An interest in the past or rebellion against the present?
Many people are particularly attracted to the past, and, for some, the feeling is so strong that they feel as though they were born into the wrong generation. Historical nostalgia is a yearning for a time in the past that you have not actually experienced; but is it the allure of the past that causes nostalgia, or is it a result of dissatisfaction with the present?
It is common to be intrigued by the past. Fashion trends almost always come back in style, usually to older generations, dismay. Perhaps your celebrity crush is old enough to be your parent or grandparent, or they have already passed away. Maybe you have acquired a record collection bigger than your parents, it is easy to wish that concerts were as cheap as in the 70s, or that candy was still a penny, and to forget about the more dismal aspects of the past. The past tends to be romanticized, and perhaps, when one longs for another time, they forget about the technological, medical, and civil rights movements that have improved the lives of many.
Psychologists have studied nostalgia through Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris. They come to the conclusion that the film uses historical nostalgia to tell a story about coping with the present. In the film, the main character Gil, played by Owen Wilson, leaves the unsatisfying present and travels to 1920s Paris, where he spends time with his artistic idols.
“It was Gil’s journey through the past that helped him identify what was missing in his present and that gave him the courage to take steps to correct it,” said Dr. Krystine Batcho, a professor at Le Moyne College in New York.
Jennifer Yalouf, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, thinks nostalgia can be interpreted as a type of fantasy, and fantasy is generally thought of as a defense mechanism that allows someone to block out the bad in the present. For Yalouf, historical nostalgia is a form of escapism, because people turn to the past to escape in many ways, from participating in historical re-enactments to reading books, listening to music, or watching movies from bygone times.
Woody Allen often uses nostalgia as a theme, as seen in Manhattan and Radio Days, but the films come to a realization that the good old days were not as good as one might think. In Midnight in Paris, Gil realizes that the past was not that golden, the future may not be that bad, and that it is up to him to live up to his full potential. Feeling disconnected with a generation and thinking you were born in the wrong era can be seen as a rebellion against the modern idea of time, history, and progress.
We live in a generation when people are extremely critical of youth. With books like, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, Mark Baurlein argues that cyberculture is turning young people into “know-nothings.” We are painted as narcissists who tweet, take selfies, have lost our social skills, and can’t live without the internet. Technology isn’t inherently bad though, and more and more young people are using it for social activism. Craig Kielburger, co-founder of the youth development charity, Free the Children, works with socially conscious young people everyday. Kielburger says that this generation is tremendously engaged and intelligent. We are inheriting another generation’s daunting economic and environmental problems, and it’s up to us to fix it. It’s easy to be dissatisfied with the present and to long for another time, but we might as well try to change what we don’t like, because time travel has not yet been perfected, and we have the intelligence and ability to bring about change.
