I feel like nostalgia doesn't hit me as hard because there is no time I would go back to. I would rather go further in the future and hope that its a better place where I can finally find somewhere that feels like home.
The future looks bleak to me. The world is ruled by money, and money doesn't care about humanitarian catastrophes. No matter how much we raise awareness about whatever issues, it's not going to change the general direction the world is going. And the past looks terrible too. If i had to choose a time to live, it would be now, because i have some proof that i'm able to survive in these times.
You can't just "go" to this future, you need to carve it out of the current nightmare. Clearly the builders in charge right now want to build a nightmare.
Khadija, THANK YOU from a Russian for showcasing our protests in the intro. Most people in your place would include just images of the war in Ukraine, and of course that would be valid, but the anti-war movement in Russia so is rarely talked about, and it leads to all of us being seen as a monolith. So activists end up beaten, prosecuted, tortured at home - and labeled a Putin supporter overseas, because most only know one side of the story. So thank you.
Here on the Left we recognise the plight of the international proletariat and understand that people are not their governments. Soidarity with Russian people against their government. ✊
Yeah we saw about all the protests about the draft. Only the idiots over here see "Ukraine good, Russia bad". Those of us with a brain know what's going on and how the government there crushes protests for decades. I see you and wish you all luck.
I've been tired of the endless reboots. Sometimes it's best to leave a show or film's legacy alone and let it be great the way it first happened. Also, there is something so poignant about the juxtaposition of bad news with the comfort of nostalgia (familiarity) being there for comfort in times of crisis.
Yuh had me at SpongeBob 😮💨 i love how the intro went from heartwarming nostalgia to.. Damn, this didn't age well.. To WELL GAD DAMN, maybe I was born in le right generation 😂
I'm digging the present and future, it's high time for some afro, aapi & indigenous futurism that doesn't just look like star wars, or like we used all the world's resources to cover the world in sky scrapers and flying cars 💀
this this this! love how people are reclaiming and rebuilding our ideas of teh future with ethnofuturism and solarpunk, especially given how colonial science and futurism (including retrofuturism) have been. How we are now shaping those narratives instead of being written out of them, and building new traditions after mourning what we lost due to colonial violence.
Okay I had to pause and breath after that intro. I can not overstate how absolutely fucking well you did producing that... I always have to take a step back when a piece of art moves me unexpectedly ❤
Yesss, whole childhood captivated and done so well. And the fade away at the end leading into "the other side" of times. Perfectly executed & I wasn't ready lol. 💙
Speaking about nostalgia, old disney movie reboots/sequels are something that came to my mind right now. For sure that visual/aesthetic wise these movies are pleasing, but the feeling? The soul? The impact? It doesn't have the same energy as the original. :/
Couldn't agree more. The recent sequel to Hocus Pocus is another example of the soulless, money grabbing trend that relied on its original fandom to get the hype, but targeted a completely different audience while alienating the audiences that loved and grew up with the original.
Some stories can be greatly expanded through a sequel. But most of the time, sequels are made just to get more profit out of a popular film that already has a satisfying conclusion and Didn't really need to have its narrative continued.
I think the line up of the old aladdin vs new aladdin kinda proves they visually arent even as stunning tbh. Every Disney remake is like "yea let's use the most muted color pallate in the name of realism" & i hateeee it😩
Agreed. A lot of the realistic portrayal of art just doesn't swing the same as stylistic unique visuals. It strips it from its charm. There is a reason why art direction with touch of style is so important and why cartoons were and are remembered and cherished the way they are to this day, over anything realistic in fact.
This was amazing. I'm from South Africa and you've made me think about something I see quite a lot still in relation to white people. A lot of (if not most) white people are still mad that apartheid ended. They won't say it out loud to our faces as black people but when they are alone together in their own space and now online, they express this nostalgic sentiment that you spoke about to go back to the way things were. A lot of white people in South Africa want that return to apartheid when theu were in control and could dominate black people freely. You can feel the resistance that white people have to being considered equal to black people and their refusal to integrate. Its in their insistence to still enforce Afrikaans (the language spoken by whites) in institutions that used to be predominately white but now need to be integrated to serve not just the white population but everyone else too. Its their insistence on continuing to have their own media outlets and entire companies built to serve just the white population separate from us and in their own language. Its the insistence on keep black academics and qualified people out of academic institutions and other spaces. Its everywhere. Even though South Africa has been a democratic country for over 20 years, white people still long for the "old times" and do everything in their power to keep that nostalgic narrative running while simultaneously refusing to be held accountable for all the atrocities their community committed.
I remember in the early 00s we were saturated in 70s and 80s nostalgia it didn’t seem so strange to me because I never lived through those years but my parents would have discussions about originality and creativity being dead
That's a trend I've noticed is that after enough time passes after a decade it becomes popular again, the 80s became popular in the 2000s and in the 2010s it was the 90s.
Yep it seems somewhere along the way after wwII we lost the hope for the future (guessing the new and constant threat of nuclear annihilation has something to do with that) and started looking backwards. There’s multiple twilight zone episodes from 1959 about people looking backwards, pining for a bygone era which may have never existed-it’s always framed as a product of fear of the present, the future. In the 70s and 80s movies harkened back to the 50s and 60s with their poodle skirts, golden age of Hollywood memories, and drag racing teens. Like you pointed out, in the 90s and 00s it was all about the 70s and 80s. Now after c19 and multiple recessions we are turning the nostalgia knob to 10 and falling into full on, full time escapism.
The origins of nostalgia made me remeber the term "banzo". It is a word initially used by African slaves kidnapped to work on Brazil, and it means "to miss your homeland so much, it brings you great sadness and depression". And I reallly do mean "depression", both the feeling and the disease. Nowadays, the word remained, but the demographic is not especific anymore (and it doesn't necessarily means missing your COUNTRY, there are people from rural towns who move to a capital city for work/study, and they may also feel banzo).
nostalgia = built in viewer base / ready made storyboards / an already-made product to show to higher ups who have no imagination. it’s impossible to make get anything else approved and made right now.
An add on: existing property/franchises have proven money making potential for higher ups to pitch to investors. Such as, Star wars made x amount of money meaning that making another star wars property will make cash money. It also has a visible and active fanbase online/IRL which means making a sequel is viable if you target those audiences. Just used star wars as an example, you can switch it out with star trek, game of thrones, lotr, pokemon, sonic or any other franchise that comes to the top of your mind.
I feel like there are harmless bits of nostalgia “like gee, weren’t video stores great, I wish we still had those” but then there’s the harmful nostalgia where we paint entire eras as picture perfect realities. That’s Always bad.
If u reforce it over and over u can't appreciate anything in the present. I had this when I discovered 2000s nostalgia. Couldn't appreciate anything that didn't scream "2000S!!!". And the worst part was cluttering my closet with clothes that don't even fit me, don't match, overconsuming anything thrifted I saw. Gladly I'm now a better and prettier girl. Let me cherish my curves, my voluminous curly hair, buy on new stores controlledly and wear whatever I want. I still love me a retro style, but I won't pretend I live in the past, cuz it wasn't perfect. [Ironically, a TV show that has scenes set in the 90s/2000s helped me change my mind! The style there is pretty and relatable]
For me at least the nostalgia vibes are more about connecting with the younger me who just didn’t have the pressure and responsibility that I have now. Like I’m fully aware that things were worse for marginalized groups (including mine) when I was a kid but I was a kid, I miss having small scale worries, and I’m sad that I didn’t really enjoy that low responsibility time in my life because I was in such a hurry to grow up. Now I’m grown up and it’s a lot, and I long for it to not be a lot, but I know that’s never happening, now it’s all debt and the alt right takeover of my government and being overworked and underpaid and being tired all the time but too anxious to sleep on a burning planet. So on days when it’s too much it helps to watch legally blonde and try and shut off my brain just enough to not dwell on the problematic elements. Not sure my comment has all that much to do with , I guess I just see a difference between people enjoying the lip balm of their childhood or whatever to numb the pain of life for a day and the people why talk about how things were better back then and how the integrity of the family has degraded because of feminism or the gays or some shit, because that is a whole other ballgame. I feel like the former is nostalgia and the latter is conservatism something entirely more political and a hell of a lot more dangerous.
It's true in the early 2000s I remember how normalized homophobia was but there were other things going on during those times that people like to reminist about.
About what part exactly? Some things in the past were not so great. But some things were better than they are now. I think most people fail to objectively look at the past because of their personal experiences. Personally I look at things statistically because what you feel or believe is not always the truth.
What they did with Bel Air - reimagining the original show to deal with issues that we're starting to reckon with now within the black community is what I feel works best with reboots. Make it relevant to our time and show us a way of dealing with the social issues that we're faced with now. Reboots for the sake of nostalgia/going back in time doesn't work. Like you said it has the effect of making you feel numb
This video is so timely. That convo about what era of the past do you wish you could've experience is a trip. I've never heard a minority person bring up the topic for fun. It's always a white person, surprisingly sometimes white women. I just be like, "😒 you do know your options are barely better than mine in most time periods right?". That whole thing is wild to me because unless you are rich, I don't think there has ever been a good time to live in, in the past.
Reboots and re-makes are surprisingly ubiquitous throughout the history of storytelling. My favorite example is Beethoven's Fidelio. It's sourced in Jean-Nicolas Bouilly's libretto for Gaveaux's opera Léonore in 1798, then Paer's in 1804, Mayr's in 1805 and finally Beethoven's from 1805 through 1814. Another example is Il mondo della luna, originally written by Carlo Goldoni in 1750 for Galuppi but also set by Haydn and Paisiello along with 3 other composers. After Galuppi's, each remake was slightly different than the prior (three of which are recorded). I use these two as they were not inspired by classical or medieval stories like many opera's which were/are remade again and again amd again (Armida, Medea, Perseus, Electra & Orestes etc). Eventually, the trends do die out but there has always been a desire to retell a popular story. How old is nostalgia and is it different than the urge to retell or remake a story?
I feel like the difference is they didn't retell it year after year ad nauseum to milk it. They did it at that time out of personal artistic choice to revisit it because they thought there was a way to both honor and remix it slightly at the same time, which I can't honestly say is what's being done today, even with it sounding like it's the same thing. It's literally things being frankensteined back into popularity year after year like a perennial crop that saps the soil's nutrients, with our wallets and our imaginations to envision anything beyond the trauma of the times and endless remakes being the soil. I don't say it like this to be all doom and gloom, but you have to admit at this point that it's really OD.
@@axeslinger94 I think we give the past too much credit for being artistic. Theater at that point in history was very expensive and ones credibility as a composer or librettist was on the line with each opera, especially moving into the 19th century. The mid to late 18th century saw the proliferation of opera to the extent that it was almost "factory" produced by composers. Many getting only a few months to a few weeks to pop them out, each heavily depending on popular tropes, plot points and character archetypes for success. I do agree that in our day and age, the velocity at which media is produced makes it overwhelming. It was commercialized back then too but now it's even more so with "create by comity" dominating many of our narrative driven industries. It's amazing to even look at a pop song and see 5 writers and another 5 musicians (different from the writers) in the credits with the end result being a spew of trite sentiments and music you've heard many times before.
That into is literally one of the best things (across all platforms and media) I have seen this year, even this decade of the 20s - SO GOOD!!!! 6 minutes in and I am already HOOKED 👌🏻
@@KhadijaMbowe honestly, I’ve always loved your videos for the incredibly high standard of their content - you’ve educated me in lots of ways, *thank you* As a longer-time watcher, it’s really cool to see your growth and evolution. When you mentioned that you believe great art can change your life, I totally agree - yours has changed mine, and many many other peoples too - thank you! ❤️
I know i cope through nostalgia, today is a work from home with my favourite cartoons in the background kind of day, but you did that intro so well it got me choked up. Edit: I also start looking at nostalgia as reclaiming ignorance. The epithet "ignorance is bliss" sticks around because it is kind of true, and nostalgia plays on individuals remembering a time where they were unaware or ignorant of many things, so it may not necessarily be a retreat from whats going on so much as a desire to return the "bliss" we existed in before we were aware of it. I think thats why you see nostalgia playing on specific generational content as well.
I like to rewatch old favorites movies, cartoons, and more things bc of the feeling it gave me the first time I saw it. I’m still trying to recapture that feeling every time adulting gets overwhelming.
I was excited for the intro when I read your description. But then got sad when I watched it. The past was great aesthetic & fashion wise. But for the Black & LGBTQ communities we are still fighting. Idk if we were treated worse back then or now. I feel like we have been purposefully stalled, when we think we’re making progress. Unfortunately, when I think about nostalgia, I can’t help but to think that my VERY TRAUMATIC childhood is connected to that.
Same here. Even when I experience nostalgia it feels largely false because it wasn't that things were that different compared to now, it's just that I wasn't aware of how bad it was. In my personal life, things have gotten better in some ways and worse in others, but I wouldn't want to go back. I barely made it through my childhood the first time, and I struggled and fought to get to where I am now. The future holds more struggle from what I can tell, but "going back" means losing everything I have fought for to this point.
So many good points you made! The romancing and “memory” of the past reminds me a lot of vintage UA-cam. They obviously fancy the vintage style, but I’ve never heard one say they would revert to the past. While yes, they’re largely white, they’re also disabled, women, and activists. Also, just watched OSP where they discussed Rome’s city of marble (I swear this is connected). It was beautiful and supposedly let Rome flourish; however, guess who romanticized that era? Mussolini- He used that glory and rose tinted era to justify literal totalitarian fascism. Essentially, we can appreciate the nice, but equally as important: lose the yikes.
I remember this dropping a while back but I’m happy to see it again. Half of my UA-cam Consumption is based on Nostalgia ESPECIALLY during the Pandemic.
I don't experience Nostalgia, every time I try I just feel crippling, mind rending panic. Not because I'm afraid of time passing, but because there isn't a single thing in my past that isn't tainted by trauma.
Wow that intro is amazing. My heart isnt moved easily, but those childhood memories clutched at my heart, then it cracked a little as the video continued.
"C'était mieux avant" Nostalgia is universal because your brain knows that it can survive the past, but doesn't know if it can survive the future. But also, like I said earlier, we often see minorities in relation to time like Pokemons, where minorities don't exist in x or y generation, so it's easy to ignore the suffering of a minority in an era where they were silenced, and it's jarring for some when minorities are introduced and are prominent in fantasy versions of the past.
It’s kinda surreal to me that people are so attached to nostalgia. I think it’s maybe my ADHD but I struggle to remember the past without signifiers (photos, objects, etc.). You think this would make me more prone to nostalgia but even though I like remembering old things and the objects help, I get bored watching, reading, or listening to the same things again, so even media I like I can’t revisit all the time. I don’t really miss feeling secure because it was never real after I found out it wasn’t. I think I also didn’t experience a lot of typically nostalgic things because even though we weren’t poor we didn’t have cable TV for a long time and my parents made me play outside a lot, so I watch the things people were obsessed with now and I’m like “it’s not actually that great”. Idk, just interesting to me.
First off, I utterly enjoy you pronounce German words so perfectly. If you ever need free German lessons or need a place to crash when you visit Berlin, please let me know.😄 NOW, I do get nostalgic all the time, especially after moving to Germany..so probably mixed with homesickness(or as you so eloquently put it, Heimweh). But as you said, we see it with rose-coloured glasses , which becomes super problematic. This became very real when I started going for therapy and started naming the different kinds of trauma I went through that I had repressed by romanticising the past. Now I'm learning to mourn this past because I'm aware that it felt familiar and the present and future is terrifying but there's no point in crying over spilt milk. We just have to shape better memories from here on.
It's so weird watching everyone going on and on about nostalgia when I have ever felt it like twice. I suppose to have an idealized version of the past you need to have 1. had positive experiences and 2. remember any of them aka not have suppressed all of the memories because they were surrounded in a dark context. I can't even remember what the two nostalgic things for me were, they were that fleeting.
"It brings to my cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives." This explains so much for me! I get annoyed when people talk about the past as if it was some great time when in reality it was filled with just as much hatred and chaos as today. Like it really upsets me. Maybe I feel that way because I feel safer and more valued now than I did as a child. My childhood was not safe. I had a lot of negative experiences growing up and pretty much hated my life. And maybe that has stopped me from being able to experience nostalgia on the level that others do. I don't romanticize the past or wear rose-tinted glasses. I can't. And it almost offends me when others do because it's like they are dismissing my trauma. Hmmm
I think Brian Broome says it best: "My uncle used to tell me that I would become more conservative as I got older because when you get older, you get "smarter". He didn't use those exact words but the sentiment was the same. He used to say that "common sense" came with age. And that I would get all my "foolish ideas" out of my head as I got older. Old people tend to believe in the innate fecklessness of youth. But now that I'm at the same age that he was when he told me all that shit, I realize that it's not true at all. You don't necessarily get wiser just because you've gotten older. You don't necessarily know more about life. All you know is more about your own life. Not everybody else's. All you know are the mistakes YOU'VE made and how they affected you. And sometimes this information is valuable to pass along to younger people. But sometimes it isn't. People get more conservative as the get older not because they've gotten smarter, but because they've become more afraid. More afraid for their financial stability. More afraid about what's going to happen to them. More afraid that the culture is leaving them behind because they don't understand what the hell is even going on anymore. And that has nothing to do with the fecklessness of young people and everything to do with the way western culture treats old people. And that capitalism deems the old as useless and refuses to help take care of our elders in their declining years. That fear has nothing to do with you becoming wiser. You're just trying to keep the world the same as it was when you were young because you feel safer there. Stop telling young people they don't know any better. Sure, there are some things from which they could benefit from your knowledge. But not everything. Let them change things. Because the world is under no obligation to make sure you still feel comfortable in it."
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes to all of this. How do you keep voicing the same thoughts I have, but in a much more articulate way than I ever could? Preach, Khadija.
I love how you broke this down for us. It makes complete sense. When I’m watching Buffy the Vamp Slayer or That’s so Raven sure, I may get a few flashes of actual memories from when I watched a specific scene but for the most part, it’s a warm feeling that I get. I did not think of it in such detail. We def need to be honest about the past and most importantly how it has shaped the present. We owe it to ourselves, but also to the humans coming up years after us. 🙌🏽♥️
Remakes have always been a thing sure, but it feels more like people's lives are getting flooded with content more than before because there is just that much more content. And more content means more rubbish to sift through to decide what to watch. It's gotten to the point where I rarely watch any new show without either a) the expectation that it will be rubbish (i.e. head empty no thoughts) or b) it was recommended by a friend. It's funny because I feel like I've always felt like I am someone who is always yearning (this is apparently a very sapphic thing to do), but that has never translated to wanting to actually go back to the past.
I agree a lot with that! I don't know that people necessarily want to go back because it was better but rather because they knew what to expect? Or were used to a certain structure, for example missing childhood because life was arranged for you vs adulthood where you're in charge. Really enjoyed this exploration of that feeling (former disease!), of nostalgia
I think this is a huge part of nostalgia. It's going back to a time where as a child, you experienced fewer worries and little responsibilities. Adults took care of everything and you were for the most part sheilded from real world problems or even problems in your own family. I remember time feeling slow when I was a child. The school year seemed to drag on. In a sense I was frozen in the moment. It was fun, simple, and very routine. The future was open and everything was possible. But adults feel it all. Almost everyday can feel like missed opportunity. We see what is no longer possible for us. We have responsibilities and the world's problems are endless. I rarely feel in the moment anymore and my mind is always consumed with the past or future in some way or another. Not everyone had a great childhood, so I understand this doesn't apply to everyone. And the past was CLEARLY not better for most human beings globally. But I think nostalgia is more rooted in wanting a life and mindset full hope and few worries rather than a desire for any given past.
I love this video. I think it might be my favorite one on the internet because it explains the complex feeling that we have all been feeling. Especially my generation. GEN Z hasn't even gotten to live yet and we've been bombarded with so much and everyone is looking at us to try and fix it. Thank you for this.
There’s some good analyses on why nostalgia for times that were “simpler,” but may have come at the cost of the world we see now in why liminal spaces are so terrifying, but also create such a cascade of emotions in people
I’m only 17:28mins in. But I had to pause to unpack what I think I now understand with more clarity due to proposing that nostalgia could be memory. In my head memory was an aspect which influences nostalgia. But nostalgia and memory were separate. The word that trips me up when thinking about nostalgia is the word sonder. Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it. So I had to take a moment. I made a hypothetical situation in my head where I asked if you could elaborate more on what you meant when referring to “memory”? I had this thought:- Memory is tangible It’s something you unpack, share and can find opportunities to make and recreate. It’s something you can bring into the present moment with you. Nostalgia is locked in a time capsule called the past You can try and recreate memories But when you feel nostalgic you know the memory, feeling, place, smell and feeling won’t remain a memory. But rather, a distant location that you know longer physically, intellectually, intuitively, psychologically and/or spiritually have access to. I think, most likely unintentionally. The difference between memory and nostalgia is distance and/or Space.
nostalgia tho! I loved this video. I was thinking about nostalgia and how it may not be a direct personal memory but an idealized world in concern to like all these aesthetics that draw from nostalgia. the biggest one for me was cottagecore because as someone who grew up going to my grandpa's cottage every summer, the reality did not look at all like my cottagecore pinterest board. we did not wear cute prairie dresses or corsets there. that's a recipe for disaster. plus they'll get ruined. we wore old jeans and sweats. so like, I'm not even nostalgic for my actual childhood memories. I'm nostalgic for an ideal that comes from an idea of cottage life that probably came from people who have never actually been to a cottage. and what are those ideals? certainly not my interned grandpa making a claim on stolen land with a cottage.
What a powerful video-you capture the divide between those who questioned the system and began pushing for change after covid and those who wanted to revert to previous ways so perfectly. Thanks for all you do Khadija, can’t wait for another video and glad you’re doing well ❤
I LOVE your take on this subject, it was a little cathartic tbh. You gotta watch A League of their Own!!! It's nothing like the reboot, they're completely different. You'll love the film too!
I was scrolling through Pinterest the other day and I had found a meme of a guy with a quote and he basically said “I believe that in the end, everything will work out. And if it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”
I work in animation, and all five film and TV shows I have worked on has been a remake or an adaptation of an existing IP. It's disappointing as an artist, but I'm over it because I'm grateful that at least I have a great job in these turbulent times. Studio executives just care about short term gains, and reusing their old IP is a sure fire way to get audiences to buy tickets. It's quite rare to have a project that puts art first.
I understood the difference between nostalgia and truly processing memories after I started an introspective journey a couple of years ago. I used to long for a sense of community and acceptance and love I never had, but for a long time I didn't want to accept that it wasn't there. So I would fantasize about what "could've happened" in the past instead what actually did or didn't, until I finally got to a better and more supportive environment and started to find my purpose. That's actually when the reality of my past started to hit and it was really scary at first. I saw there really wasn't much from back then I could romanticize except for some specific events and places I've traveled (and ofc some tv shows, like many ppl). The hard truth about my past (esp childhood/adolescence) is too much of it was filled with isolation, trauma, and really bad mental health issues that were never dealt with for a long time so I didn't know what was going on with me (that's probably part of what contributed to the isolation). The other thing was I was an immigrant kid in a very conservative town, but also regardless of where I was, the racism was always there. Thankfully, as much as I've had a lot of unaddressed issues with my family, they are educated, financially stable middle class that has, at least in literal terms, been able to stay intact. This has allowed me to work toward a better life, with opportunities that many don't get. But looking back, a lot of my life has been me working as hard as I could and exhausting myself bc I knew that was the only way to move to a better place and find a sense of community, & possibly even love. It's scary, sometimes I fear I may fall back to where I was before. I know the future is bleak but, maybe bc my career path is so service-oriented and humanitarian, the future gives me way more sense of hope and warmth than the past, although no doubt that it's definitely very scary and bleak right now. But I really believe we can work through it, and actually more than anything, humanity needs to stay in the present to find ways to band together and help each other survive & fight for changes rather than wasting away and dwelling on the past bc we've lost all hope.
All of that is fantastic and I feel for the negative aspect in having felt the isolation. What often kills that crap is actually intelligently and boldly interacting & educating yourself with various cultures of people from all walks of life. A service based career doesn't always give that. Keeping an open mind as to what types of people you'll encounter and having a working moral compass keeping it in tact will certainly help.
For sure, I mean going to college & living in the big city, I’ve encountered more types of ppl than when I was back in my hometown. It certainly helps to give a more expansive view of the world and get you out of your head. Environment certainly has a big influence.
A Legaue of Their Own (the movie) is actually based on the real life All American Professional Girls Baseball League. It was a real thing the went from the early 40s to early 50s. Sadly most people only see it as a movie instead of as a historical event, which is sad :(
I'm curious if another aspect of nostalgia is that a lot of those times where people prospered where usually following up other periods of turmoil. Maybe that's a stretch, I don't know. I definitely am not trying to discount any points made... more like trying to add on additional ideas. To me, when we're struggling, I feel like it helps to go "Hey remember this time when things were bad? We made it through that time; we can make it through this one." ~shrug~
It affects famous people too, look at JLo and Ben Affleck lol And on a personal note… My nostalgia is about movies, when I was a child I was left alone quite often and for long periods of time and the only entertainment I had was a tv, so I just watched the same VHS movies every time. As I grew older I used that to cope with anxiety, and I’ve probably seen about 30 times the movie Hercules, so many other tv shows as well, I just feel good. I try to watch other things but nothing makes me as happy as those I’ve already seen and I know everything is safe
I wonder if this nostalgic boom is a cycling trend or is it because deep down we think we have no future? Me, personally, I have decided that I will consume mostly original content and media, and I say mostly, because it is of human to get attached to things.
33:00 that’s what happened to me. When the pandemic hit I was able to focus on creativity and overcome the deep depression that had me blocked for ten years. It was like I could finally breath
I’d also add if we look at the history of literature you can also see nostalgia and the comfort of reboots and sequels long before our time Technically the Renaissance was way of the people to comfort themselves the past remembering old hero’s in a new light by using the way people used to write but for new audiences Same goes for the Roman-fleuve in french lit from the 17 century that basically defines itself as book series with characters that get revisited time and time again to comfort the reader (especially female authors were known for these novels like Madame de Sévigné)
i like that you brought up that it happens during specific times in history. i would have loved if you would have spent more time comparing what makes this time similar to that time
Loved this so much!! I had a conversation with friends 2 nights ago, trying to articulate why Nostalgia can make me uncomfortable (usually when observing others who seem to rely on nostalgia for happiness). This was such a timely upload, and explained so well the many aspects I couldn't articulate.
Never realized nostalgia was pathologized, or that it was related to homesickness and specifically the plight of immigrants/expats. I appreciate that you brought up therapy & Brene Brown. The politics of all this is suuuuuper important. All those people yelling "law & order"... if we actually returned to that era, their heads would explode because crime is wayyyyy down now (even post-pandemic). But as the memory-vs-nostalgia quote pointed out, nostalgia is fine with an imagined past. For a lot of people, it's hard to admit that certain things are actually much better now than they were back then.
Nostalgia is no longer a look back into an imagined past, as with the internet, glorified memories are often not only now tied to objects or media, but also preserved online forever. And with the increasing awareness of the destruction around us, it has become a coping mechanisim for current disarray in our lives, by not only looking back but also creating an obsession with curating the image of a collected, perfect lifestyle on social media in current time.
Oooh I love your thoughts close to the end about those who feel like they don't have a home adapting more to the future! I've been wanting to make a video about how we never will escape nostalgia, how it shows differently with each generation and how the future being as bleak as it is, we'll never stop looking back but love the points you raise here!
I'm moving from my home country tomorrow and I feel like I'm gonna die from nostalgia so watching today was really helpful in a way, I'm def revisiting this video when I leave this place.
this was wonderful, im in love with the feeling of this video. i’ve also picked up on the nostalgia bomb that is the media lately. hell, i fall into that trap. i can say on my end that i think we fall into these traps bc we feel that something has changed, and it has. what i miss is the freedom to not grow up before i should, less population, so more nature, and most importantly the community. communities used to be strongly connected. whether you wanted it or not, your mothers aunts best friends dog would see you doing something and you’d come home to an angry mom. hostile example, but you had the sense that people cared and you were seen. something has changed that
Can't wait for the next one. I felt like you were really starting to hit on something toward the end, and I would love to see what the next hour on this topic is gonna look like. Just keep drawing those parallels!
As a woman, let's go beyond race for a min - any person who wants to live in a previous time gets the side-eye from me, because women had fewer rights in literally any time before now. That, and the effects of modern medecine cannot be understated. I used to fantasize about the 1800s for the romance, but the more I learned... it's so easy to forget the oppressed and pretend like it wouldn't be just shitty for the most of us.
For sure. It's fine to enjoy the aesthetics and art of a time, but it's important to understand the society that produced it and to reject the negative aspects therein. The danger comes when people boil down history and only see the aesthetics and ignore the failings. Basically, the problem lies in idolizeing the past
It's almost like nostalgia is a want to a return to a time when YOU were different... you weren't scared, you weren't depressed, you were empowered... not necessarily when the world was different.
Another stellar essay! I really loved the "Where on Earth is Home" segment and wanted to expand on that a bit. I feel like there're a lot of critiques (for valid reasons as you mentioned) of nostalgia as a desire to return to some rose-tinted era but I've never personally felt it in that way. Nostalgia feels to me not as a desire to return to the past, but a reminder that there WERE good moments within my past. Moments that fill me with warmth and comfort. Personal, cherished moments that are sometimes shared but always unique in how they impact you. Nostalgia tends to manifest as memories of interests I once held and there's a deep pleasure in reconnecting with those lost interests with the benefit of the wisdom and learning I've accumulated along the way. Anyway, lots to ruminate over with this one. Thanks again for your fantastic work, Khadija! :)
The intro had me crying. But as I listened to you saying how terrifying the present is and how we disassociate I felt less alone. I thought I was going crazy feeling this existential dread *every day* and checking out two screens and a twelve pack. Everything is terrifying. I feel like I'm in hell. You put that into words when you said it feels like we could slip through the great filter at any moment. I'm not crazy. Thank you.
My header on Facebook is a picture of a child in a park with the twin towers in the background, text splash across the top reads: "the world you were born in no longer exists" Excellent cold opening.
"What people went what way". This was really obvious to me, but I never had the words to put to it. I feel as though many of my friends went a different way than me. As someone who is normally incredibly introverted, borderline a hermit, I found myself comfortable at first, but less and less so as the panini* went on. I think I came out the other side with much more of a sense of myself, and also a longing for building community around me.
It feels weird to me talking about nostalgia, and even weirder to see the importance that it has now in media. I have fond memories of the comics that I read when I was a child, and I remember with a smile the cartoons, and Disney movies that I watched, but I want them to stay in the past. I never rely on nostalgia in the sense of wishing that those times come back or that those were better years. These good memories of mine were bright sprinkles in a general sensation of not-belonging (because autism, yay). I remember being happy at times, of course, but because of issues that already existed in me and that I was yet unaware of, I always ended depressed, heartbroken, losing all my friends, and starting all over, but learning. I can't muster the idea of going back anywhere because I had to learn and be better at so many things that I cringe at myself when I think about it. Whatever I just hope someone can relate to this comment and it's not out of place. I thank you Khadija for making the video and lighting this feeling up.
James Somerton did a really good video about the marketing of nostalgia and the problems that arise when they ignore the bad parts of it. Highly recommend.
" takes a deep sigh" girl....Damn the first 5 minutes were heavy af. I had to go but an icy because I needed something sweet after this one. Love the commentary, it stimulates💙
It was interesting to me to watch the intro since I didn't grow up in the US. It didn't trigger much emotion for me, while by reading the comments I know it was an emotional moment for most of the viewers
Great video! I didn’t start to question all the obsession with nostalgia that everyone but particularly us gen z seems to have until fairly recently. I figured (specifically with the 90s nostalgia & obsession) we like it so much because none of us got to experience it ourselves so it’s like an intense interest in someone we could never know first hand. But then I thought about it more and read other people’s opinions and found the answer is quite simple. We are obbsessed with the past (even the recent past like 10-30 years ago) because that is a symptom of a generation of people not allowed to and/or unable to imagine the future. This was not exactly new knowledge for me because my whole life I have not really been able to imagine what the future of the world or my own life will look like due to the instability and uncertainty of our world, but I guess I hadn’t thought about it framed in that way and took in and celebrated the nostalgia for so many years uncritically. Recently, I have been finally able to allow myself to have hope for the future of the world and us as humans. I still am unable to really imagine and visualize the future which is quite sad but I have hope in constructing it and have no choice but to basically take life one day at a time. Watching your video has revived in me the notion of how important it is for us to consciously look to the future, not nihilistically, while not forgetting the past of course, but not living in it either. I would love to do more radical imaginative work whatever that may be and actively create a future worth living in and for, I’m just not sure where to start. But if there’s a will, there’s a way!
I feel like my go-to answer for what time period I'd want to live in, I want to experience my childhood (the 90's and 00) as an adult. I want to see how that would change my opinion of how I saw things as a child and what thinks where out of my understanding.
As someone before the COVID pandemic, I never really thought about how me as a POC have been lucky with the people I have met and talked to through the years. I would say that I would want to live in the roaring 20s but other than that, I wouldn't want to live in any era before the 90s (maybe the 80s get a pass but doing research now, I wouldn't want to). Now being 24 and having to deal with basically scrounging for a simple room to sleep in, I was radicalized to think differently due to the COVID pandemic but I was always having that happen. Now, I've been working on work that tries to break out of nostalgia and shows what happens when you try to keep the nostalgia going. I believe the issue of nostalgia is that it's a good indicator of something we enjoyed no longer being there but neo liberalism wants to keep the power of change to those who can pay the most and those people will want to keep their nostalgia going (1% owning the mass amount of wealth type of nostalgia). The only difference is that now, they don't need to hide it behind sentiments of being a good person they can just be rich and enjoy the passes that they've been given since the birth of America.
We don't actually miss these entertainment franchises. We miss having a sense of hope and a feeling that there was still magic left in the world.
Perfectly said
Exactly, I feel like we've been robbed of hope.
This is the main thing for me
Honestly, I think our generation should start pushing for more creative and passionate media again.
tbh I don’t actually think that’s why these franchises and reboots are popular, it’s because studios hit on something reliable
I feel like nostalgia doesn't hit me as hard because there is no time I would go back to. I would rather go further in the future and hope that its a better place where I can finally find somewhere that feels like home.
Absolutely, for me I'm daydreaming about a better future because the past is painful
The future looks bleak to me. The world is ruled by money, and money doesn't care about humanitarian catastrophes. No matter how much we raise awareness about whatever issues, it's not going to change the general direction the world is going.
And the past looks terrible too. If i had to choose a time to live, it would be now, because i have some proof that i'm able to survive in these times.
You can't just "go" to this future, you need to carve it out of the current nightmare. Clearly the builders in charge right now want to build a nightmare.
This made me tear up
SAME. My history has a lot of…bad times in it. I don’t want to go back to any of that
Khadija, THANK YOU from a Russian for showcasing our protests in the intro. Most people in your place would include just images of the war in Ukraine, and of course that would be valid, but the anti-war movement in Russia so is rarely talked about, and it leads to all of us being seen as a monolith. So activists end up beaten, prosecuted, tortured at home - and labeled a Putin supporter overseas, because most only know one side of the story. So thank you.
Folks like Putin win by making it seem like they have more support than they do.
YESSS! I feel so seen, Khadija you're a queen!!!
Here on the Left we recognise the plight of the international proletariat and understand that people are not their governments. Soidarity with Russian people against their government. ✊
Yeah we saw about all the protests about the draft. Only the idiots over here see "Ukraine good, Russia bad". Those of us with a brain know what's going on and how the government there crushes protests for decades. I see you and wish you all luck.
As a Russian, I second this. Thank you for writing this comment and huge thanks to Khadija.
I've been tired of the endless reboots. Sometimes it's best to leave a show or film's legacy alone and let it be great the way it first happened.
Also, there is something so poignant about the juxtaposition of bad news with the comfort of nostalgia (familiarity) being there for comfort in times of crisis.
Yeah, if I wanna watch a video from my childhood I'll find that version instead of seeking out reboots.
Right? Exactly. The same magic cannot be repeated. First impression means a lot.
Yuh had me at SpongeBob 😮💨 i love how the intro went from heartwarming nostalgia to.. Damn, this didn't age well.. To WELL GAD DAMN, maybe I was born in le right generation 😂
Thank you for lending your eyes 💕💕
Love ur channel friend!
I'm digging the present and future, it's high time for some afro, aapi & indigenous futurism that doesn't just look like star wars, or like we used all the world's resources to cover the world in sky scrapers and flying cars 💀
this this this! love how people are reclaiming and rebuilding our ideas of teh future with ethnofuturism and solarpunk, especially given how colonial science and futurism (including retrofuturism) have been. How we are now shaping those narratives instead of being written out of them, and building new traditions after mourning what we lost due to colonial violence.
Okay I had to pause and breath after that intro. I can not overstate how absolutely fucking well you did producing that... I always have to take a step back when a piece of art moves me unexpectedly ❤
I wholeheartedly agree. This intro is a perfect mirror image of what it feels like to be alive in this time
Omg thank you so much 🥺🥺💕💕💕 that really means a lot
literally only watched the intro and it made me cry??
Yesss, whole childhood captivated and done so well.
And the fade away at the end leading into "the other side" of times.
Perfectly executed & I wasn't ready lol. 💙
yeah not even kidding i had to take a nap after that. well done!!!!
Speaking about nostalgia, old disney movie reboots/sequels are something that came to my mind right now. For sure that visual/aesthetic wise these movies are pleasing, but the feeling? The soul? The impact? It doesn't have the same energy as the original. :/
Couldn't agree more. The recent sequel to Hocus Pocus is another example of the soulless, money grabbing trend that relied on its original fandom to get the hype, but targeted a completely different audience while alienating the audiences that loved and grew up with the original.
Some stories can be greatly expanded through a sequel. But most of the time, sequels are made just to get more profit out of a popular film that already has a satisfying conclusion and Didn't really need to have its narrative continued.
I think the line up of the old aladdin vs new aladdin kinda proves they visually arent even as stunning tbh. Every Disney remake is like "yea let's use the most muted color pallate in the name of realism" & i hateeee it😩
Majority of the originals were white and racist
Agreed. A lot of the realistic portrayal of art just doesn't swing the same as stylistic unique visuals. It strips it from its charm. There is a reason why art direction with touch of style is so important and why cartoons were and are remembered and cherished the way they are to this day, over anything realistic in fact.
This was amazing. I'm from South Africa and you've made me think about something I see quite a lot still in relation to white people. A lot of (if not most) white people are still mad that apartheid ended. They won't say it out loud to our faces as black people but when they are alone together in their own space and now online, they express this nostalgic sentiment that you spoke about to go back to the way things were. A lot of white people in South Africa want that return to apartheid when theu were in control and could dominate black people freely. You can feel the resistance that white people have to being considered equal to black people and their refusal to integrate. Its in their insistence to still enforce Afrikaans (the language spoken by whites) in institutions that used to be predominately white but now need to be integrated to serve not just the white population but everyone else too. Its their insistence on continuing to have their own media outlets and entire companies built to serve just the white population separate from us and in their own language. Its the insistence on keep black academics and qualified people out of academic institutions and other spaces. Its everywhere. Even though South Africa has been a democratic country for over 20 years, white people still long for the "old times" and do everything in their power to keep that nostalgic narrative running while simultaneously refusing to be held accountable for all the atrocities their community committed.
I remember in the early 00s we were saturated in 70s and 80s nostalgia it didn’t seem so strange to me because I never lived through those years but my parents would have discussions about originality and creativity being dead
That's a trend I've noticed is that after enough time passes after a decade it becomes popular again, the 80s became popular in the 2000s and in the 2010s it was the 90s.
Yep it seems somewhere along the way after wwII we lost the hope for the future (guessing the new and constant threat of nuclear annihilation has something to do with that) and started looking backwards. There’s multiple twilight zone episodes from 1959 about people looking backwards, pining for a bygone era which may have never existed-it’s always framed as a product of fear of the present, the future. In the 70s and 80s movies harkened back to the 50s and 60s with their poodle skirts, golden age of Hollywood memories, and drag racing teens. Like you pointed out, in the 90s and 00s it was all about the 70s and 80s. Now after c19 and multiple recessions we are turning the nostalgia knob to 10 and falling into full on, full time escapism.
@@justinarzola4584 and now it's gonna be the 2000s
@@asanitheafrofuturist It already is if you've been paying attention ro fashion trends
i’d argue it’s worse now in a sense eveything you see is related to a property,
The origins of nostalgia made me remeber the term "banzo". It is a word initially used by African slaves kidnapped to work on Brazil, and it means "to miss your homeland so much, it brings you great sadness and depression". And I reallly do mean "depression", both the feeling and the disease. Nowadays, the word remained, but the demographic is not especific anymore (and it doesn't necessarily means missing your COUNTRY, there are people from rural towns who move to a capital city for work/study, and they may also feel banzo).
nostalgia = built in viewer base / ready made storyboards / an already-made product to show to higher ups who have no imagination. it’s impossible to make get anything else approved and made right now.
As just a consumer of content, thank you that seems like the sort of really important info to know. I know my outlook is shaped by what I see ...
An add on: existing property/franchises have proven money making potential for higher ups to pitch to investors. Such as, Star wars made x amount of money meaning that making another star wars property will make cash money. It also has a visible and active fanbase online/IRL which means making a sequel is viable if you target those audiences.
Just used star wars as an example, you can switch it out with star trek, game of thrones, lotr, pokemon, sonic or any other franchise that comes to the top of your mind.
Hit the nail on the head.
yeah i honestly think that’s more of a reason than some mad yearning for nostalgia
I feel like there are harmless bits of nostalgia “like gee, weren’t video stores great, I wish we still had those” but then there’s the harmful nostalgia where we paint entire eras as picture perfect realities. That’s Always bad.
If u reforce it over and over u can't appreciate anything in the present. I had this when I discovered 2000s nostalgia. Couldn't appreciate anything that didn't scream "2000S!!!". And the worst part was cluttering my closet with clothes that don't even fit me, don't match, overconsuming anything thrifted I saw. Gladly I'm now a better and prettier girl. Let me cherish my curves, my voluminous curly hair, buy on new stores controlledly and wear whatever I want. I still love me a retro style, but I won't pretend I live in the past, cuz it wasn't perfect. [Ironically, a TV show that has scenes set in the 90s/2000s helped me change my mind! The style there is pretty and relatable]
Whenever I see people craving nostalgia, I get scared as a Queer Person. No age has been safe for us, except the present or maybe not even that.
I always think this as a black person. It’s like you can go back but I’m going to stay here with my wifi and my civil rights 😅
@@mauve9266 “Wi-FI and Civil Rights” is a great T-Shirt. Also, you’ve put it eloquently.
☕👀 Yes it instantly puts me on edge
For me at least the nostalgia vibes are more about connecting with the younger me who just didn’t have the pressure and responsibility that I have now. Like I’m fully aware that things were worse for marginalized groups (including mine) when I was a kid but I was a kid, I miss having small scale worries, and I’m sad that I didn’t really enjoy that low responsibility time in my life because I was in such a hurry to grow up. Now I’m grown up and it’s a lot, and I long for it to not be a lot, but I know that’s never happening, now it’s all debt and the alt right takeover of my government and being overworked and underpaid and being tired all the time but too anxious to sleep on a burning planet. So on days when it’s too much it helps to watch legally blonde and try and shut off my brain just enough to not dwell on the problematic elements.
Not sure my comment has all that much to do with , I guess I just see a difference between people enjoying the lip balm of their childhood or whatever to numb the pain of life for a day and the people why talk about how things were better back then and how the integrity of the family has degraded because of feminism or the gays or some shit, because that is a whole other ballgame. I feel like the former is nostalgia and the latter is conservatism something entirely more political and a hell of a lot more dangerous.
It's true in the early 2000s I remember how normalized homophobia was but there were other things going on during those times that people like to reminist about.
Auntie took the feels dial and turned it up to 200% got me shedding some thug tears ngl.
I knew you were a water sign *squints*
About what part exactly? Some things in the past were not so great. But some things were better than they are now. I think most people fail to objectively look at the past because of their personal experiences. Personally I look at things statistically because what you feel or believe is not always the truth.
@@jayrose8869 did you not look at the intro? Pretty sure that’s what’s being referenced here
@@kissit012 Of course I did. I was confused at first but I understand what she was going for. I didn’t cry tho lol
@@jayrose8869 …
What they did with Bel Air - reimagining the original show to deal with issues that we're starting to reckon with now within the black community is what I feel works best with reboots. Make it relevant to our time and show us a way of dealing with the social issues that we're faced with now. Reboots for the sake of nostalgia/going back in time doesn't work. Like you said it has the effect of making you feel numb
This video is so timely. That convo about what era of the past do you wish you could've experience is a trip. I've never heard a minority person bring up the topic for fun. It's always a white person, surprisingly sometimes white women. I just be like, "😒 you do know your options are barely better than mine in most time periods right?". That whole thing is wild to me because unless you are rich, I don't think there has ever been a good time to live in, in the past.
Reboots and re-makes are surprisingly ubiquitous throughout the history of storytelling. My favorite example is Beethoven's Fidelio. It's sourced in Jean-Nicolas Bouilly's libretto for Gaveaux's opera Léonore in 1798, then Paer's in 1804, Mayr's in 1805 and finally Beethoven's from 1805 through 1814. Another example is Il mondo della luna, originally written by Carlo Goldoni in 1750 for Galuppi but also set by Haydn and Paisiello along with 3 other composers. After Galuppi's, each remake was slightly different than the prior (three of which are recorded). I use these two as they were not inspired by classical or medieval stories like many opera's which were/are remade again and again amd again (Armida, Medea, Perseus, Electra & Orestes etc). Eventually, the trends do die out but there has always been a desire to retell a popular story. How old is nostalgia and is it different than the urge to retell or remake a story?
I was surprised to learn that in my research too! That it has always been present and adaptation/reboots have been too
Literature is full of retellings of ancient tales, too
I feel like the difference is they didn't retell it year after year ad nauseum to milk it. They did it at that time out of personal artistic choice to revisit it because they thought there was a way to both honor and remix it slightly at the same time, which I can't honestly say is what's being done today, even with it sounding like it's the same thing. It's literally things being frankensteined back into popularity year after year like a perennial crop that saps the soil's nutrients, with our wallets and our imaginations to envision anything beyond the trauma of the times and endless remakes being the soil.
I don't say it like this to be all doom and gloom, but you have to admit at this point that it's really OD.
The origins of sampling 😊
@@axeslinger94 I think we give the past too much credit for being artistic. Theater at that point in history was very expensive and ones credibility as a composer or librettist was on the line with each opera, especially moving into the 19th century. The mid to late 18th century saw the proliferation of opera to the extent that it was almost "factory" produced by composers. Many getting only a few months to a few weeks to pop them out, each heavily depending on popular tropes, plot points and character archetypes for success.
I do agree that in our day and age, the velocity at which media is produced makes it overwhelming. It was commercialized back then too but now it's even more so with "create by comity" dominating many of our narrative driven industries. It's amazing to even look at a pop song and see 5 writers and another 5 musicians (different from the writers) in the credits with the end result being a spew of trite sentiments and music you've heard many times before.
That into is literally one of the best things (across all platforms and media) I have seen this year, even this decade of the 20s - SO GOOD!!!! 6 minutes in and I am already HOOKED 👌🏻
Dang, thanks so much 🥺💕 I worked really hard on it so I appreciate it
@@KhadijaMbowe honestly, I’ve always loved your videos for the incredibly high standard of their content - you’ve educated me in lots of ways, *thank you* As a longer-time watcher, it’s really cool to see your growth and evolution. When you mentioned that you believe great art can change your life, I totally agree - yours has changed mine, and many many other peoples too - thank you! ❤️
I know i cope through nostalgia, today is a work from home with my favourite cartoons in the background kind of day, but you did that intro so well it got me choked up.
Edit: I also start looking at nostalgia as reclaiming ignorance. The epithet "ignorance is bliss" sticks around because it is kind of true, and nostalgia plays on individuals remembering a time where they were unaware or ignorant of many things, so it may not necessarily be a retreat from whats going on so much as a desire to return the "bliss" we existed in before we were aware of it. I think thats why you see nostalgia playing on specific generational content as well.
Ooooooh excellent point. We romanticize the hell out of youthful naivete.
I like to rewatch old favorites movies, cartoons, and more things bc of the feeling it gave me the first time I saw it. I’m still trying to recapture that feeling every time adulting gets overwhelming.
I was excited for the intro when I read your description. But then got sad when I watched it. The past was great aesthetic & fashion wise. But for the Black & LGBTQ communities we are still fighting. Idk if we were treated worse back then or now. I feel like we have been purposefully stalled, when we think we’re making progress. Unfortunately, when I think about nostalgia, I can’t help but to think that my VERY TRAUMATIC childhood is connected to that.
Same here. Even when I experience nostalgia it feels largely false because it wasn't that things were that different compared to now, it's just that I wasn't aware of how bad it was. In my personal life, things have gotten better in some ways and worse in others, but I wouldn't want to go back. I barely made it through my childhood the first time, and I struggled and fought to get to where I am now. The future holds more struggle from what I can tell, but "going back" means losing everything I have fought for to this point.
So many good points you made! The romancing and “memory” of the past reminds me a lot of vintage UA-cam. They obviously fancy the vintage style, but I’ve never heard one say they would revert to the past. While yes, they’re largely white, they’re also disabled, women, and activists. Also, just watched OSP where they discussed Rome’s city of marble (I swear this is connected). It was beautiful and supposedly let Rome flourish; however, guess who romanticized that era? Mussolini-
He used that glory and rose tinted era to justify literal totalitarian fascism.
Essentially, we can appreciate the nice, but equally as important: lose the yikes.
I remember this dropping a while back but I’m happy to see it again. Half of my UA-cam Consumption is based on Nostalgia ESPECIALLY during the Pandemic.
I don't experience Nostalgia, every time I try I just feel crippling, mind rending panic. Not because I'm afraid of time passing, but because there isn't a single thing in my past that isn't tainted by trauma.
In the same boat. Sending love and solidarity
Wow that intro is amazing. My heart isnt moved easily, but those childhood memories clutched at my heart, then it cracked a little as the video continued.
💕💕💕
"C'était mieux avant" Nostalgia is universal because your brain knows that it can survive the past, but doesn't know if it can survive the future. But also, like I said earlier, we often see minorities in relation to time like Pokemons, where minorities don't exist in x or y generation, so it's easy to ignore the suffering of a minority in an era where they were silenced, and it's jarring for some when minorities are introduced and are prominent in fantasy versions of the past.
That intro gave me chills. Very well done! The intro summed it up way to good...
It’s kinda surreal to me that people are so attached to nostalgia. I think it’s maybe my ADHD but I struggle to remember the past without signifiers (photos, objects, etc.). You think this would make me more prone to nostalgia but even though I like remembering old things and the objects help, I get bored watching, reading, or listening to the same things again, so even media I like I can’t revisit all the time. I don’t really miss feeling secure because it was never real after I found out it wasn’t. I think I also didn’t experience a lot of typically nostalgic things because even though we weren’t poor we didn’t have cable TV for a long time and my parents made me play outside a lot, so I watch the things people were obsessed with now and I’m like “it’s not actually that great”. Idk, just interesting to me.
First off, I utterly enjoy you pronounce German words so perfectly. If you ever need free German lessons or need a place to crash when you visit Berlin, please let me know.😄
NOW, I do get nostalgic all the time, especially after moving to Germany..so probably mixed with homesickness(or as you so eloquently put it, Heimweh). But as you said, we see it with rose-coloured glasses , which becomes super problematic. This became very real when I started going for therapy and started naming the different kinds of trauma I went through that I had repressed by romanticising the past. Now I'm learning to mourn this past because I'm aware that it felt familiar and the present and future is terrifying but there's no point in crying over spilt milk. We just have to shape better memories from here on.
I stayed up until 10PM!!! Like a crazy person to catch the live... but then I fell asleep 15min in, so I am really glad you posted this. Thank you
It's so weird watching everyone going on and on about nostalgia when I have ever felt it like twice. I suppose to have an idealized version of the past you need to have 1. had positive experiences and 2. remember any of them aka not have suppressed all of the memories because they were surrounded in a dark context. I can't even remember what the two nostalgic things for me were, they were that fleeting.
I always feel so validated when Khadija puts out a video on something that’s been on my mind lately. Like maybe I’m a smart millennial auntie too😂
"It brings to my cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives." This explains so much for me! I get annoyed when people talk about the past as if it was some great time when in reality it was filled with just as much hatred and chaos as today. Like it really upsets me. Maybe I feel that way because I feel safer and more valued now than I did as a child. My childhood was not safe. I had a lot of negative experiences growing up and pretty much hated my life. And maybe that has stopped me from being able to experience nostalgia on the level that others do. I don't romanticize the past or wear rose-tinted glasses. I can't. And it almost offends me when others do because it's like they are dismissing my trauma. Hmmm
I think Brian Broome says it best:
"My uncle used to tell me that I would become more conservative as I got older because when you get older, you get "smarter".
He didn't use those exact words but the sentiment was the same. He used to say that "common sense" came with age. And that I would get all my "foolish ideas" out of my head as I got older.
Old people tend to believe in the innate fecklessness of youth.
But now that I'm at the same age that he was when he told me all that shit, I realize that it's not true at all. You don't necessarily get wiser just because you've gotten older. You don't necessarily know more about life. All you know is more about your own life. Not everybody else's. All you know are the mistakes YOU'VE made and how they affected you. And sometimes this information is valuable to pass along to younger people. But sometimes it isn't.
People get more conservative as the get older not because they've gotten smarter, but because they've become more afraid. More afraid for their financial stability. More afraid about what's going to happen to them. More afraid that the culture is leaving them behind because they don't understand what the hell is even going on anymore.
And that has nothing to do with the fecklessness of young people and everything to do with the way western culture treats old people. And that capitalism deems the old as useless and refuses to help take care of our elders in their declining years.
That fear has nothing to do with you becoming wiser. You're just trying to keep the world the same as it was when you were young because you feel safer there.
Stop telling young people they don't know any better. Sure, there are some things from which they could benefit from your knowledge. But not everything. Let them change things.
Because the world is under no obligation to make sure you still feel comfortable in it."
I like how beginning with the etymology of "nostalgia" is arguably a nostalgic act in itself. 😄
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes to all of this. How do you keep voicing the same thoughts I have, but in a much more articulate way than I ever could? Preach, Khadija.
I love how you broke this down for us. It makes complete sense. When I’m watching Buffy the Vamp Slayer or That’s so Raven sure, I may get a few flashes of actual memories from when I watched a specific scene but for the most part, it’s a warm feeling that I get. I did not think of it in such detail. We def need to be honest about the past and most importantly how it has shaped the present. We owe it to ourselves, but also to the humans coming up years after us. 🙌🏽♥️
Remakes have always been a thing sure, but it feels more like people's lives are getting flooded with content more than before because there is just that much more content. And more content means more rubbish to sift through to decide what to watch. It's gotten to the point where I rarely watch any new show without either a) the expectation that it will be rubbish (i.e. head empty no thoughts) or b) it was recommended by a friend. It's funny because I feel like I've always felt like I am someone who is always yearning (this is apparently a very sapphic thing to do), but that has never translated to wanting to actually go back to the past.
I agree a lot with that! I don't know that people necessarily want to go back because it was better but rather because they knew what to expect? Or were used to a certain structure, for example missing childhood because life was arranged for you vs adulthood where you're in charge. Really enjoyed this exploration of that feeling (former disease!), of nostalgia
I think this is a huge part of nostalgia. It's going back to a time where as a child, you experienced fewer worries and little responsibilities. Adults took care of everything and you were for the most part sheilded from real world problems or even problems in your own family. I remember time feeling slow when I was a child. The school year seemed to drag on. In a sense I was frozen in the moment. It was fun, simple, and very routine. The future was open and everything was possible.
But adults feel it all. Almost everyday can feel like missed opportunity. We see what is no longer possible for us. We have responsibilities and the world's problems are endless. I rarely feel in the moment anymore and my mind is always consumed with the past or future in some way or another. Not everyone had a great childhood, so I understand this doesn't apply to everyone. And the past was CLEARLY not better for most human beings globally. But I think nostalgia is more rooted in wanting a life and mindset full hope and few worries rather than a desire for any given past.
I love this video. I think it might be my favorite one on the internet because it explains the complex feeling that we have all been feeling. Especially my generation. GEN Z hasn't even gotten to live yet and we've been bombarded with so much and everyone is looking at us to try and fix it. Thank you for this.
There’s some good analyses on why nostalgia for times that were “simpler,” but may have come at the cost of the world we see now in why liminal spaces are so terrifying, but also create such a cascade of emotions in people
I’m only 17:28mins in. But I had to pause to unpack what I think I now understand with more clarity due to proposing that nostalgia could be memory. In my head memory was an aspect which influences nostalgia. But nostalgia and memory were separate. The word that trips me up when thinking about nostalgia is the word sonder. Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
So I had to take a moment. I made a hypothetical situation in my head where I asked if you could elaborate more on what you meant when referring to “memory”?
I had this thought:-
Memory is tangible
It’s something you unpack, share and can find opportunities to make and recreate. It’s something you can bring into the present moment with you.
Nostalgia is locked in a time capsule called the past
You can try and recreate memories
But when you feel nostalgic you know the memory, feeling, place, smell and feeling won’t remain a memory. But rather, a distant location that you know longer physically, intellectually, intuitively, psychologically and/or spiritually have access to.
I think, most likely unintentionally. The difference between memory and nostalgia is distance and/or Space.
nostalgia tho! I loved this video. I was thinking about nostalgia and how it may not be a direct personal memory but an idealized world in concern to like all these aesthetics that draw from nostalgia. the biggest one for me was cottagecore because as someone who grew up going to my grandpa's cottage every summer, the reality did not look at all like my cottagecore pinterest board. we did not wear cute prairie dresses or corsets there. that's a recipe for disaster. plus they'll get ruined. we wore old jeans and sweats. so like, I'm not even nostalgic for my actual childhood memories. I'm nostalgic for an ideal that comes from an idea of cottage life that probably came from people who have never actually been to a cottage. and what are those ideals? certainly not my interned grandpa making a claim on stolen land with a cottage.
What a powerful video-you capture the divide between those who questioned the system and began pushing for change after covid and those who wanted to revert to previous ways so perfectly. Thanks for all you do Khadija, can’t wait for another video and glad you’re doing well ❤
this except covid is still ongoing
I LOVE your take on this subject, it was a little cathartic tbh. You gotta watch A League of their Own!!! It's nothing like the reboot, they're completely different. You'll love the film too!
I was scrolling through Pinterest the other day and I had found a meme of a guy with a quote and he basically said “I believe that in the end, everything will work out. And if it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”
I work in animation, and all five film and TV shows I have worked on has been a remake or an adaptation of an existing IP. It's disappointing as an artist, but I'm over it because I'm grateful that at least I have a great job in these turbulent times. Studio executives just care about short term gains, and reusing their old IP is a sure fire way to get audiences to buy tickets. It's quite rare to have a project that puts art first.
I understood the difference between nostalgia and truly processing memories after I started an introspective journey a couple of years ago. I used to long for a sense of community and acceptance and love I never had, but for a long time I didn't want to accept that it wasn't there. So I would fantasize about what "could've happened" in the past instead what actually did or didn't, until I finally got to a better and more supportive environment and started to find my purpose. That's actually when the reality of my past started to hit and it was really scary at first. I saw there really wasn't much from back then I could romanticize except for some specific events and places I've traveled (and ofc some tv shows, like many ppl). The hard truth about my past (esp childhood/adolescence) is too much of it was filled with isolation, trauma, and really bad mental health issues that were never dealt with for a long time so I didn't know what was going on with me (that's probably part of what contributed to the isolation). The other thing was I was an immigrant kid in a very conservative town, but also regardless of where I was, the racism was always there. Thankfully, as much as I've had a lot of unaddressed issues with my family, they are educated, financially stable middle class that has, at least in literal terms, been able to stay intact. This has allowed me to work toward a better life, with opportunities that many don't get. But looking back, a lot of my life has been me working as hard as I could and exhausting myself bc I knew that was the only way to move to a better place and find a sense of community, & possibly even love.
It's scary, sometimes I fear I may fall back to where I was before. I know the future is bleak but, maybe bc my career path is so service-oriented and humanitarian, the future gives me way more sense of hope and warmth than the past, although no doubt that it's definitely very scary and bleak right now. But I really believe we can work through it, and actually more than anything, humanity needs to stay in the present to find ways to band together and help each other survive & fight for changes rather than wasting away and dwelling on the past bc we've lost all hope.
Ur last paragraph is jus too good
All of that is fantastic and I feel for the negative aspect in having felt the isolation. What often kills that crap is actually intelligently and boldly interacting & educating yourself with various cultures of people from all walks of life. A service based career doesn't always give that. Keeping an open mind as to what types of people you'll encounter and having a working moral compass keeping it in tact will certainly help.
For sure, I mean going to college & living in the big city, I’ve encountered more types of ppl than when I was back in my hometown. It certainly helps to give a more expansive view of the world and get you out of your head. Environment certainly has a big influence.
A Legaue of Their Own (the movie) is actually based on the real life All American Professional Girls Baseball League. It was a real thing the went from the early 40s to early 50s. Sadly most people only see it as a movie instead of as a historical event, which is sad :(
First off the intro was EVERYTHING!!
I'm curious if another aspect of nostalgia is that a lot of those times where people prospered where usually following up other periods of turmoil. Maybe that's a stretch, I don't know. I definitely am not trying to discount any points made... more like trying to add on additional ideas. To me, when we're struggling, I feel like it helps to go "Hey remember this time when things were bad? We made it through that time; we can make it through this one."
~shrug~
It affects famous people too, look at JLo and Ben Affleck lol
And on a personal note…
My nostalgia is about movies, when I was a child I was left alone quite often and for long periods of time and the only entertainment I had was a tv, so I just watched the same VHS movies every time. As I grew older I used that to cope with anxiety, and I’ve probably seen about 30 times the movie Hercules, so many other tv shows as well, I just feel good. I try to watch other things but nothing makes me as happy as those I’ve already seen and I know everything is safe
I wonder if this nostalgic boom is a cycling trend or is it because deep down we think we have no future? Me, personally, I have decided that I will consume mostly original content and media, and I say mostly, because it is of human to get attached to things.
33:00 that’s what happened to me. When the pandemic hit I was able to focus on creativity and overcome the deep depression that had me blocked for ten years. It was like I could finally breath
Man, that intro literally left me blown away and emotional
I’d also add if we look at the history of literature you can also see nostalgia and the comfort of reboots and sequels long before our time
Technically the Renaissance was way of the people to comfort themselves the past remembering old hero’s in a new light by using the way people used to write but for new audiences
Same goes for the Roman-fleuve in french lit from the 17 century that basically defines itself as book series with characters that get revisited time and time again to comfort the reader (especially female authors were known for these novels like Madame de Sévigné)
That intro was phenomenal. It’s been a while since I’ve cried, but Here I am, alone in my hotel room, weeping before I can finish your video!
i like that you brought up that it happens during specific times in history. i would have loved if you would have spent more time comparing what makes this time similar to that time
Loved this so much!!
I had a conversation with friends 2 nights ago, trying to articulate why Nostalgia can make me uncomfortable (usually when observing others who seem to rely on nostalgia for happiness).
This was such a timely upload, and explained so well the many aspects I couldn't articulate.
Incredible essay- That intro hit me.
I still remember that at some point, many of us wanted to introduce ourselves and make the Disney Channel Logo.
that intro gave me chills 🥲 great job creating it.
Lilo and Stitch always makes me bawl my eyes out.
Me too
THANK U KHADIJA I’m doing a semester long project on nostalgia and this is exactly what I needed to get me going! Love love love you sm for this one!
Never realized nostalgia was pathologized, or that it was related to homesickness and specifically the plight of immigrants/expats. I appreciate that you brought up therapy & Brene Brown. The politics of all this is suuuuuper important. All those people yelling "law & order"... if we actually returned to that era, their heads would explode because crime is wayyyyy down now (even post-pandemic). But as the memory-vs-nostalgia quote pointed out, nostalgia is fine with an imagined past. For a lot of people, it's hard to admit that certain things are actually much better now than they were back then.
Nostalgia is no longer a look back into an imagined past, as with the internet, glorified memories are often not only now tied to objects or media, but also preserved online forever. And with the increasing awareness of the destruction around us, it has become a coping mechanisim for current disarray in our lives, by not only looking back but also creating an obsession with curating the image of a collected, perfect lifestyle on social media in current time.
Oooh I love your thoughts close to the end about those who feel like they don't have a home adapting more to the future! I've been wanting to make a video about how we never will escape nostalgia, how it shows differently with each generation and how the future being as bleak as it is, we'll never stop looking back but love the points you raise here!
I'm moving from my home country tomorrow and I feel like I'm gonna die from nostalgia so watching today was really helpful in a way, I'm def revisiting this video when I leave this place.
only watched the intro so far and it is a piece of art that made me cry
this was wonderful, im in love with the feeling of this video. i’ve also picked up on the nostalgia bomb that is the media lately. hell, i fall into that trap. i can say on my end that i think we fall into these traps bc we feel that something has changed, and it has. what i miss is the freedom to not grow up before i should, less population, so more nature, and most importantly the community. communities used to be strongly connected. whether you wanted it or not, your mothers aunts best friends dog would see you doing something and you’d come home to an angry mom. hostile example, but you had the sense that people cared and you were seen. something has changed that
Can't wait for the next one. I felt like you were really starting to hit on something toward the end, and I would love to see what the next hour on this topic is gonna look like. Just keep drawing those parallels!
"Torpedoing us through the Great Filter" bruhhhhh I am so stealing that because it's BRILLIANT
As a woman, let's go beyond race for a min - any person who wants to live in a previous time gets the side-eye from me, because women had fewer rights in literally any time before now. That, and the effects of modern medecine cannot be understated. I used to fantasize about the 1800s for the romance, but the more I learned... it's so easy to forget the oppressed and pretend like it wouldn't be just shitty for the most of us.
For sure. It's fine to enjoy the aesthetics and art of a time, but it's important to understand the society that produced it and to reject the negative aspects therein. The danger comes when people boil down history and only see the aesthetics and ignore the failings. Basically, the problem lies in idolizeing the past
It's almost like nostalgia is a want to a return to a time when YOU were different... you weren't scared, you weren't depressed, you were empowered... not necessarily when the world was different.
Another stellar essay! I really loved the "Where on Earth is Home" segment and wanted to expand on that a bit. I feel like there're a lot of critiques (for valid reasons as you mentioned) of nostalgia as a desire to return to some rose-tinted era but I've never personally felt it in that way. Nostalgia feels to me not as a desire to return to the past, but a reminder that there WERE good moments within my past. Moments that fill me with warmth and comfort. Personal, cherished moments that are sometimes shared but always unique in how they impact you. Nostalgia tends to manifest as memories of interests I once held and there's a deep pleasure in reconnecting with those lost interests with the benefit of the wisdom and learning I've accumulated along the way. Anyway, lots to ruminate over with this one. Thanks again for your fantastic work, Khadija! :)
I'm living for the intro in this video!!!
Khadija, your videos never dissappoint and seem to only get better
Khadija.... the intro!!! I almost shed tears. I wanted to. Also, you're one of my favorite historians at this point!
Silent viewer and had to just commend you on the intro! You conveyed such emotion with that piece from the start to end. Bravo!!!!!!!
The intro had me crying. But as I listened to you saying how terrifying the present is and how we disassociate I felt less alone. I thought I was going crazy feeling this existential dread *every day* and checking out two screens and a twelve pack. Everything is terrifying. I feel like I'm in hell. You put that into words when you said it feels like we could slip through the great filter at any moment.
I'm not crazy. Thank you.
Diana, you've got winter blues
@@PHlophe it's not winter here
Diana, where are you based
My header on Facebook is a picture of a child in a park with the twin towers in the background, text splash across the top reads: "the world you were born in no longer exists"
Excellent cold opening.
Can confirm, “Our Flag Means Death” and “The Bear” are both great! Highly recommend!
Love this topic, love your perspective! Thank you.
I agree. Nostalgia and the ego are drugs. And the best line in this was “But I think dishonesty actually is one hell of a drug.” 38:31 Chef’s kiss.
"What people went what way". This was really obvious to me, but I never had the words to put to it. I feel as though many of my friends went a different way than me. As someone who is normally incredibly introverted, borderline a hermit, I found myself comfortable at first, but less and less so as the panini* went on. I think I came out the other side with much more of a sense of myself, and also a longing for building community around me.
i think its finally time to get your patreon
It feels weird to me talking about nostalgia, and even weirder to see the importance that it has now in media. I have fond memories of the comics that I read when I was a child, and I remember with a smile the cartoons, and Disney movies that I watched, but I want them to stay in the past. I never rely on nostalgia in the sense of wishing that those times come back or that those were better years. These good memories of mine were bright sprinkles in a general sensation of not-belonging (because autism, yay). I remember being happy at times, of course, but because of issues that already existed in me and that I was yet unaware of, I always ended depressed, heartbroken, losing all my friends, and starting all over, but learning. I can't muster the idea of going back anywhere because I had to learn and be better at so many things that I cringe at myself when I think about it.
Whatever I just hope someone can relate to this comment and it's not out of place.
I thank you Khadija for making the video and lighting this feeling up.
Excuse me but I wasn’t ready for that Showreel at the beginning. After this video, I’m checking out all of them.
I really love the intro you gave us. It's just a wow
James Somerton did a really good video about the marketing of nostalgia and the problems that arise when they ignore the bad parts of it. Highly recommend.
I'm nostalgic for a time when I had hope. Nostalgia for the future.
This intro got to me. Less than 5 mins in and im crying
Toxic nostalgia isn’t talked about enough and it should be. So as a queer person thank you for this.
" takes a deep sigh" girl....Damn the first 5 minutes were heavy af. I had to go but an icy because I needed something sweet after this one. Love the commentary, it stimulates💙
It was interesting to me to watch the intro since I didn't grow up in the US. It didn't trigger much emotion for me, while by reading the comments I know it was an emotional moment for most of the viewers
Great video!
I didn’t start to question all the obsession with nostalgia that everyone but particularly us gen z seems to have until fairly recently. I figured (specifically with the 90s nostalgia & obsession) we like it so much because none of us got to experience it ourselves so it’s like an intense interest in someone we could never know first hand. But then I thought about it more and read other people’s opinions and found the answer is quite simple. We are obbsessed with the past (even the recent past like 10-30 years ago) because that is a symptom of a generation of people not allowed to and/or unable to imagine the future. This was not exactly new knowledge for me because my whole life I have not really been able to imagine what the future of the world or my own life will look like due to the instability and uncertainty of our world, but I guess I hadn’t thought about it framed in that way and took in and celebrated the nostalgia for so many years uncritically. Recently, I have been finally able to allow myself to have hope for the future of the world and us as humans. I still am unable to really imagine and visualize the future which is quite sad but I have hope in constructing it and have no choice but to basically take life one day at a time. Watching your video has revived in me the notion of how important it is for us to consciously look to the future, not nihilistically, while not forgetting the past of course, but not living in it either. I would love to do more radical imaginative work whatever that may be and actively create a future worth living in and for, I’m just not sure where to start. But if there’s a will, there’s a way!
Damn, this into hit me HARD. I felt so many emotions. Thank you
That intro was amazing, was not prepared for all these emotions damn
I feel like my go-to answer for what time period I'd want to live in, I want to experience my childhood (the 90's and 00) as an adult. I want to see how that would change my opinion of how I saw things as a child and what thinks where out of my understanding.
As someone before the COVID pandemic, I never really thought about how me as a POC have been lucky with the people I have met and talked to through the years. I would say that I would want to live in the roaring 20s but other than that, I wouldn't want to live in any era before the 90s (maybe the 80s get a pass but doing research now, I wouldn't want to). Now being 24 and having to deal with basically scrounging for a simple room to sleep in, I was radicalized to think differently due to the COVID pandemic but I was always having that happen. Now, I've been working on work that tries to break out of nostalgia and shows what happens when you try to keep the nostalgia going.
I believe the issue of nostalgia is that it's a good indicator of something we enjoyed no longer being there but neo liberalism wants to keep the power of change to those who can pay the most and those people will want to keep their nostalgia going (1% owning the mass amount of wealth type of nostalgia). The only difference is that now, they don't need to hide it behind sentiments of being a good person they can just be rich and enjoy the passes that they've been given since the birth of America.
Why stopped saying nieces, nephews and nibbling, and aunties, uncles and pibblings? I miss that