Et tu, Millennials? The old nostalgia-industrial complex got its hooks into you, too, huh? I must ask: Have you not witnessed in firsthand horror what pining for the good old days has done to Generation X…?
To recap: We Xers have thus far spent the twenty-first century reliving all our childhood favorites—Star Wars, Super Friends, Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, Lethal Weapon, Halloween, Bill & Ted, Tron, Transformers, Terminator, Top Gun—a pathological exercise in self-infantilization that has catastrophically retarded both the culture as well as a generation of middle-aged adults who are at this point more passionately invested in Skywalkers and superheroes than are the juvenile audiences for whom those characters were originally intended.
Always keen to recognize—and replicate—a winning formula, a new permutation of forward-thinking backward-gazing has recently seized Hollywood: Sell nineties-era nostalgia to the generation that came of age in that decade! Over the past few years, we got a pair of Jurassic Park remakes-masquerading-as-sequels that didn’t inspire a single word of enthusiasm (certainly not a second viewing), but nonetheless earned over a billion dollars apiece, while our last conventional movie star, Dwayne Johnson, used his considerable clout (or more aptly muscle?) to resurrect both Jumanji and Baywatch. As for this year? Hope you’re excited for warmed-over helpings of The Lion King, Men in Black, Toy Story, Aladdin, and yet more Jumanji. And while we’re at it, let’s welcome back slacker duo Jay and Silent Bob, because surely their grunge-era stoner humor still holds up in middle-age—
—as well as Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, back from buddy-cop purgatory for more Bad Boys badassery! You know damn well whatcha gonna do when they come for you: Buy a ticket!
For an indeterminate, but clearly not immeasurable, swath of moviegoers, there is no marketing campaign more alluring than one that taps into foggy childhood memories. . . .
. . . The great nostalgia-industrial complex will [continue] steamrollering us against our better judgment into multiplexes, hoping for a simulacrum of the first high we felt watching great characters years ago.
Tom Philip, “Summer ’19 Brought To You By Nostalgia-Bait Movies,” Opinion, New York Times, July 4, 2019
Not just multiplexes. (And how are those even still a thing?) On the small screen, VH1 revived game-changing nineties slasher franchise Scream this summer (how, for that matter, is VH1 still a thing?), and new iterations of decade-defining teen melodramas 90210 and Party of Five are on the way. Dope.
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