The world feels like it’s ending, yet I’m somehow thoroughly and debilitatingly bored. It makes me anxious how dull everything seems when it’s evidently not. The American Empire is crumbling before us, the fascists are back, our government is gleefully complicit in a genocide, the landscape’s always on fire or flooding or both, and it’s all broadcast live on television for our viewing ‘pleasure’.
Except, it’s the only thing on television. Nothing else is really worth watching. I miss the 22-episode series soap operas of the early 2000s and the actors who brought them to life. I miss the vibrancy of movies filmed in Technicolour.
It’s not just a problem with visual media either. The organic, crisp music production of the ‘90s, the sound that predates compression turned up to its maximum setting, somehow can’t be emulated in modern music. It’s frustrating that hand-me-down clothes from my mother are nicer than the ones I can afford to buy new. Why is everything made of polyester? I hate my phone. I hate Twitter. I can’t pay attention to anything anymore. Things used to happen. Now, nothing ever does.
There’s a certain allure to this kind of nostalgia. Cultural stagnation is always concerning, but it’s particularly uncanny when there’s just so much source material. It’s hard not to think that, in years gone by, the erosion of once-reliable political institutions and terrifying descent of world leaders into madness would have inspired some sort of cultural upheaval reflective of the dominant tone of uncertainty. A recognisable zeitgeist for the 21st century.
But there just isn’t. Or at least I’ve missed it. It’s like watching the Titanic sink without the violins playing us into the ocean. So we look back to the aesthetics and sounds of the past, feeling disjointed from the present and despondent for the future.
The emotional currency of nostalgia by no means exists in a vacuum. As our society is increasingly defined by extreme inequality and the millennial beige colour palette of late stage capitalism, conditions only further stifle cultural innovation. Only the most privileged can afford to make art, whilst they often have the least interesting things to say.
Beyond the heirs and heiresses to media empires, big corporations are primarily tasked with cultural reproduction. Void of the humanity that is central to good art, the easiest way to engage in cultural production on a large, profitable sale is to reproduce cultural artefacts of which consumers already have fond memories. The only thing people could possibly love more than Oasis is a band that sounds a bit like Oasis with an added discordant corporate glean.
In the context of how chronically online we all are, this emphasis on replication as opposed to innovation is doubtlessly magnified. What we experience digitally doesn’t feel ‘real’ in the same way analogue alternatives do. A single polaroid seems like a more truthful iteration of a photo than the 4,000 I have backed up on iCloud. It’s all a bit Baudrillardian, a cultural state of hyperreality that makes us perpetually uneasy and so bloody bored.
I think this cultural reliance on nostalgia is harmful beyond its political implications. While our culture is certainly fragmented and the mainstream more obviously controlled by big corporations that lower its quality, there are still things to enjoy, and it’s important to try to be happy. Dwelling on the fact that there are fewer live music venues than when your parents were at uni, for example, is probably stopping you from going to the ones that are still around. Culture is a living beast. If you think it’s stagnating then you ought to try and breathe life into it by participation, reclaiming the soundtrack to our humanity.
