Was It Yesterday?

Description

Bringing together prominent transatlantic film and media scholars, Was It Yesterday? explores the impact of nostalgia in twenty-first century American film and television. Cultural nostalgia, in both real and imagined forms, is dominant today, but what does the concentration on bringing back the past mean for an understanding of our cultural moment, and what are the consequences for viewers? This book questions the nature of this nostalgic phenomenon, the politics associated with it, and the significance of the different periods, in addition to offering counterarguments that see nostalgia as prevalent throughout film and television history. Considering such films and television shows as La La Land, Westworld, Stranger Things, and American Hustle, the contributors demonstrate how audiences have spent more time over the last decade living in various pasts.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: History in Reverse
Matthew Leggatt

Part I: What Is Nostalgia?

1. Clearing Up the Haze: Toward a Definition of the "Nostalgia Film" Genre
Jason Sperb

2. Midcentury Metamodern: Returning Home in the Twenty-First-Century Nostalgia Film
Christine Sprengler

3. Touched by Time: Memories of the Faded Star
Daniel Varndell

4. Mimetic Tangible Nostalgia and Spatial Cosplay: Replica Merchandise and Place in Fandom's Material Cultures
Ross P. Garner

Part II: When Is Nostalgia?

5. A Nostalgic Exception: Warren Beatty's Star Performance in Rules Don't Apply
Steven Rybin

6. The Past as a Temporal Free-Zone: The Nostalgic 1970s in Contemporary Crime Film and Television
Fran Mason

7. On the Limits of Nostalgia: Understanding the Marketplace for Remaking and Rebooting the Hollywood Musical
Justin Wyatt

8. "I'm Going to My Friends . . . I'm Going Home": Contingent Nostalgia in Netflix's Stranger Things
Tracey Mollet

Part III: The Politics of the Past

9. A Confrontation with History: Re-Viewing the Horror Film Sources of Get Out
Vera Dika

10. "Why Can't We Go Backwards, for Once?" Nostalgia, Utopia, and Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One
Matthew Leggatt

11. Replaying Cowboys and Indians: Controlled and Commercial Nostalgia in Westworld
Christina Wilkins

12. Contradictory Reminiscences: Post-9/11 Cold War Nostalgia, The Americans, and Deutschland 83/86
Ian Peters

Part IV: Not My Nostalgia

13. Remembering It Well: Nostalgia, Cinema, Fracture
Murray Pomerance

14. Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be
William Rothman

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Télévision
• Film
• History of film
• Television
• Visual culture
• Popular culture
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438483504
• Langue: English

Extrait

Was It Yesterday?

Was It Yesterday?
Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television

Edited by
Matthew Leggatt
Cover image: Stranger Things , courtesy of Photofest.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Leggatt, Matthew, 1986– editor.
Title: Was it yesterday? : nostalgia in contemporary film and television / edited by Matthew Leggatt.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020058279 (print) | LCCN 2020058280 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438483498 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438483504 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—United States. | Nostalgia in motion pictures. | Television programs—United States. | Nostalgia on television.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.U6 W35 2021 (print) | LCC PN1993.5.U6 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/0973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058279
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058280
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: History in Reverse
Matthew Leggatt
Part 1 What Is Nostalgia?
1 Clearing Up the Haze: Toward a Definition of the “Nostalgia Film” Genre
Jason Sperb
2 Midcentury Metamodern: Returning Home in the Twenty-First-Century Nostalgia Film
Christine Sprengler
3 Touched by Time: Memories of the Faded Star
Daniel Varndell
4 Mimetic Tangible Nostalgia and Spatial Cosplay: Replica Merchandise and Place in Fandom’s Material Cultures
Ross P. Garner
Part 2 When Is Nostalgia?
5 A Nostalgic Exception: Warren Beatty’s Star Performance in Rules Don’t Apply
Steven Rybin
6 The Past as a Temporal Free-Zone: The Nostalgic 1970s in Contemporary Crime Film and Television
Fran Mason
7 On the Limits of Nostalgia: Understanding the Marketplace for Remaking and Rebooting the Hollywood Musical
Justin Wyatt
8 “I’m Going to My Friends … I’m Going Home”: Contingent Nostalgia in Netflix’s Stranger Things
Tracey Mollet
Part 3 The Politics of the Past
9 A Confrontation with History: Re-Viewing the Horror Film Sources of Get Out
Vera Dika
10 “Why Can’t We Go Backwards, for Once?” Nostalgia, Utopia, and Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One
Matthew Leggatt
11 Replaying Cowboys and Indians: Controlled and Commercial Nostalgia in Westworld
Christina Wilkins
12 Contradictory Reminiscences: Post-9/11 Cold War Nostalgia, The Americans , and Deutschland 83 / 86
Ian Peters
Part 4 Not My Nostalgia
13 Remembering It Well: Nostalgia, Cinema, Fracture
Murray Pomerance
14 Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be
William Rothman
Contributors
Index
Illustrations
1.1 Cub Photographer (Noah Matteo). Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013). Digital frame enlargement .
2.1 George (William H. Macy) and Betty Parker (Joan Allen). Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998). Digital frame enlargement .
2.2 Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), and Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson). Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, 2016). Digital frame enlargement .
3.1 and 3.2 Gloria Swanson on-screen in Queen Kelly (Stroheim 1929) and “in the flesh” in Sunset Blvd. (Wilder 1950) .
3.3 and 3.4 A haunted study: Negri in A Woman of the World (St. Clair 1925) and The Moon-Spinners (Neilson 1964) .
3.5 and 3.6 Reversing the rot: Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House (Whale 1932) and Titanic (Cameron 1997) .
3.7 and 3.8 Enduring love: Maria (Julie Andrews) dancing with the Captain (Christopher Plummer) in Sound of Music (Wise 1965), and Clarisse dances with Joe (Héctor Elizondo) in Princess Diaries (Marshall 2001) .
3.9 and 3.10 Enchanting: Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (Wise 1965) and Princess Diaries 2 (Marshall 2004) .
4.1 Hot Toys’ life-size replica of the Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers: Infinity War .
5.1 Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) sings a song as Hell’s Angels (1930) flickers behind her in Rules Don’t Apply (Warren Beatty, 2016). Digital frame enlargement .
7.1 Danny (Aaron Tveit) and Sandy (Julianne Hough) at the beach, the opening of Grease Live!
9.1 Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) falls into the Sunken Place: Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017). Digital frame enlargement .
10.1 Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Army of Darkness references, and more in Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, 2018). Digital frame enlargement .
10.2 Parzival (Tye Sheridan) watches an entry in the Halliday Journals in Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, 2018). Digital frame enlargement .
10.3 The Overlook Hotel, the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), as recreated in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One (2018). Digital frame enlargement .
11.1 Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) waking up in Westworld episode 1 (Jonathan Nolan, 2016). Digital frame enlargement .
11.2 Maeve (Thandie Newton) encountering the Westworld reception in Westworld episode 10 (Jonathan Nolan, 2016). Digital frame englargement .
13.1 Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) racing across San Francisco’s Bay Bridge to find the love of his life in The Graduate (Mike Nichols, Lawrence Turman/Embassy, 1967). Digital frame enlargement .
Acknowledgments
As I’ve learned since beginning this journey, a collection of this sort relies on the patience and hard work of a huge number of people. It would be difficult to thank them all here. No doubt, behind every chapter in this collection is a story and a list of people without whom the work may never have been completed. All I can do is offer a big thank you to all of these unnamed and kindly people. I owe a huge debt to the following people: my partner, Laura, for her love and good humor; Murray Pomerance, without whom there would be no collection at all; and Daniel Varndell, who has given up so much of his time during this journey to offer advice and feedback. I also want to personally thank all the contributors in the collection for making this a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Thank you for your professionalism and for putting your trust in me.
Introduction
History in Reverse
M ATTHEW L EGGATT
The entirety of our history is now being written at the speed of light, which is to say in nanoseconds, picoseconds and femtoseconds whereas the organization of time was previously based on hours and minutes. We no longer live even in a world of seconds; we live in a world of infinitely tiny units of time.
—Paul Virilio (113–14)

I N SPRING 2018, AS I SAT DOWN and began to pen ideas for how to open this book, I was suddenly struck by the uncanny symmetry between the worlds of culture and politics that I was inhabiting at that moment. My partner and I had decided to catch up on The Americans , a Joe Weisberg creation then in its sixth (and final) season. We were on the fourth season. For those who aren’t familiar with it, The Americans , an FX television show that first aired back in 2013, follows the exploits of two deep-cover KGB spies, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings (played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) and their family, as they attempt to navigate the perils of a job that involves numerous undercover operations all while trying to maintain the appearance of normality in 1980s America. Much of the plot for season 4 revolves around the couple’s attempts to smuggle biological weapons being developed by their US adversaries out of the country and to the Soviet Union. Strange, I thought, given that at that very moment Sergei Skripal, a former Russian counterintelligence operative for the UK government, and his daughter, Yulia, lay recovering in a hospital some weeks after they had been the target of an attempted murder by shadowy figures in the Kremlin (or so the UK government insisted). That this attack had happened in Salisbury, England, using a military-grade nerve agent in broad daylight some fifty miles away from my quiet hometown on the south coast of England was like something out of a fictional realm. The event, which dominated the UK media for about a week before disappearing, will no doubt be little more than a footnote by the time you read this. Like so many similar political instances, these events demonstrate the increasing ephemerality of the public memory. As Virilio suggests, history is being written at the speed of light. How could one possibly remember?
There were more uncanny similarities to be observed. As Ronald Reagan’s rosy cheeks appeared on the television screen in season 4, episode 5, giving his March 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative speech—the family in The Americans are often shown gathered round watching the fortieth president of the United States address the nation—I was reminded that a Reagan-like impostor currently occupied the White House. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, I was struck by Donald Trump’s boast in the debates that his corporate tax cuts would be the biggest since