Why we miss the recent past, how it threatens the development of culture and how nostalgia helps to cope with the uncontrollable present – in the material Trends
Today, nostalgia is a noticeable, perhaps key phenomenon in world pop culture, including Russian. Hollywood releases endless remakes: Ocean’s Eleven, Casino Royale, The Pink Panther. On Russian television, serials about the Soviet era (“Thaw”, “Optimists”, “Excellent student”, “Fartsa” and others) are released one after another, young directors reflect on the theme of the 1990s: in 2017, “Closeness” by Kantemir Balagov thundered, in 2018, “Crystal” by Daria Zhuk was released, in 2019 – “Bull” by Boris Akopov.
This year, Kinotavr presents at least three films set in the 1990s: Masha by Anastasia Palchikova, Intervention by Ksenia Zueva and Has anyone seen my girl? Angelina Nikonova (by coincidence, Anna Chipovskaya plays the main role in all three films). Of course, television film and cinema for the big screen pursue different goals: the series primarily seeks to entertain, while auteur cinema, in theory, should strive for reflection, but interest in the past is obvious both there and there.
Nostalgia in pop music
Even more revealing is the situation in domestic indie pop music. Singer Luna is inspired by the Russian pop music of the 1990s, among the main influences she names Linda and “Guests from the Future”, and about her work she says that The Cure could do this in 1984 based on a creative and sometimes erotic novel between Robert Smith and Alla Primadonna Pugacheva. Luna took part with pleasure in a cover version of Natalia Vetlitskaya’s hit “Look into your eyes”.
Musya Totibadze is experimenting with the sound of the 1980s, and in the video for the song “Dance, Vitalik!” appeared in the form of a young Alla Pugacheva.
By the way, Totibadze also re-recorded Vetlitskaya’s song “I’ll Stay with You.”
The Voronezh synth-pop group Nesmeyana is also inspired by the 1980s and 90s, but does it in a completely different way: it ironically comprehends orphan pop and cooperative disco.
Finally, Monetochka recorded the song “90s”, and the clip unequivocally refers to the first part of the “Brother” duology by Alexei Balabanov. You can continue indefinitely.
“It seems to me that the point is, firstly, that these artists themselves were most often born in the 1990s – and in a logical way they strive to reconstruct the world as it was at the time of their birth,” says a music journalist and lecturer at RANEPA Lev Gankin. – “Nineties” – the first decade that they do not remember or remember very vaguely; hence the lively interest. On the other hand, this is generally an extremely mythologized era, about which there is not even a hint of public consensus: some say that it was a time of freedom and freemen, others do not get tired of frightening, they say, do you want to do it again?! And in this last discourse, the 1990s are described without alternative as “dashing”, in a purely negative sense. I am sure that this uncertainty, the inconsistency of perception, also fuels interest in the 1990s.
Nostalgia is always longing for a fictional past, it implies the subjective attitude of the one who remembers. More precisely, this is not even a memory, but a reconstruction.
Nostalgia is retromania
British music critic Simon Reynolds devoted a whole study to the phenomenon of nostalgia – “Retromania. Pop culture in captivity of its own past. He believes that “today, pop culture is obsessed with retro and significant anniversaries.” Moreover, retromania is not only when young performers turn their eyes to the achievements of the past. It is also endless reunions of legendary bands, anniversary tours and tributes.
Reynolds is pessimistic: “The future of music is more and more determined by the past every year, and it becomes a real threat to its development.” Reynolds believes that it is the constant nostalgia that has become a major force in modern culture.
The critic distinguishes “retro” from an interest in history. Retromania is a passion for fashion, music and heroes that fit in a short memory. From the point of view of the author of Retromania, this phenomenon has the following distinctive features:
- retro is always associated with the recent past (for example, crinolines cannot be called a mass hobby, this is a subcultural phenomenon, in contrast to mass love for vintage clothes);
- retro is always based on available sources – photos, videos, music recordings;
- retro refers to the artifacts of popular culture, it “is fueled not by auction houses or antique shops, but by flea markets, second-hand shops and junk shops.”
Nostalgia in cinema
In cinema, in addition to the tendency to make films about the recent past, the biopic genre has become extremely popular (Reynolds considers this one of the brightest indicators of retromania).
In our country, the interest of directors in recent years has focused on rock musicians. In 2018, the film “Summer” by Kirill Serebrennikov was released, in the center of which are the figures of Mike Naumenko and Viktor Tsoi, in the fall of 2020, “Tsoi” by Alexei Uchitel was released on the screens, the filming of the films “White light came together on you like a wedge” about Yanka Diaghileva and “Uyezdny city N ”again about Mike Naumenko.
This is a bit of a paradoxical situation, because, on the one hand, rock music has a reputation as “art not for everyone” (but there are still a lot of these “not everyone”, more than fans of Edison Denisov or Alexander Mosolov), on the other hand, there is no doubt about Diaghileva’s popularity in the post-Soviet space, and even more so Tsoi. In fact, rock is an important component of pop culture, and rock musicians, whose activities flourished in our country at the turn of the 1970s and 80s, have become a symbol of a free life in a state where everything is banned.
“A desperate grip on the past is, on the one hand, a way to control the uncontrolled world narrative, on the other hand, the construction of spectacular and vivid details around a very everyday and boring world that all people live in – and rock stars, of course, too.
What is the bottom line even for a rock star when you think about the daily life of a superstar? Painful moves, the same painful weeks in the studio, when everything doesn’t work out the first time, conflicts with those you see 24/7, and often aggravating circumstances – your own frustrations, drunkenness and hangovers, drugs.
Retromania varnishes these dullness, putting forward spectacular secondary things: David Bowie’s life did not revolve around outfits, Lou Reed and Nico did not sit until the end of their days in Warhol’s Factory with champagne and cocaine, Janis Joplin did not cry with happiness in the company of Woodstock musicians ”, says film critic and lecturer Alisa Taezhnaya.
The film “Summer” predictably faced criticism from eyewitnesses in the spirit of “everything was completely different.” Boris Grebenshchikov, who criticized Serebrennikov’s idea after reading the script, spoke out harshest of all, calling “Summer” “a lie from beginning to end.”
Valery Todorovsky faced the same claims after the release of The Thaw. The director bluntly replied: “I did not shoot a documentary, but a myth! But the myth is very similar to the truth. The main thing is the spirit of that time. The Thaw is not a realistic reflection of the 1960s, but the feeling of that era, our understanding of the legend.”
Nostalgia in pop culture
This is the main conflict of the phenomenon of nostalgia in culture. An artist, by definition, makes a reconstruction of an era that will inevitably come into confrontation with the memories of eyewitnesses. But the demand for retroutopia on the part of the consumer does not decrease from this, and, as a rule, this is a young consumer.
“Until there is a radical change in the current cultural and economic state, nostalgia will play one of the main roles in culture, if only because it fits well into the economic model, relatively speaking, of modern Western culture, it is convenient to sell it.
But, nevertheless, the question of the future was thus removed from pop culture. In fact, it began to come down to different versions of retrofuturism. Until this issue (of the future, utopia, whatever) returns to the agenda, we will continue to chew on the same thing, ”says musician and journalist Ivan Beletsky.
But so far, nostalgia remains one of the main trends in culture.
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