Recently, I heard a radio interview with Adam Curtis, the brilliant documentary maker, whose style is that of cross-reference and visual metaphor. Broadly speaking, his intertextuality focuses on politics, lived experience and the way media is consumed. Often, he’s been criticised for a bleak worldview, a tendency to zoom in on all things Orwellian. But what struck me was that he was saying that most of the contemporary documentary makers – particularly within the realms of arts and culture – have a tendency towards the same old, same old nostalgia. He’s absolutely right.
This is the reason he tries to come from a more left- field perspective, in terms of finding more obscure or lesser known archive: a house party playing reggae, crisp factory workers, cult indie tunes, as opposed to Swinging London, or The Beatles, Twiggy and The Sex Pistols.
All too often, it’s easy to view the past with a rosy glow, and misremember a trauma or struggle that was occuring at the same time. This is why victims of CPTSD tend to forget a lot of past events: the brain puts a body into survival mode, acting as protector. It’s a sort of filter. This can also be seen in patients with dementia. My grandmother, in her latter stages of dementia, was singing old Scottish folk songs- it seemed to me that this was her coping mechanism as she deteriorated mentally, losing all her faculties. These songs made her feel safe.
It’s strange how gen z are into nostalgia too. They just don’t realise it. Raye, huge with gen z, makes extremely retro music. And kids love her. She’s obviously talented and beautiful, but she just sounds like Amy Winehouse without her humour or sass. There’s very little that feels like the shock of the new these days. No punk or rave equivalent. I see kids who look like goths doing covers of Sabrina Carpenter on talent shows. And I’d quite like to vomit . We’re post-everythimg now, and genre is just a massive pick ‘n’ mix counter from which people plunder.
I was channel hopping on my. TV last night, and an edition of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ was on. I watched as much as I could endure, which was three minutes. The contestant was all of nineteen, and didn’t know the difference between a jive and a waltz. I facepalmed. But what really got to me was that he didn’t even know who The Spice Girls were. Now, that made me feel ancient. That group’s first number one was thirty one years ago. The Spice Girls are now vintage. I feel ancient. They’re all roughly my age. But give me Bikini Kill any day.
I’m not sure what lies ahead, but sadly, given my family history, it’s likely to be me in a care home, going to ukulele players, “Do you know any Birthday Party songs?”, and them saying, “Oh, is it your birthday, Lorna?” I’m trying not to let nostalgia win.Too much nostalgia is like too much pie. It’s not good for us. Unfortunately, nostalgia knows us all too well. And these days, we’re all slave to the algorithm.
