In an era of seemingly endless choice when it comes to media consumption, it’s quite clear that there’s an insatiable appetite for nostalgia.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone to learn that as a collector of physical media, I’m often looking for a comforting feeling of nostalgia.
From the video game consoles I played as a kid to listening to music from decades prior to my birth on vinyl, a big part of why my wife and I collect physical media revolves around its power to transport you to different places in the past.
Although I had mostly disregarded my childhood video game collection and didn’t think much of the small handful of records I owned in my early adulthood, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic changed that and much more for everyone on the planet.
Beyond the obvious impacts the pandemic had on public health, the world economy and how the workforce operates, it also sparked the beginning of new interests and hobbies in millions of people – with the start of our physical media collection beginning in earnest around then.
To be clear, nostalgia was already making its way into the public stream of consciousness before the onset of the pandemic – the original trilogies of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro received vastly updated remasters in the late 2010’s, Full House received a Netflix reboot and the country’s obsession with the O.J. Simpson case seemed to be at its highest since it actually happened.
The yearning for the past reached new heights when pandemic-related lockdowns began in March 2020, with my wife and I being far from the only ones that had the idea to start collecting physical media.
It’s become abundantly clear in the six years since that nostalgia has become a safe marketing tool – an old reliable of sorts in an era of extreme polarization and oversaturation in the media landscape.
With the pandemic’s isolation making for a more internet-dependent society than ever before, the appetitie for nostalgia from people my age and older reached a fever pitch, as many adults began to feel like the world they grew up knowing no longer existed.
This in many ways was music to the corporate world’s ears, who have doubled down on rehashing old material for old and new audiences alike.
From Final Fantasy VII and Tales of Symphonia to Pac-Man World, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom to just about every old Nintendo hit that’s available via online services, the gaming world has pounced on this trend in an assertive and boisterous fashion.
As I alluded to earlier, I can’t act like I’m fully upset by this and all that entails, at least on a superficial level. I’m greatly enjoying the long-anticipated Scrubs reboot and I did indeed fly to the U.K. last year to see Oasis’ reunion tour, 30 years after the peak of their popularity.
It is of course worth noting that even with that, I didn’t watch Scrubs when it was originally on and I didn’t really get into Oasis until several years after their breakup. For all the nostalgia, it’s still in many ways a novel experience for myself.
Yet beneath the comfortable feeling of enjoying the culturally prevalent work of years past is wondering what art that is being made today will accurately depict the turbulent and uncertain times the world is facing?
What makes art and human creativity so incredible is being able to look back decades ago and to take in a work of art, be it an album, film or video game, and to truly feel like you’re in that timeframe – living through the realities and problems of the world as it existed when that work of art was made.
I don’t mean to make any grand proclamations here, nor do I think I’m qualified to – as I’m not nearly as tuned in with the albums, games and TV shows of today as I perhaps should be (turns out, I really do enjoy the old shit that much).
I’m also not denying the existence of poignant, timely art in today’s media landscape – work that will likely feel even more important and timeless as time goes by and the footprint of artificial intelligence in media only increases.
In many ways, nostalgia feels like the lone safe bet media conglomerates have to cling on to in an era full of consolidation and rapid change that is erasing decades of precedent in the industry. With countless streaming services featuring a neverending list of content many only scroll through, the days of a single piece of media commanding immediate and universal cultural relevance is long gone.
Ultimately, that is my worry with the flood of remasters and reboots the media landscape has been subjected to over the past decade or so. That there is no longer a hunger to distribute and market work that will stand the test of time, due to a wide variety of factors ranging from oversaturation, poor pay and job security within the industry and the continuing infiltration of artificial intelligence.
This isn’t to say that music, movies and games of this decade will at all be forgotten – in fact, I’m sure there are several works that will greatly appreciate in reputation and cultural standing over time as a wider audience gets a chance to experience and contextualize it.
After all, that phenomenon is certainly nothing new. Rolling Stone dealt three-star reviews to Nirvana’s Nevermind and Weezer’s Pinkerton upon release, both of which have since become recognized as seminal albums of the decade and among the best of all-time.
I have no doubt that the 2020’s will feature plenty of works that see their legacies grow in the following decades, and I also have no doubt that people will remember the already timeless work the media landscape has seen in the past six years.
Hell, the pandemic lockdowns coincided with the release of two works of art that seamlessly fit the predicament the world was in – Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Fiona Apple’s 2020 album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Though not at all intended to coincide and fit the way they did, New Horizons introduced a cozy brand of escapism into the gaming landscape, allowing millions of players to immerse themselves in their own world and creativity.
As for Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Apple’s writing that largely revolved around past relationships, isolation and self-value recorded in a lo-fi, bedroom pop-type setting timelessly related to millions at the time of its April 2020 release, immediately being hailed as an instant classic that reflected its time in impeccable fashion.
As a physical media collector who is always looking to discover music, movies and games of the past that I had previously missed out on, the marketing of nostalgia feels like it’s explicitly made for people like me – those that will always be drawn to yesterday’s trends and items regardless of where the media landscape is presently at.
Yet as someone who is also enamored by listening to music that embodied the burgeoning counterculture of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, works of art that have not only stood the test of time but feel more prevalent now than ever before, I hope that in some way, that kind of poignant work is being made today.
One of the more memorable moments of my AP US History class in high school was looking back on some of the most recognizable protest music from the era of the Vietnam War – timeless songs like “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield and Gil Scott-Heron’s salient “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
To this day, songs like these and others from the era still have a profound impact on me, despite my birth coming a quarter-century after these events. The unreal range of uncertainty, hopefulness, dread and resolve that is expressed in many of these songs helps to paint a picture that words alone are simply incapable of.
Just looking back on the first six years of this decade, I wonder what, if any, work from this era will be seen as purely indicative of the times – a decade filled with social isolation, democratic backsliding, geopolitical insecurity and a devastating genocide.
I’d imagine there’s plenty, but in today’s world of media saturation, who knows how many will ever experience it themselves.
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