Nostalgia is an emotion I’ve frequently come across throughout my college experience. During such a formative time of our lives, it is easy to revert back to our favorite things from childhood; when life is difficult, I like to revisit music I enjoyed when I was younger or replay an old favorite video game, and I’m confident that I’m not the only one.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel cynical about nostalgia. Maybe my attitude isn’t fair, since going back to these old works of art I’ve enjoyed is a huge comfort. If you look at the way the outside world uses nostalgia, however, you’ll see what I mean.
If you’ve been in a movie theater recently or perused any streaming service, you’ve definitely been barraged with reboots and legacy sequels of classic films, especially nostalgic children’s movies. This year alone, we have Disney’s “Jurassic World Rebirth,” a live-action “Snow White,” “Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and many more. The original 2002 “Lilo & Stitch” is one of my personal childhood favorites, and yet I harbor no excitement for the new film. The gorgeous animation that made the original so beloved has been replaced with soulless CGI and still, its marketing indicates nothing significant will be changed from the 2002 classic.
The remake’s style tells us exactly what it is: a product. These remakes do not seek to challenge us or make us think like other great films do — they seek to do the opposite. Rather than truly revisiting the story and connecting it to the present, the film replays our cozy memories of the original with perfectly recreated scenes. The only purpose behind these films is to take the dollars from our pockets instead of giving us a new experience to enjoy and learn from like the incredible original did.
In short, I hate nostalgia because it is too often weaponized against us, using our fuzzy childhood memories to sell us something while filling our theaters with reheated leftovers, not new classics to fall in love with.
The most baffling part of this new phenomenon is that the remake craze barely even makes successful products anymore. Disney’s 2023 remake of “The Little Mermaid” lost close to $5 million at the box office, and the recent “Snow White” remake’s failure caused the development of a “Tangled” remake to be stalled. At the same time, a movement of Generation Z cinephiles has emerged following the pandemic, flocking to rereleases of films from before our time and bringing in millions of dollars to independent studios and distributors.
Many in our generation have resisted the call of nostalgic cash grabs, but that does not stop them from flooding our theaters.
As obnoxious as these soulless remakes are, the impact of nostalgia on politics has been far more destructive. The most terrible impacts of the recent administration can be linked back to a nostalgic return to the past. This goes so far as the president’s slogan, encouraging voters to “Make America Great Again” with a return to a past they are nostalgic about.
Recently, the government has implemented tariffs on about 90 nations in an effort to bring back the manufacturing jobs that defined America in the mid-20th century. This counters the fact that only one in four Americans would prefer a manufacturing job to their current one.
Before the election, Donald Trump also promised to “stop crime and restore safety,” which has taken effect in the form of “mistakenly” sending a legal resident “mistakenly” to a prison camp in El Salvador and deporting university students for expressing speech counter to our current government’s beliefs. The president invokes nostalgia to violate basic civil liberties, using a vague and shifting fondness for the past as a weapon to increase his own power.
Nostalgia is a powerful force in politics. It appeals to a general better past, allowing politicians to fill in the blanks with their policies as people nod along to the sentiment that things used to be better. We see the danger of this in the present, with “Make America Great Again” used as a precursor to actions that go against our foundational values of free speech and the wishes of the American public.
This is the force that makes nostalgia dangerous. Nostalgia is also selective — it appeals to the positive parts of the past but not the entire truth. It stifles our society with yesterday’s art and yesterday’s solutions, ones that have far less value in today’s society with today’s problems.
There’s nothing at all wrong with being nostalgic, with cozying up with an old favorite book or movie to revisit some positive memories. On this individual level, it can be a wonderful thing. However, nostalgia is a force that leaves us weakened when it is leveraged on all of society at once, rendering our memories impersonal and up for grabs. By going after our vague and collective fuzzy memories, corporations and politicians alike win money and support without earning it.
Our fond memories may bring us comfort, comfort that is then cynically destroyed for profit or power. Instead, we can look to the future, create works of art that respond to modern issues and support those with forward-thinking solutions to them. This is what allows society to move forward rather than fall into the trap of hopelessly chasing yesterday.
Kevin O’Connell is a freshman majoring in political science.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.