit

Last night I caught an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit calling out to the concept of nostalgia. They profiled the lead writer of the Stuck in the 80′s blog, obsessed Leave it to Beaver fans, and a few people from the Renaissance fair. In the past I’ve been known to wax poetic about nostalgic ideas, like in my Movies of the 1980′s post, and I’ve been known to appreciate the styles of bygone eras. I love the science fiction of the 1970′s… things like Rollerball, Logan’s Run, Saturn V. There was even a time in my life when I used to take it upon myself to be surrounded by people who worshiped the 1930′s and 40′s as if it was some kind of ideal utopia lost. If you notice that magazine photo at the top of the page, it’s me and my “friends” in a 1998 issue of Nightclub and Bar Magazine.

I want to speak to the idolization of times past. The 1980′s were a magical time for me. It was my decade. I owned it. I was born in the first year of it and my character was molded by the things that I saw during that ten year span. In the earliest days of the decade I was still learning the concepts of this place. I was learning about society, language, morality, and how I placed within the world order. My family moved often. I have memories of living on the road when my parents had a traveling puppet show. One constant no matter where we ended up was the movie theater. It was the same experience in any state at any time. The cool air, the dark house and the bright screen. I used to love my movie heroes. They defined the world for me. In 1985 I saw Back to the Future and lost all respect for established authority. That was the same year I kissed a girl for the first time. We’d “date” for a few years until she had to move away. It was sweet and I felt real loss. The first time I went to a nightclub was in the 80′s. My mother bought me a white Miami Vice jacket and brought me in-tow to a dance club. I felt adult and alive, although I was still very shy about it. I remember vividly the night that I saw bulldozers ripping down the Berlin Wall in 1989. This, to me, was a direct symbol that my life would be defined in very different ways than that of my parents. As I was ushered toward maturity the world around me was changing with me.

This gives way to the dark side of nostalgia that Penn and Teller lampooned last night. Those strange people that I hung around just before the millennium. They bought vintage clothing and listened to swing music nearly exclusively. Popular media reinforced their behavior by resurrecting Brian Setzer and other acts. Swing nightclubs popped up all over the place. It was a mini-movement. I thought it was all fun and games until I realized that some of these people had a screw loose. When I’d get in my car to go home I’d listen to Johnny Cash up through popular radio hits. This wasn’t the case for the others. It truly became their lifestyle and I couldn’t deal with it. I tried to show them that they should branch out to other things, but I was just talking to a wall. We were in Miami and a good number of these people were dancing in the halftime show at the Orange Bowl. After the show ended we took a drive down to the strip and wandered. This is when I realized that these people weren’t playing with a full deck. Some of the girls wanted to split off for a little while and regroup later. I decided on a place and time to meet up and I thought everyone would be happy. This one twerp, with whom I would nearly come to blows several times almost tried to physically stop the girls from leaving. His name was Michael I think and he was about four feet tall and five pounds with a fat asian girlfriend. They looked like the alligator and the hippo from fantasia dressed up in a zoot suit and pill-box hat. Michael explained to me that women couldn’t navigate the city on their own and the men needed to stay close so that they didn’t get lost or injured. Mind you the layout of the main strip of Miami is one single linear line from end to end covered with police officers and club bouncers.

It was then that I realized he fashioned himself a type of 1950′s stereotypical man. An effigy of all those movie characters of a bygone era. He truly thought we had all lost our way and needed to be stopped. He disgusted me with his ignorance and he’s exactly what Penn and Teller were warning us about.

The world has never and will never be a morally clean place. To say that the violence reflected in our media is somehow worse than the violence depicted in Taxi Driver is a fool’s errand. You need to live in the world as it is and allow your best memories of those times you recall to be echoed in the way you approach life. Don’t let them shackle you.

Billy Joel said in his song, Keeping the Faith, “You know the good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” I think this will always hold true. If you’re trapped thinking that the best of things are behind you then you will never give them a chance to improve. This act is contrary to our own fear of mortality.

Ogden Nash wrote in one of his more somber poems,

” People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when…
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.”

These lines illustrate the root of why we have nostalgia. It can be a powerful tool to connect people born together and dying together. It’s a way for us to mark our time on Earth with those who will notice us fading from it. It’s the chain that binds a family and the anchor that defines a man’s claim in the frontier of history. When you begin to define all points of your existance through a keyhole you cut yourself off from the joy that the world can bring and on that day nostalgia ends with the sound of your own voice eulogizing your rotting shell.