Consumed Nostalgia: Memory in the Age of Fast Capitalism
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 023116758X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom.
Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change.
Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.
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Its passive consumption, as Jameson assumes? Another, more positive take on retro media comes from a younger generation of commentators: Paul Grainge, for example, argues that the prevalence of nostalgia TV reflects the availability of reruns and the need of so many channels to fill time slots rather than some pathological need of aging viewers to recover a lost innocence or the inexorable power of the simulacra or the hyperreal media. Of course, it isn’t just a matter of supply (many if not most.
Radios were in most American living rooms, and music was mainly featured in commercial programming. Tin Pan Alley songsmiths survived by shifting to this new medium and relying on royalties for income. During the Depression, most music was heard on the radio, both because it was free after initial purchase (while records remained pricey) and was even simpler to use: no more changing records every couple of minutes. With this shift, the Alley became ever more wed to the imperative of winning.
Changing but small range of tunes at a time. Just as TV programmers realized that viewers wanted the familiar and thus embraced the repetitive sitcom and drama series, radio stations discovered that listeners wanted to hear their favorite tune over and over, exactly the same, and cared not a bit that the music wasn’t live. This led to the era of the deejay. Of course, the central role of the record-playing radio announcer wasn’t new to the 1950s. In 1933, Al Jarvis hosted a program of records.
Them fame and fortune. Black DJs like Jacko Henderson (whose career in Philadelphia dated back to 1953 but was broadcast in many American cities) returned in the 1980s and 1990s with oldies shows on radio. DOO-WOP: FROM TEEN POP TO MIDDLE-AGED OBSESSION At the core of the oldies circuit was doo-wop, a subset of rock that prevailed from about 1955 to 1958, with a brief revival in 1961, the year when the term doo-wop seems to have been introduced by Gus Gossert. Unlike the country and R&B styles.
Divide generations, as it has since the passing of Tin Pan Alley. Give Me That Old-Time Radio 169 By 1990, groups and solo artists, largely from the 1970s, such as the Eagles, Boz Scaggs, Pink Floyd, and the Marshall Tucker Band, were returning to the stage on the nostalgia circuit as audiences who were teens in the 1970s reached their thirties. And into the twenty-first century, old bands regularly (and, to many, relentlessly and boringly) returned to the stage in reunion concerts: Chicago,.