AccueilRetrophilia, Nostalgia, and the End of Pop Culture

AccueilRetrophilia, Nostalgia, and the End of Pop Culture

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Publié le vendredi 25 novembre 2022

Résumé

The purpose of this publication is to question and re-evaluate Simon Reynold’s 2011 statement that “We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. […] Could it be that the greatest danger to the future of our music culture is … its past?” One decade after Reynolds’s thought-provoking analysis, one may wonder whether this assumption is still relevant today. Can it be extended to other objects of pop culture (films, series, music, video-games, tatoo art, etc.)? In the Post-pandemic age, is pop culture still fixated on its (and our) past? Is this “addiction” to the past a regressive trend or, on the contrary, an opportunity to reassess modern history and re-evaluate its legacy and its representation in popular mass media? In terms of forms and formats, can something “radically new” emerge from nostalgia?

Annonce

CFP Imaginaires – Pop Culture Online Journal, University of Reims, CIRLEP EA4299

Retrophilia, nostalgia, and the end of pop culture

Argument

In 2011, music critic Simon Reynolds’s essay Retromania came out, the main argument of which was that “We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. […] Could it be that the greatest danger to the future of our music culture is … its past?” (Reynolds ix). Reynolds’s focus was on pop music at the turn of the new millennium, questioning the role of its producers and the tastes of its audience, stuck in a state of “hyper-stasis”. One decade after Reynolds’s thought-provoking analysis, one may wonder whether this assumption is still relevant today. Can it be extended to other objects of pop culture?

In a 2021 Guardian article, Mark Singer contended that “Covid has pushed pop culture into nostalgia. It’s time for something new”. The American journalist “worried that culture was increasingly trapped in its own past, awash with reissues and remakes. In contrast to most of the 20th century, very little in the world of music or cinema felt radically new” (<Covid has pushed pop culture into nostalgia. It’s time for something new | Mark Sinker | The Guardian> Last accessed 11/08/22).

In the Post-pandemic age, is pop culture still fixated on its (and our) past? Is this “addiction” to the past a regressive trend or, on the contrary, an opportunity to reassess modern history and re-evaluate its legacy and its representation in popular mass media? In terms of forms and formats, can something “radically new” emerge from nostalgia?

Topic Proposals

Papers discussing those issues may tackle the following topics (but not exclusively):

1 – Retro-content and aesthetic

- Mediums concerned: music, cinema, TV series, videogames, tattoo art, fashion and design, advertising.

- Retro in the digital age: retro-gaming

- The definition of “retro” vs “vintage”

- Remakes, prequels, and reboots: a critical or idealised re-evaluation of our reconstructed past/close history?

- Retromania in pop culture as a way of renegotiating cultural memory / reconquering history=> looking at our past with a new, contemporary lens (post-colonial, post-“me-too” approaches). New “gazes” on past events and pop culture objects. Cf. How women are treated in Mad Men. What about women’s empowerment (or lack thereof) in Call the Midwife? What is said of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland in the 1990s-set comedy show Derry Girls?

- Heritage films and heritage TV series: could the triumphant success of Downton Abbey in the US be another sign of retrophilia? This phenomenon is nearly “squared” retrophilia as the series is more reminiscent of other “period” series or films than it is (or is intended to be?) a reconstruction of the UK of the 1910-1920s. Can the same be said of Brideshead Revisited, of the innumerable adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels? Another interesting example would be Bridgerton, perhaps, a reworking of Jane Austen “with a multicultural twist”, where the anachronism is displayed and assumed.

- Post-modern dimension of the phenomenon: recycling past images, collage creating something new out of defunct periods of history?

- Aesthetic of the past / aesthetic of past pop culture productions –> not only in “period” costumes or intradiegetic music but also in the very texture of the image (examples on Netflix: Stranger Things, Fear Street 1994 / 1978, Archive 81, etc.).

- Elements of today’s pop culture to comment on the past cf. extradiegetic modern and anachronistic music in Peaky Blinders.

- Is there such a thing as “Netflix Nostalgia”?

- Retro, vintage, and heritage in fashion.

- Nostalgia for a pre-digital age that the under-20s cannot remember => Pseudo-nostalgia: “We call it pseudo-nostalgia because younger consumers of these revived products and services have never experienced the original. Generation Z will not have been there, done that. / In fact, they are buying retrotastic products and services that sometimes have little relation to 1980s reality whatsoever.” (<It’s not nostalgia. Stranger Things is fuelling a pseudo-nostalgia of the 1980s (theconversation.com)> last accessed 11/08/22)

- Consumption-based nostalgia for children: books, films, and toys.

- Retro-consumption in music: revival of vinyl discs, CDs, even cassettes (and their players) Old bands reforming for special concerts/performances.

-Retro-parties or revival parties: The Jazz Age Lawn Party (New York City’s original prohibition era inspired gathering. <Jazz Age Lawn Party – The Official Site of The Jazz Age Lawn Party>); The Blitz Party in London (“London’s best-loved and most authentic 1940s party”, <London’s Best 1940s-Theme New Years Eve Party (theblitzparty.com)>

2- Retro and vintage culture: forms and formats

- Back to traditional forms of serialisation: weekly episodes vs binge watching – what narrative (and marketing) issues? Ex. On Netflix, Better Saul=> one episode per week; more recently, Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities built up viewers “curiosity” by releasing two episodes every day.

- Viewers’ relation to time => Television grid based on a chronological, linear programming to be opposed to digital, non-linear temporality=> Can binge-watching be interpreted in terms of Foucault’s heterochrony?

- Streaming platforms and social networks mimicking TV temporality – cf. Live broadcasts on Twitch.

- A new recipe with outdated ingredients: ex.: Black Mirror’s interactive episode, “Bandersnatch” (Netflix, December 2018)=> Ambiguous example – using retrogaming mania in the digital age: the viewers can “play” the episode and influence the plot and the fate of the main character.

- The death of television or a renewal of the “television” format?

- Marketable nostalgia in the industry (food industry, fashion industry, etc…) ex. Nostalgia for US Southern history in Dixie Land, the case of “ante-bellum restaurants” serving “plantation food”: Aunt Pittypat’s Porch, Mary Mac’s TeaRoom, and Empire State South (cf. talk given by Lily Kelting at a London conference dedicated to “Pop Culture Nostalgia” in 2016, entitled: “From fried chicken to kimchi grits: restaurants and the nostalgia industry in the U.S. South”, review of the conference here: index.asp (hu-berlin.de)).

- “Retromarketing”: defined as “relaunch or revival of a product or service from a historical period, which marketers usually update to ultramodern standards of functioning, performance or taste.” (<It’s not nostalgia. Stranger Things is fuelling a pseudo-nostalgia of the 1980s (theconversation.com)> last accessed 11/08/22)

How to apply

Please send a 250/300-word abstract with a short resume to the following Email address:

yannick.bellenger@univ-reims.fr

by December 27th 2022

Articles will preferably be in English, occasionally in French.

Planning

  • 250/300-word abstract with a short resume should be sent by December 27th 2022
  • Notification of acceptance by January 10th ‘23
  • Full papers due by April 15th ‘23
  • Style sheet available here: Submissions | Imaginaires (univ-reims.fr)
  • Double-blind peer reviewing process until May 31st ‘23
  • Revised papers due by August 1st ‘23
  • Online Publication fall/winter 23

Editor

  • Yannick Bellenger-Morvan

Contact: yannick.bellenger@univ-reims.fr

Editorial Team

  • Yannick Bellenger-Morvan (General Editor)
  • Marine Galiné
  • Xavier Giudicelli
  • Sylvie Mikowski
  • Yann Philippe

Selected bibliography

BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Retrotopia. Cambridge: Politi Press, 2017.

BROWN, Ray B, and Ronald J. AMBROSETTI, ed. Continuities in Popular Culture. The Present in the Past and the Past in the Present and Future. Bowling Green (Ohio): Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1993.

BROWN, Stephen. Marketing. The Retro Revolution. London: Sage Publications, 2001.

BURNS, Jehnie I. Mixtape Nostalgia. Culture, Memory, and Representation. New York: Lexington Books, 2021.

DIKA, Vera. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: The Rise of Nostalgia. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003.

FLYNN, Susan, and Antonia MACKAY, ed. Screening American Nostalgia. Essays on Pop Culture Constructions of Past Times. Jefferson (North Carolina): McFarland, 2021.

GRAINGE, Paul, ed. Memory and Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003.

HIGSON, Andrew. English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980. Oxford : Oxford UP, 2003.

LEGGATT, Matthew, ed. Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Films and Television. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.

LIZARDI, Ryan. Mediated Nostalgia. Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media. New York: Lexington Books, 2015.

NIEMEYER, Katharina, ed. Media and Nostalgia. Yearning for the Past, Present, and Future. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2014.

PALLISTER, Katherine, ed. Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand. New York: Lexington Books, 2019.

REYNOLDS, Simon. Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber, 2011, 2012.

SPERB, Jason. Flickers of Films. Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema. Rutgers UP, 2016.

SPRENGLER, Christine. Screening Nostalgia. Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film. New York : Berghahn Books, 2009.

WESSELING, Elisabeth, ed. Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia. Books, Toys, and Contemporary Media Culture. New York : Routledge, 2018.

Lieux

  • Université de Reims 57 rue Pierre Taittinger
    Reims, France (51)

Dates

  • mardi 27 décembre 2022

Mots-clés

  • Retromania, retrophilia, nostalgia, pop culture, heritage, media studies, TV series, film studies, music, videogames

Contacts

  • Yannick Bellenger-Morvan
    courriel : yannick [dot] bellenger [at] univ-reims [dot] fr

URLS de référence

Source de l'information

  • Yannick Bellenger-Morvan
    courriel : yannick [dot] bellenger [at] univ-reims [dot] fr

Licence

CC0-1.0 Cette annonce est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universel.

Pour citer cette annonce

« Retrophilia, Nostalgia, and the End of Pop Culture », Appel à contribution, Calenda, Publié le vendredi 25 novembre 2022, https://doi.org/10.58079/1a14

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