Part 1
What Is Nostalgia?
1
Clearing Up the Haze
Toward a Definition of the âNostalgia Filmâ Genre
JASON SPERB
ONE MOMENT IN THE POSTâWORLD WAR II drama The Master (2012) features US soldier Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) discussing a letter he received from a girl back home, one that caused him to have an intense emotional reaction. Asked by a psychologist to describe his feelings, âI believe I suffered what, in your profession, you call ânostalgia,â â Freddie says, laughing it off. This nods to the termâs (almost mythical) origin as a clinical termâa doctorâs diagnosis for Swiss soldiers experiencing a profound sense of homesickness way back in the seventeenth century (given its Swiss roots, Svetlana Boym notes that the word nostalgia âis only pseudo-Greek, or nostalgically Greekâ (âNostalgia,â 7; see also Boym, Future). This sequence was an homage to a similar moment in John Hustonâs documentary Let There Be Light (1946)âalso about the trauma of US soldiers struggling to adjust to civilian life after experiencing the horrors of warâbut there were important differences. The soldier in the documentary (an African American man) was provoked into a state of melancholic despair not by a letter but a photograph. Upon recalling this episode, the real-life soldier breaks down again in shameful tears.
Figure 1.1. Cub Photographer (Noah Matteo). Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013). Digital frame enlargement.
There was always something uniquely nostalgic about the photographic image. Like nostalgia itself, the frame isolates; it blocks off as much about the past as it reveals. The image suggests a moment frozen in time, both powerful and deceptive in what it shows. As Roland Barthes, Hollis Frampton, and others have tried to capture, those images of years gone by permanently wall off from us the past as much as they may also allow us to glimpse its fragmentsâcreating a decisive visualization of the gap between âthenâ and ânow.â Writing or speaking, in contrast, creates a greater sense of immediacy, as the reader/listener is able to visualize in the present what is being described. This was part of the effect of Framptonâs Nostalgia (1971)ânarration is present, image is past. Sarah Polleyâs autobiographical film Stories We Tell (2012) operates similarlyâthe voice of her putative father (Michael Polley), as he reads his account of family events, creates an intimate sense of presence, while the Super 8 footage of those same past moments (both actual home movies and Polleyâs uncanny re-creations) immediately and overwhelmingly conveys a sense of pastness.
Itâs unsurprising that a collective preoccupation with nostalgia increased across the span of the twentieth century in direct proportion to the rapidly expanding presence of visual media, such as cinema and television. As Fred Davis noted long ago, popular culture only intensified nostalgiaâthe ubiquity of older media in recirculation and repackaging meant being in the audible and visible presence of the past. It is one thing to try to recall such times as a hazy abstraction and quite another to have it (in a way) physically present. As culture became increasingly confronted with its mediated past (fueled in part by the cheap conveniences of endlessly repackaging the same content through various aesthetic forms and technological platforms), it stands to reason that the centrality of nostalgiaâs power would soon follow. In a thoroughly mediated, globalized, mobilized culture, the image becomes a substitute for homeâas in a repository for (increasingly collective) memories of the past (Davis has noted how the general lack of geographic stability in our modern mobile society suggests that perhaps âmedia products may now serve memory where once houses, streets and persons didâ; 129). And yet while few would question the centrality of nostalgia in media culture today, there remains little in the way of a working genre definition for that most often-used term: the ânostalgia film.â This chapter is an attempt at such a projectâto quantify textually what we mean by ânostalgicâ media texts and whatâs at stake in highlighting it beyond either just reliving reassuring fantasies of days past or (coexisting with that) blocking out the ugly realities of history.
The âNostalgia Filmâ?
Specific textual attempts to define what nostalgia might look and sound like have beenâlike nostalgia itselfâpowerful and persuasive, but also fragmentary and incomplete. For instance, Alexander Payneâs Nebraska (2013) is obviously a deeply nostalgic film. In some ways, the movie evokes Fredric Jamesonâs notion of the ânostalgia film,â a highly stylized vision of a father (played by Bruce Dern) and son (Will Forte) road trip that knowingly equates some notion of the past with its cinematic mediation (the vintage Paramount logo, black and white cinematography). But it is also, importantly, a story about nostalgia. Woody (Dern) returns to his hometown, encounters old friends and family, and even visits his eerily abandoned childhood home in an elusive quest to recapture some semblance of a lost pastâmost directly symbolized by his desire to be allowed to drive again, that great âfrontierâ myth of the open road and all its possibilities that defined his postâWorld War II generation. In this regard, Nebraska attempts to capture a nostalgic journey (narrative), as well as a nostalgic look (black and white 35mm film stock). There remains, too, the question of what possible nostalgic relationships the film itself will evoke in another thirty yearsâwhen someone looks back as longingly at 2013 as some now do at the hazily defined era of classical cinema the filmâs pastiche visually simulates. Finally, the fact that the movie was shot on what will continue to be the increasingly quaint anachronism that is celluloid film suggests another layer of (technological) nostalgia. In sum, saying Nebraska is a ânostalgia filmâ presents as many questions as it does answers.
There are, as Rick Altman argued, different ways to conceptualize genreâthrough an exhaustive list that includes every possible film in the category, or as a more exclusive group of the best cinematic examples whose textual commonalities collectively define the genre in question. Or we can define it as a relatively stable category with fixed narrative and thematic and iconic elements (semantic), or as a more historically contingent one whose basic genre features are defined more by core ideological meanings that tend to be in dialogue with larger cultural contexts (syntactic). The task of analyzing the nostalgia text from a syntactic perspective has been more thoroughly explored than its textual mechanisms, as demonstrated by Davisâs Yearning for Yesterday, Jamesonâs Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, or Boymâs The Future of Nostalgia. Jamesonâs use of the phrase ânostalgia filmâ is an important and usefully contested point of reference that has permeated countless discussions since. On its own, though, the phrase is vagueâparticularly as Jameson admits that the word nostalgia is unsatisfactory for his purposes. For a touchstone, the title of my chapter deliberately uses the phrase ânostalgia filmâ in a nod to this well-known termâat the risk of unintentionally implying that these ideas do not also apply to possibilities in TV and other mass media (advertising, video games, and so forth). For Jameson, the nostalgia film is a simplified, superficial pastiche of stylistic clichĂŠs, âconveying âpastnessâ by the glossy qualities of the imageâ (19), which for him evokes a collective, largely conservative, vision of an idealized past that is ultimately more approachable in opposition to its double: the messy, at times unknowable contradictions of history (for more on nostalgia, postmodernism, and late capitalism, see also Stewart).
Thus, a working demarcation for what might actually define nostalgia as a genre of media remains more abstract, despite there being a working assumption that such a concept already exists. As Christine Sprengler notes, âgenre labels continue to suggest a degree of coherence and singularity markedly absent from the various ways in which nostalgiaâs relationship with the cinema can be theorizedâ (67). From a strictly semantic standpoint, Marc Le Sueurâs often overlooked essay, âTheory Number Five: Anatomy of Nostalgia Films,â followed Davisâs work by attempting to give shape to the emerging centrality of nostalgia in popular culture by the 1970s. Le Sueurâs work focused primarily on nostalgiaâs thematic consequences and visual elements, such as mise-en-scène. Pam Cook has explored how the language of cinema can evoke nostalgia through the stylistic use of freeze frames, slow/step motion, ellipses, repetition, and other visual means of stopping, preserving, and reversing the flow of time. Richard Dyer has shown how we might use nostalgic pastiche to engage with the history of genre. The concept is perhaps underdefined in part because we tend to think of nostalgia as an affectâa by-product of media consumption as often as an inherent textual feature.
Affective, Peripheral, Representational, and Narrative Nostalgias
Generally we can distinguish at least four broad types of mediated nostalgia, and the more elusive question of affect may be the best place to start. An âaffectiveâ nostalgia is a form that does not extend directly from any element planned in the text itself and can only be acquired over time. It is not a text necessarily set in the past or targeted toward a melancholic audience, but triggers in the present a yearning for yesterday by virtue of its relationship to some distant audience memory. Davis has written about âfuture nostalgiaâ or âplanned revivificationâ (133)âhow media products will be increasingly conceived with an eye toward their potential nostalgic value in subsequent cycles of consumption after their initial shelf life expires. In a sense, most productsâ inevitable, often preplanned state of anachronism is a necessary first component to their lasting value. As an affective experience, for instance, reruns of Saved by the Bell (1989â1993) today can offer an intensely nostalgic journey for certain generations, despite the fact that there was (we can reasonably presume) no sense of appealing to nostalgia at the time of its production. This contrasts sharply with, say, Freaks and Geeks (1999)âa loosely similar concept about the ups and downs of high schoolâaged students, but one deliberately set two decades earlier to at least partially capture a nostalgic desire for that time. For my present purposes, I set aside such affective forms of nostalgiaâendlessly fascinating and equally infinite to map (as audience reception studies has already shown)âand stay confined to more quantifiably textual components.
There are those types of nostalgia that straddle the fine line between purely affective and more explicitly textual forms. For lack of a better term, we can call this âperipheral nostalgia.â These texts are where nostalgia is clearly one possible source of appealâtwo prominent forms are star vehicles (which can refer to well-known writers or high-profile directors, as well as established actors) and franchise properties (which would include sequels, prequels, and reboots, alongside broader nostalgic media brands such as Disney and Pixar). The latest Julia Roberts movie, James Bond epic, or TV show featuring Cedric the Entertainer undoubtedly appeals to those whoâeither passionately (fans) or more casuallyâlook forward to the reassurances of medias past which those texts can potentially offer on top of other visceral and narrative pleasures. Here, the nostalgic value of a proven star or durable franchise is clearly evident, thereby negotiating the boundaries between knowingly incorporating that appeal into the text and yet still depending mostly on the affective engagement of the audience to more explicitly articulate that nostalgic value. I am tempted, moreover, to place Dyerâs work on genre imitation somewhere in this category of the peripheral. His definition of pastiche, wherein new movies call forth the longer history of preexisting genre conventions before them, offers up an engagement with (but not necessarily a dependence on) earlier media periods and formsâmeaning, the knowledge of genre history is not essential to the textâs resonance (or lack thereof) with contemporary audiences. Of course, the actual degree to which such nostalgia is truly peripheral or possibly intended to the textâs appeal is a subjective point open to debate. My point is merely structuralâsome stories are not directly about nostalgia in any technological, visual, narrative, or thematic way. Peripheral nostalgia is an unspoken, if generally agreed on, element of the textâs appeal, which otherwise offers no direct engagement with such melancholic desires.
On that note, we can begin to more directly examine nostalgic modes by distinguishing ârepresentationalâ forms from ânarrativeâ ones. Representational refers to the ways in whichâsomewhat like Stories We Tellâs kitschy 1970s flashbacksâa text might seek to emulate a nostalgic time and place. We can break this down further to highlight âperiod nostalgiaââthat is, movies, TV shows, and so on, set in the recent or historic past with the conscious intention of appealing to some kind of nostalgia associated with that time. Meanwhile, period pieces are not necessarily the same as those representationally nostalgic media that try to simulate earlier media forms. We can refer to this as âsimulacric nostalgiaââas in, not just (or even necessarily) set in the past but meant to literally emulate a mediated look from the past. For instance, Nebraska is presumably set in the present day, despite its visual evocation of an earlier film aesthetic. Grand Budapest Hotelâs (2014) frame narrative, meanwhile, establishes multiple past time periodsâand the filmâs shifting aspect ratios (1.37:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1) match the common aspect ratios of the corresponding period. Le Sueurâs work is an important precedent in this regard, as he made the distinction between âsurface realismâ (mise-en-scène) and âdeliberate archaismâ (textual simulation of obsolete media) (192) as separate forms of what I am choosing instead to call representational nostalgia (I prefer the word simulacric not only because of its play on simulation but also its Baudrillardian evocation of an absence of history).
Such diverse cases of representational nostalgia must be distinguished from the more common form of narrative nostalgia. Such storylines can be set in either the past or the present (or perhaps most intriguingly, in the futureâPixarâs WALL-E [2007] offers a paradoxical nostalgia for our own immediate present seven hundred years into the future). Narrative nostalgias do not necessarily depend on any particular fan base, franchise connection, historic time period, or simulacric lookârather, they are simply stories explicitly about nostalgic impulses (just as, oppositely, movies that depend on representational nostalgia do not necessarily concern themselves with overtly nostalgic plotsâsuch as Argo [2012], The Wolf of Wall Street [2013], and so on).
Some common nostalgic plots might involve one or more of the following.
1.Major life events, such as reunions, weddings, milestones, graduations, or deathsâwherein reflecting on the past and the inevitability of change becomes a central narrative and thematic point.
2.Road trips, vacations, or other forms of âhome-comingââwhere there is the assumption or hope that at the end of the journey, one will enter into a physical space that is either literally or symbolically associated with an earlier period in oneâs life (a place often, but not always, associated with childhood).
3.Time travelâwhere the journey into the past becomes literal.
4.âReturnâ to natureâhere, nature is defined by its opposition to competing notions of âsociety,â âmodernity,â âcivilization,â and other concepts that work in some way as a code for the complexities, temporalities, and challenges of everyday, modern life from which nostalgic impulses of...