Oh Christ, is that a tape deck?
Upon sitting in my car, I couldn’t help but wonder why a car manufactured in 2002 was still being fitted with a tape deck. I was cast back to two memories, that classic scene in British comedy sitcom ’the inbetweeners’ when Simon gets his first car which indeed has a tape deck. The other to being a toddler listening to nursery rhymes on a cassette player from early learning centre, a shop that generates and emphasises childhood nostalgia. We often have this fondness for things or places that we experienced as children. It would be obscene to relive these memories in exact detail but instead, we recycle elements of the things we remember as particularly good and responded in differing forms keeping the memory perpetually relevant, thus the nostalgia never dies out, but its boundaries and definitive meanings become blurred.
Briefly, tapes were not uncommon in our house in early 2000, and this makes sense replacing a whole tape collection to CD or digitalising it would be expensive, difficult and absolutely ridiculous. You would just buy CDs of new albums and a collection would begin and the fondness for not being able to buy tapes any longer would become stronger. Things were beginning to make sense, a tape player in a car from 2002 was seeming less improbable.
2002 had moved on from tapes we were entering the realm of CDs and starting to delve into a world of iPods and portable listening devices, however, the same problems were faced when the Walkman was released in the 80’s only a select few could afford these devices in their early forms. We were on the cusp of being to access albums and artists at the touch of a button, but it was all still slightly out of reach.
Perhaps the 2000s were a time that resented change, living through the ideologies of 20-year revivalism; still clinging on to the most prevalent things in popular culture. The Sony Walkman, personal cassette player, possibly car manufacturers were nostalgic for the idea of being able to listen to music on the go and by putting a cassette player in a car it meant that the nostalgia for tapes could be held onto. It also meant that our parents and generations before us could pass their nostalgia onto us, thus causing a generation nostalgia for a time they didn’t even live in.
Still, with much of the 2000s reciprocating 20-year revivalism, we can’t ignore that our generation has grown up nostalgic for things outside of music, many other things that we have never experienced or are likely to. Music particularly responds old sounds, melodies and riffs, we hear music that are parents are fond of and grow up being surrounded by this and the go on to listen to Sugababes ‘freak like me’ and hear familiar sounds from the music that has been fed to us by our parents we become nostalgic for music and musicians we have not experienced in their first wave but are hearing the same sounds through these revivals and recycling of old sounds. And so, I pulled off the driveway with the volume cranked up, my mums’ cassette of Fleetwood Mac’s, ‘tango in the night’ playing loud.
Michael Jackson off the wall: painting a façade over a deep and complex truth
An icon of the ’80s, musically and for his quirky lifestyle. A celebration of everyone that adored a man for which everything was not enough. The latest exhibition at the national portrait gallery celebrates a man who influenced, music, style and dance worldwide, and continues to do so to this day through his legacy. 10 years since the king of pops passing and we are still as enthralled with him as we were back when he first entered the music scene with his equally musically talented brothers. It becomes clear how celebrated and loved Jackson was through the excess of 40 people who wanted to capture him. It is interesting that this exhibition does not directly follow the musicians, actual music but him a figure and a person.
It becomes even more interesting when we look at this celebration with the eyes of nostalgia. We to this day regard Jackson as the king of pop, for his musical talents being second to none, we are nostalgic for his music as we tend to only look back with rosy- retrospection, looking back with innocence and a rose-tinted façade. We completely disregard allegations towards this man for indecency. Mention Jimmy Saville and a wave of ‘dirty old man’ washes over the conversation, never ‘Jim will fix it was an amazing show, despite it all’. Mention Michael Jackson ‘oh what a man’, ‘his talents were second to none’ never does the conversation hang up on the many allegations towards him for his indecencies. It is a weird paradox in whereby we regard a person still like the person we have always known them as, and others we completely disregard and dehumanise. We remove these wrongdoing people from our minds unless we can find something that counteracts this. Apparently, Jackson's talents override allegations and accusations that are still being raked up and discussed at a time where the portrait gallery is perhaps celebrating the image of a ‘paedophile’? it is these other factors that seem to override all of this.
Looking more closely at the exhibition and the idea of rosy retrospection, challenging how this idea emphasises the removal of negative memory. We celebrate the themes of race and ethnicity and the work that has been done over the past decades to create a more accepting world, we celebrate the influences in music and the opportunity to be yourself and express yourself without caring. We judge the past disproportionately to the present and completely disregard the bad things that were dug up after the musicians passing. Some might decide that this is wrong, and we cannot ignore these wrongdoings, however, it is the way in which nostalgia works, could nostalgia perhaps be called wrong? Or are we wrong for only desiring things that are good?
I bet you can’t do a handstand, I bet I can eat a caramac afterwards though
Upon starting swimming, I never thought I’d be hit by the waves of nostalgia that some might. Swimming for me was something that I, from a young age had always had negative feelings towards. I didn’t have a fondness for childhood days being spent in a pool having fun, largely due to not being able to swim until the age of about 7 years. However, this all changed recently upon having the fancy to go swimming after having not stepped foot in a leisure centre for in excess of 8 years, of course, I had been swimming since on holidays. Although I do not remember swimming with fondness, I do not fear water as many people do who have never learnt to swim or began swimming at older ages.
For me, this resurgence in wanting to swim began through the envy of a friend who had already started going and, wanting to be active and build up my strength. It wasn’t until id been in the pool and was leaving the leisure centre, I caught a glimpse of the vending machines, a leisure centre staple, the nostalgia washed over me. I did not have nostalgia for swimming but elements that connected with the leisure centre landscape suddenly became nostalgic. The remembering of not having fun with friends in the pool due to not being able to do handstands and other grand acrobatics that seemed so out of reach and impressive, but the remembering for a particular part of the experience became so clear and resonant.
That thing that I remembered so clearly was using the vending machine to get a caramac chocolate bar what would be consumed while waiting for a parent or guardian to fetch us home again. It might seem strange that the end of the experience is the thing that is remembered most fondly but in keeping with the themes of nostalgia, it reiterates that our brain only recollects positive memory largely due to cognitive memory, the thing that means we all collect memory in the same way and most often all collect positives. Additionally, rosy retrospection is the thing that makes past events wholly happy memories, we take out the positives and overall the brain combines these to create an end product that is a good memory, thus making us take positive risk, i.e. starting to go swimming again, because the overriding good factors mean that our idea of the overall experience makes us want to do it again or at least look at it with positivity.
V and a museum of childhood
When we hear the name museum of childhood wave of nostalgia come over us. But why are we nostalgic for a museum full of things that we’ve likely never had? This form of nostalgia we feel when visiting places like the v and a museum of childhood is a strange one. My generation can relate, my parents' generation can relate, it simply appeals to all generations by including small elements that specifically relate to people on a personal level by combining them with items that cross generations/ are still relevant too. When we are struck by nostalgia, it is often out of context, making it unreliable in factoring the truth. It gives us a heightened sense of contentment because we are not recalling the exact details of an event. Inevitably it becomes about our expectations of how memory will make us feel opposed to it being wholly autobiographical.
Remembering only the bits we know will make us feel good may seem like a bad thing, but this is what stops us from becoming down, or even depressed. Thus, also meaning that we can share our nostalgia more widely. In terms of the V and A museum of childhood this is key we share our nostalgia through our peers and the things that they remember most fondly to create a collective memory- this memory is not the truth per se but is a common ground on which nostalgia is formed.
Moving through the must-have toys collection we find ourselves nostalgic for the 1920s board game snakes and ladders, again this seems wrong, but it is a game that has been used through generations and generations. We are not nostalgic for the time in which it was made or perhaps, even the game itself is ‘outstanding’ but the memories of it unifying families and creating a memory in this way. It is not autobiographical, nor is it nostalgia for a certain object. It is nostalgia for emotion. Likewise trawling through the learning and developing collection, we do not feel nostalgic for having remembered a rattle had as a baby but rather the methods in which children through time have been taught to learn, the basic principles have seldom changed. The nostalgia we feel and most likely our parents feel is teaching of learning and vice versa, learning the time you spend with those who have given you your basis of knowledge. Again, this isn’t nostalgia for a decade or object but a memory or emotion. By creating nostalgia around emotion and memory, nostalgia for specific objects, or time periods get misplaced because of shared collective memory and emotion.
Withnail and I
The constant recycling of the decades into one generation, consequently, means that our recollections of what actually happened vs what we imagine happened become skewed. In looking at this skewing of the exact details I think of many films that were made in the eighties that portray another decade. One of my favourites being slightly offbeat avant-garde film Withnail and I, that follows the life of two low life artists struggling to make a living in the ’60s. Although the film hints at the decade through certain tropes of the 60’s we tend to disregard the actual decade. We often do this with films in place of relating to the lives of the central characters. You begin to imagine that this is perhaps what your life might become unless you have a rich uncle that will come along and bail you out.
It has remained relevant since the ’60s when the film was set, artists and creatives still have the struggle of making it in the world and experience hardships. This perhaps might not be positive nostalgia or nostalgia at all, but it is a form of wistfulness or knowing that people like myself have had this constant struggle and not everyone in the creative field will make it big right away. It is not nostalgia but a comfort knowing that we are not the first generation of artists who have struggled.
More directly about the nostalgia portray in the film however we must comment on that fact that the ’80s itself was a decade that had some form of yearning for other decades and wanting to represent an issue that was still current as artists have always liked to voice ‘how hard’ they’ve got it and how difficult it might be for them. We could perhaps say that films during the eighties was in a state of confusion, not nostalgic, as many films of the time looked back to events such as the Vietnam war and the more light-hearted downfallings such as that of the lives of Withnail and Marwood, there was a major rehash of the ’60s. And on the other end of the spectrum sci-fi culture looked forward to a time that had not yet happened, a generation of people not quite happy with recycling their own past maybe?
Our parents were growing up in the ’80s with our grandparents nostalgia for growing up in the 60s and it is this cross-generational relationship, not only at home but in the workplace that creates learning for things we’ve not experienced, thus we don’t only live through our own positive memory but that of our peers and the characters in films and on Tv shows.
Back in time for school
BBCs most recent imagining of the ‘back in time’ series surrounds the idea of school. Something that most of us in western society can relate to. Whether you’ve got a degree of left secondary school at the age of 15, it is still common ground. When sitting down with both parents to watch the 1980s episode of the show, one of which left school in 84’ and the before the 80s in 78’. And myself who left the formal education of secondary school in 2013, so with a range of outlooks on our times at school, it was interesting to see what was remembered most fondly, what we had nostalgia for, and whether it would be a learning experience of alien sights for me.
With plenty of ‘I remember that’s’ and ‘oh I have never seen that’s’ it became evident that the inaccuracy of nostalgia was still playing a huge role, but not only this geography played a huge role, with comments that only some or few schools done certain things or, the idea that different things happened in northern and southern schools. Remembering little about using or learning about computers in an age where they were on the dawn of breaking through into the mainstream, we concluded only highly funded, and the inner-city schools had the privilege of learning computer skills. Being from a wholly rural setting the school curricular was focussed mainly still on the 60’s idea of learning applicable skills rather than more academic skills. Almost as if the countryside was stuck in an absolute time warp, I remember my middle school curriculum being heavily focussed on similar skills, like woodwork, sewing and cookery. Craft played a big role in my family’s school education.
However, this could be the result of a geographical blip and moving slightly slower to cities but could also be the result of positive cognitive memory. My parents and I are kinetic learners and prefer to be hands-on with whatever we are learning. This has thrust us all into places that use our skills of craft rather than academia, and it is this positive memory and outlook we all have on kinetic learning that may have caused us to think all in a similar way about our education. We have perhaps forgotten the academic learnings of maths and science and have erased them as negative memory. Thus, each of us all has retained the positive memory of our hands-on subjects. For example, when we look at our early years' education, we remember it being days filled with playing, colouring and with little learning, of course, there was learning to a degree. But our brain positively remembers the early years' education wholly as playing and a place of minimal education, as it was the type of education that did not require lots of effort.