The opening notes of Devo’s “That’s Good” begin to play. The synthesizer is instantly recognizable for anyone familiar with the new wave sounds of the 80s. A narrator tells us, “My mixtapes bend others to my will. It's a strange, almost cosmic talent.” She invites us to “go back to a time where summers lasted forever, when friendships were unbreakable, and any trouble was good trouble.”
“This year, I wanna ride a flaming stallion of delinquency!”
This is the setup for the trailer for Mixtape, an upcoming video game that promises to let players relive the “freedom of the teenage wasteland” through the “greatest hits” of being a teenager (according to the game’s developers). The trailer features scenes of rebellion, romance, and the bittersweet reflections of adolescence, all set to iconic tracks from bands like DEVO, Roxy Music, and Joy Division. It promises an adventure through the formative years of high school, filled with sneaking out, making out, and avoiding the law.
The way it sells itself, it comes off as the laziest, shittiest possible version of telling a story. If storytelling evokes an emotional response to the world the storytellers live in, then a nostalgia-centric story is about avoidance. Avoidance of time, growth, and change.
It sells well and promotes social reaction. Here’s how (and why)!
A Narrative Crutch
Nostalgia often serves as a shortcut to evoke emotions without doing the hard work of developing characters or plots. Instead, the nostalgia-heavy writer draws on the reader’s life, using various cultural signals, reminders, and images to allow the reader to fill in the blanks. Because “the blanks” are often large elements of the story, this approach gives us a shallow compilation of greatest hits rather than a cohesive and meaningful story.
This isn’t to say that people should not remix culture; it’s very much the opposite. I’m referring to relying on lazy emotional shorthand for “this is melancholic” or “you’re supposed to feel something here,” coaxing emotional payoffs where no work has been done to set them up.
We see this pretty constantly in various media today, but what made me write this is a trailer released for an upcoming game, Mixtape, which seems to fall into this trap. While this might initially attract players who long for the days of their youth (or younger folks who were “born in the wrong era”), the trailer doesn’t really indicate much substance beyond a striking (but familiar) art style and soundtrack that, frankly, I like (particularly DEVO).
En route to their final party together, a perfectly curated playlist draws them into dreamlike reenactments of their formative memories. Experience a variety of narrative vignettes exploring the pivotal moments that shaped them. It's the greatest hits of teenage friendship, from the first kiss to the last dance.
Featuring music from DEVO, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and many more.
Skate. Party. Avoid the law. Make out. Sneak out. Hang out.
- Mixtape marketing materials
Nostalgia-heavy narratives often fail to engage with the complexities of human life, past or present. They offer a simplified, romanticized version of social and individual history that can be comforting but is ultimately unchallenging. I don’t think looking back is automatically bad, but I do think there comes a point where it becomes fetishization.
The past is actually a source of rich, multifaceted experiences, but this approach reduces them to collections of clichés, digestible but ultimately hollow moments.
Reaction
Beyond its limitations as a storytelling device, nostalgia can also be reactionary. From a Marxist perspective, a reactionary viewpoint opposes significant social, political, or economic changes that communize (synonym: democratize) the social order. Reaction seeks to maintain or return to a previous paradigm, generally to benefit the ruling class(es).
Nostalgia fits very well within that paradigm, glossing over the complexities and struggles of the past in favor of “the warm fuzzies.” This can lead to an escapism fetish that encourages people to retreat into an imagined golden age rather than engaging with the present or envisioning a better future. This can be political and societal, like resisting the integration of a previously marginalized group, or can be individualized, where one might endlessly talk about (or post photos or videos of) the glory days (often about sports, either “mainstream” like football or “alternative” like skateboarding).
By portraying the past as a time of unblemished joy and stability, nostalgia-heavy narratives can subtly endorse the notion that current societal dynamics are deviations from a superior past – that we continue to drift further from one’s concept of a “good” society. This romanticization can foster resistance to progress, both personal and societal, and a desire to return to an idealized, often mythical, bygone era.
This is actually what South Park’s “Memberberries” are critiquing:
Living as if the best times are behind us is demoralizing and fosters a sense of detachment, nihilism, or even active hatred. This is particularly problematic when it intersects with political and social movements that seek to restore a perceived lost greatness, often at the expense of necessary societal advancements from which many benefit.
Commodification
Nostalgia becomes particularly interesting when it transitions from a harmless reflection on the past to a more toxic form. What I would call “toxicity” is when nostalgia starts competing with the present, portraying the past as inherently superior (again, at the individual or societal level). It’s at this point that nostalgia becomes ripe for commodification. Marketers and creators then capitalize on this longing for an idealized past, turning it into a product that can be sold.
I would also argue that in our current age, it's difficult to engage in anything moderately. We live in a world dominated by fandom and competitive consumption, pushing many to become hyperconsumers, excessively online, or even addicts.
Movies, music, and games like Mixtape outsource the labor of evoking emotions to their audience. This turns the audience member into a support worker for the supposed storyteller – and not in a communal, participatory way. When we buy a game, a movie ticket, or a vinyl record (because, of course, that's the best and only way to hear music!!!), we end up doing the work of earning the emotional payoffs for the narratives rather than relating to it. While our lives and memories will always inform how we interpret a story, instead of simply evoking them, this kind of media fully relies on familiar cues and meta-references to make sense
To put it a different way, here’s a paragraph that illustrates how these stories are constructed:
John sat in his living room, surrounded by (objects that held significant meaning). He picked up a photo album, its pages filled with (images from various periods). The room was filled with (posters, memorabilia, toys, and other collectible objects). He noticed his (old object) needed to be fixed, and took it down to the (indie bullshit store) to do so. Angela was the woman who worked there. She immediately really liked (John’s old object), finding it crazy that John had such a rare (item). But Angela had been hurt in the past, which is why she has this (hair color, tattoo, or clothing style). They almost don’t get together, but then they do, and their wedding is very (aesthetically indicative of their bullshit).
This paragraph relies heavily on the audience's ability to fill in the emotional and narrative gaps using their experiences and associations with the described objects and situations. It assumes a shared cultural context without engaging in any depth and development.
The absence of genuine thought and depth in nostalgia-driven narratives directly results from commodification. As nostalgia becomes a product, the cultural industry cycles through the subsumption of authenticity into marketable goods. This process simplifies and sanitizes complex and multifaceted experiences, reducing them to easily digestible and sellable forms. The products then are put out and become culture; people take them in and express themselves as authentically as possible, which is noted and subsumed again.
As culture cycles through this process, producing these simplified versions of stories becomes easier. The market becomes flooded with products that mimic the appearance of what a demographic deems authentic but without the underlying depth. This is why so many modern narratives rely on familiar cues and meta-references: they are quick and easy ways to evoke emotions without requiring significant creative effort or intellectual engagement.
This cycle perpetuates itself. As we consume this commodified nostalgia, it becomes culture, which becomes commodified nostalgia. Zoomers will be nostalgic for Stranger Things when it is intended to cater to Gen X and Millennial nostalgia. This dilutes culture, and often leads people to thinking “culture used to be better,” and they blame other groups of people rather than this process of commodification, bringing us right back to reaction.
Conclusion
While evocative, nostalgia becomes problematic when it transitions from a harmless reflection to a toxic obsession that competes with the present. This shift opens the door for commodification, where marketers and creators exploit our longing for an idealized past, turning it into a product to be sold.
Further, movies, music, and games like Mixtape illustrate how the labor of storytelling is outsourced to the audience, relying on familiar cues and meta-references rather than developing genuine characters and plots. This reliance on nostalgia-driven narratives results in shallow, unchallenging stories.
Commodified nostalgia becomes culture, leading to a cycle of consumption that dilutes genuine cultural depth. People become nostalgic for products whose purpose is to cater to nostalgia, creating a feedback loop that fosters a belief that “culture used to be better.”
It makes for shitty stories that teach people to withdraw and consume.
A perfectly stated, warrantedly brutal takedown. Nostalgia has been my enemy since 1988; when the commodified "boom" of "Classic Rock" radio and culture pushed the music culture I worked to be part of to the margins, from which it has never fully returned.
Nostalgia has been too long condoned for forging the past into a weapon against the present.