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Historical Nostalgia

   Written by Rachel Van Zeumeren on April 9, 2015
--
   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?

--
   romantic feeling about a time we have never experienced ourselves.

   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
--

   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