hi i took last week as a pause from publishing the newsletter (still posted podcast, youtube, and short form videos) but am back now! This piece is a little different than what I normally write about but i feel like a conversation about media consumption is really tremendously important.
The Cult of Nostalgia
I’ve been really fascinated by nostalgia recently, specifically how it defines culture and therefore the economy (such as the Super Mario Bros movie, Marvel Cinematic Universe, constant reboots, the monetization of familiarity). We love the past.
Susan Sontag’s view on this was that that we engage in a cult of nostalgia allowing us to focus on commemorating the past vs critically engaging with the present. We like to stay in pristine museum walls versus building new things! As Svetlana Boym wrote in the very poignant The Future of Nostalgia -
What is crucial is that nostalgia was not merely an expression of local longing, but a result of a new understanding of time and space that …
