Photos
Dear Nostalgia,
Congratulations are in order, I suppose, as New York Magazine is reporting that you have won another decisive battle in your war against pop culture via your recent success earlier this week in the Teen Nick throwback ’90s programming block.
According to Nielsen, the midnight-to-1 a.m. combo of All That and Kenan and Kel drew roughly 600,000 viewers (of all ages) Monday, compared to the 374,000 viewers who caught Lopez Tonight on TBS in the same hour. It also bettered the 559,000 viewers who caught an Awkward rerun on MTV at midnight, as well as the roughly 500,000 people who checked out reruns of The New Adventures of Old Christine and HIMYM on Lifetime. Considering Teen Nick doesn’t have anywhere near the profile of those other networks, its after-midnight performance can only be called extraordinary.
Congratulations, Nostalgia, and also fuck you. You are the worst and you are ruining everything. Let me put it this way: it was not until YOU came along that I felt compelled to defend the noble sanctity of Lopez Tonight! At least he is trying to MAKE something. That is how terrible you are, Nostalgia, a blight, a scourge, and you must be destroyed.
People have always enjoyed/struggled with you, Nostalgia. It is literally, like you, nothing new. And in moderation, and depending on the format, around a campfire say, or on a lonely night, indulging in you can be enjoyable (or enjoyably unenjoyable) and meaningful. But lately, Nostalgia, you have mutated like the disease in that movie about diseases. Although it kind of goes against what you are all about, you have become something new. You are far more dangerous and insidious than you have ever been before, and you must be killed before you kill pop culture.
I’m talking, Nostalgia, about your new role as an empty surrogate for actual creativity. There was a time when you were something to hold hands with on a trip down Memory Lane, but now Memory Lane is paving over Today Street. It’s one thing for a movie or a TV show to give a self-aware nod to its influences and those who came before, but now 20 year old TV shows for children that were kind of corny and garbage in the first place are beating out contemporary shows by a margin of 2-to-1? You are behind every remake. You are behind every bad idea being given a second chance. We have abandoned the knowing references (which were become problematic in their own right) for a whole-hog return to the past. But that is no way to build a future!
The more you succeed, Nostalgia, the less inclined people will even be to try anymore. But if no one tries anymore than there won’t be anything contemporary to feel nostalgic for in the future. Ultimately, Nostalgia, you are a poorly imagined virus that will burn itself out along with everything else if left to your own devices. Yikes! Even you would be able to see how this is a serious problem if you weren’t too busy looking backward. (BOOM!)
Enough, Nostalgia. Down here, it’s our time. It’s our time down here. That’s all over the second we ride up Nostalgia Troy’s bucket.
Sincerely,
The Cast of Hey Dude.
 |
 |
You Might Also Like
 Now We Will All Have Seen This Video About A Teenager With… | The Bigger Biggest Loser |  Mentos, The FAILmaker | Prancercise: A Fitness Workout |
Leave a Reply
Sign inSign in with FacebookYou must be logged in to post, reply to, or rate a comment.
I can’t wait until I will read this letter again 10 years from today and miss Videogum.
To be fair Gabe, you were a kid before fun was invented by Alfred T. Fun in 1634.
“The only cure for the disease of nostalgia is the drug of originality”
~ Hunter S. Thompson, probably
I’m actually personally offended that Hey Dude has not been included in the Nick lineup. So there’s that.
But how much different is this than watching old episodes of Freaks and Geeks when you can’t sleep? Other than Clarissa didn’t really hold up as well as I thought it would.
Sabrina The Teenage Witch, on the other hand, still awesome
I feel the opposite- I actually enjoy Clarissa now more than I did when I was a kid. Sabrina on the other hand is kind of a nightmare, apart from that one episode with the Violent Femmes.
I always found Hey Dude to be a little wild and a little strange.
Especially when you make a home out on the range.
I actually thought Clarissa held up better than I expected. I was pleasantly surprised. I am dying to see how Hey Dude, Welcome Freshmen and Salute Your Shorts hold up.
Is Hey Dude coming back? I really thought it wasn’t.
Hey Dude just came out on DVD if you really have an itch to watch it again.
I liked Clarissa Explains it all because I had a total crush on Sam. Well, the equivalent to what a crush feels like, but before you know you’re gay, so it just kind of feels like “I want to hang out with Sam, like, a lot. Like, he’s just so cool you know?… Hey you want to compare penises?”
I had that with Cole Sprouse.
I was all set to defend nostalgia (mainly because I do enjoy re-watching Pete and Pete (SURPRISE) and Fraggle Rock), but in the face of the Transformers move and the Smurfs movie, there really is nothing to say.
Pete and Pete is just a legitimately good show and will fight anyone who says differently.
Pete and Pete is amazing.
I will fight at your side. In fact, the lack of Pete and Pete in this whole thing offends me more than nostalgia offends Gabe, probably.
I also agree that Pete & Pete is great!
FRAGGLE ROCK 4 LYFE!
Nickelodeon is definitely part to blame here (someone should cover them in Gak for this programming block), and definitely Michael Bay, and seriously, fuuuuck that guy (whoa now, stay with me here, Monsters).
But in my opinion, the real culprit of The Modern Nostalgiageddon has got to be YouTube. Ever since that beautiful disaster website started letting people upload their own videos, people have understood that freedom to be a wide-open invitation to convert and upload their old VHS tapes full of poorly-recorded television shows and movies and commercials and whatever else Your Mom used to record for you when you lacked the fine motor skills required to operate a remote control, or anything other than a Game Boy. Once all that stuff is inside your grown-up, well-adjusted brain, it is Game Over for most of your wonderful fond memories, shot in soft focus as if Vaseline was all smeared over your mind’s eye lens.
Cliff’s Notes: For the love of God, Don’t search YouTube for “Stick Stickly.” Leave him alone. He stays in Memoryland, on a throne he has rightfully earned.
I searched youtube for “Stick Stickly” and this is what I got: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDzt6yI3Dw8
Mailman, look what you have done.
You need to search for Stick Stickly Nickelodeon. You can even find the full length special where Stick went on a quest to find his long lost brother! *Spoiler: He found him on top of the Twin Towers.
Pete & Pete is still my favourite show. That holds up better than expected. To anyone who hasn’t watched it as an adult, it is highly recommended!
My problem with nostalgia is there are certain things I did not care about as a young person, like say Pokemon, and now everywhere I look it’s Pokemon, and I still do not care about Pokemon.
I loved Pokemon as a kid, but now I could give a care about Pokemon.
My problem with you is that you were a kid when Pokemon appeared. I was in college. OMG I think I hate you ):
Power Rangers were huge when I was a kid. I mean, not the Power Rangers themselves, I’m pretty sure they were normal-sized. But the Power Rangers phenomenon was exceedingly prominent back then. However, at the time, I was ALREADY too much of a manly man to even consider being into the Power Rangers. For example, I strong-armed God Himself into giving me a lumberjack mustache for my fifth birthday.
Also, I pointed out how racist their suit colors were, WAY before it was mainstream to do that. #MACHOHIPSTER
The original idea behind Power Rangers is so great though. “Let’s take this Japanese crazyness, dub it, and the intercut it with some really cheap high school sets out of the original context! We’ll be rich!”
That has almost NEVER panned out like American producers have hoped. To wit:
Yeah, Power Rangers is the worst. Even at age 5 I could tell it was stupid. Still, I watched it because of peer pressure. Don’t do it kids!
If anyone ctrl+F’d this page for “Pokemon” because they were looking for someone to trade with via the Internet (hello, it’s 2011, Black and White Version, get WITH IT) just leave me your friend code
Andrew battle me on Friday
0518 6576 1364
I can’t get over the fact that there’s a period at the end of your comment. What is the world coming to??
I like how the last paragraph includes a knowing nod to the ‘Footloose’ remake. It’s our time now! That film’s gonna be great because I love the original. Popcorn anyone? #Facetious
I like how the last line is a reference to a movie that holds immense nostalgic power over me. I believe the irony was intentional, but maybe it would be funnier if it weren’t.
Anyway, here is an artist’s rendering of me and nostalgia:
“Why does everyone like Goonies? It’s two-dimensional, unrealistic, and crassly manipulative.”–me at 15
I’m only nostalgic for times before I was born.
Man, Keenan and Kel is great. I don’t care. Tuba-Phones 4 life.
Who loves orange soda?
Kellll loves orange soda…I do I do I do I do-ooh.
I prefer “Kenan & Kel” because I’m a snob.
Can I just give a shout out to nostalgia’s ugly cousin? Of course, I’m talking about nostalgia for things you’re not old enough to remember.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for going back and watching/listening to/reading things from before you were born. There was a lot of great stuff that happened before you were born! But have you ever talked to someone who was nostalgic for something that you know went off the air before they could possibly have seen it? All the downvotes to them.
This x 1,000.
Gabe, I just heard back from the guys at Kodak. They are passing on Videogum as the agency to represent the Carousel.
Ah, I remember before nostalgia was invented. Those were good days, good days…
I disagree with your thesis here, and would blame the death of creativity on people failing to be creative – not on nostalgia.
Do you remember that episode of the Golden Girls when my namesake, Betty White, in her landmark role as Rose Nylund, was trying to help Dorothy write the song about Miami, and all Rose could come up with to rhyme with ‘Miami is nice’ is either ‘twice’ or ‘thrice’ followed by repeating the first line two or three more times, as appropriate?
Nostalgia had NOTHING to do with that creative failure, and I dare say creative ineptitude has not been showcased more hilariously or touchingly since that television episode SIR, I DO REST MY CASE.
Because obviously there hasn’t been any good new TV shows in the last ten years.
Go back to St. Olaf, you hippie.
I would, but I just started re-watching Arrested Development, and I suspect that after I’m finished I’m going to get into a VERY deep Buffy the Vampire Slayer groove. I just can’t get myself out the door – you should see the state of my refrigerator.
So you’re watching the samizdat, basically?
Gabe, if you were a nerd and played videogames, this generation of interactive entertainment would drive you, literally, insane.
*Dons nerd hat and rides away on Epona*
^ ^ I think that is Epona’s song, if I remember correctly. I need to play Zelda 64 again.
Damn! The characters I typed didn’t show up! Anyhow, Up Left Right, Up Left Right
marry me and let’s go fishing. i know where to find the sinking lure.
Today street is for the 8-10pm time slot…I’m ok for Nostalgia taking up my midnight to 1pm or DVR time
make that 1am
way to explain it all clarissa
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Gabe. This is why I read Videogum. Oh man, I love this so so so so much.
Is it weird to think that if you met Gabe, you’d probably, immediately become BFFs?
You could play chess together.
Are you asking that question of yourself?
Also, I love this so so so so much as well. The unchecked nostalgia running wild these days is probably the worst thing about these days. (Minus, like, earthquakes or tsunamis or guys murdering entire summer camps and stuff.)
It’s only weird if you think about it everyday for a couple years, kind of desperately. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a… certain… shrine to attend to.
Girl Talk, Smurf movies, SNL skits evoking early 90s R&B, Bel Biv Devoe performing on Jimmy Fallon, Indiana Jones sequels 20 years after the fact, Transformers, Internet Mashup Culture, the phrase “Raped My Childhood”, fucking Battleship movies, YouTube videos depicting a cosplaying Mario and Luigi, pop culture cosplaying in general, ComicCon, fucking Candyland movies, the Internet in general.
I love a decent chunk of the items on this list. But what happens when that becomes your everything? What happens when films like Source Code and Meek’s Cutoff are buried under the weight of the Transformers and the Smurfs? What happens when a gajillion people go to see G.I. Joe: The Wrath of Whatever We Don’t Even Know Anymore and six people go to see The Tree of Life while three walk out halfway through because Brad Pitt doesn’t take his shirt off?
This is seriously dangerous. I’m not exaggerating. Great societies can be assessed by their culture, and when our culture is a poisonous snake eating its own fucking tail, what do we have? We have poison, and it’s all we know. We have the memories of something we half-remember meant something to us a long time ago, and we regurgitate it through our understanding of what things now are, which is a half-rememberance of things that meant something to us long ago.
We’re fucked. We’re fucked as a culture. It’s over, and the very beast that perpetuates this nonsense (the Internet), is really the only way out. Pop culture is done, it’s Thundercats and Where’s Waldo from here on out. But if you care, you can find original ideas. You can find something that articulates where we are right now, or where we were and how it relates to where we are. They’re there, and I believe as long as we have living brains floating around, they’ll always be there. Problem is, those ideas reach fewer and fewer people each year as we climb deeper into this chasm.
So please, don’t see Battleship or Smurfs, Too!: I Smurfed In My Pants! or Paul Fart: Here’s Some Talking Chipmunks. Go see something new. Don’t watch reruns of Hey Dude or Dallas or Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Pete and Pete. Those shows might still hold up today, but in the age of online streaming, your click is like a vote for what you’d like to see in the future.
In the near future, if you click in the wrong direction a few times, George Lucas will rape your childhood all over again.
Counterpoint: Music
I don’t care what you say, I’m going to listen to Talking Heads records even if they came out long ago even if there is newer more creative music coming out. Full Disclosure: I listen to new music, but my point is that you can’t go on an all-out Nostalgia Attack just because Nick aired some fucking re-runs.
Are they re-making All That and bringing it back with new episodes? (like, really, are they? I don’t know, I hope not!) Because if they were, THAT is the problem I see. It’s taking old things that we feel nostalgic toward and making them NEW THINGS!
BUT THAT’S WHY I LIKED IT. BECAUSE IT WAS OLD! NOT BECAUSE IT WAS NEW!
I think nostalgia is perfectly healthy and a means to make somebody feel good inside. WE SHOULD ALL BE SO LUCKY TO HAVE SOMETHING that makes us feel better about our lives. And if that is watching an old ass episode of Roseanne on Netflix (I’m looking at YOU Other Gabe) then go the fuck for it! Disease my ass!!
So if I want to listen to an album that was released in 2001, or hell, go see a concert of a band that reunited that USED to be my favorite band, what is wrong with that? I think the only problem is when those old bands try to make NEW music, then it get shitty & bad. Or when they take old movies and make them NEW, shit gets bad. When they take OLD actors and try to make them NEW actors (betty black)
Nothing is wrong with looking back on things in your life that made you feel good. That’s how I interpret Nostalgia. Trying to profit on nostalgia is the crime. Case Closed!
(All we get when we die is nostalgia the end)
Nostalgia in reference to music is a double-edged sword tho. Yes, everyone should go back and listen to classic albums and bands, because great music never dies. But on the other hand, nostalgia is also to blame for the current glut of absolutely wretched, auto-tuned pop/hip-hop/house “remakes” of every terrible pop-song from 1984 to 2005.
(For the record, I do everything in my power to never listen to pop radio, I’m just subjected to it everyday at the gym, and it makes me want to throw weights at people.)
Hey, life is shitty and hard. Let us go back to a time when it was fun and breezy once in a while. Nostalgia is nothing new. It’s part of why Shakespeare, the Greeks and the Bible have stuck around so long.
Yes. That is why we still read Oedipus Rex. For the nostalgia.
Hm, yes…this why all of the movies nominated for best picture over the past few years have all been remakes and no one takes the time to appreciate any original modern films. yes, what you describe is bad, but i think we’re a long way from that point….a very long way.
jeez, i’ve read videogum since it started and i almost never comment yet your writing off of bell biv devoe’s music as mere nostalgic enjoyment sent me over the edge. THE EDGE I SAY.
also, source code sucked. let it be buried.
(it is terrifying me to leave this comment because i know That One is kind of a bigwig around here and I am a mere facebook user who refused to start an account when they made that switch so long ago)
I likewise thought Source Code was way overrated. Also, in response to ‘we’re fucked as a culture’; Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Lost, Dexter, Arrested Development ETC. are all modern pop-culture icons to varying degrees and are all TBS Very Good. I think a lot of the originality in entertainment (ironically considering what prompted this post) is coming from TV now, instead of movies, and I think that’s OK.
I was pretty much with you until you said to not watch reruns of Pete and Pete. Then I stopped reading.
tl:dr = Marc Summers never answered young Gabe’s fan letter.
What Would You Do? For love and attention from your boyhood hero.
Unfortunately, Ken Ober died and they haven’t invented a Remote Control that reanimates the dead or my broken heart.
Sometimes I read old WMOAT post through a thin veil of nostalgia.
I made this for “The Cast of Hey Dude”
So they’re NOT coming back? I kind of blame Ben Stiller for this, if only because his big Dodgeball residual money is probably keeping people from remembering why we sort of remember his wife from back when we were babysitting…
Ironically, I’d stay home to watch the Ben Stiller Show around the same time. And when I lived in NYC and didn’t have a DVR yet because they were expensive, I’d go to the Museum of TV and Radio to watch old episodes of that show. Mostly because Bob Odenkirk as Charles Manson is one of the greatest things in the whole world.
I would expand that thought to say Bob Odenkirk is one of the greatest things in the whole world.
“I’m talking, Nostalgia, about your new role as an empty surrogate for actual creativity.”True that x infinity, but didn’t VG just post a shot-for-shot remake of an LCD Soundsystem video using Legos?
I believe people of my generation (Xish) were the first to radically revive their childhood — way beyond what Baby Boomers did. And the internet, which quickly exhausts ‘content,’ has only fueled the cycle. This sort of scary cultural closed loop of endless re-referencing has ensured that the distinction between the past and present collapses. They don’t call the internet the Forever Machine for nothing. Remember when we simply lost touch with marginal acquaintances? Remember when we actually forgot about marginal TV shows or celebrities? If you’re 25 or younger, you probably don’t. I’m older than that and even I’m beginning to forget forgetting.
But Baby Boomers kind of rebelled against the values that created the seminal shows of their childhood. (And they also rebelled against the Smothers Brothers, which were way more subversive than the hippies. Morons.) And those early kids shows were boring as hell. Plus, when they started having kids in the 70s or so they had great Muppet and Sesame Street and other cool stuff to watch that had jokes for them and their children. Then Reagan passed that law that didn’t force children’s programming to be educational and we got the candy/sugar cereal/toy shows of the Saturday Morning era…
Nick is interesting to me because it went from crap like Kids Incorporated (or was that Disney?) to scripted shows just for the Tween demo. I was old enough to enjoy it ironically, though thought Clarissa was an interesting homage to the RIOT GRRRL movement of the 90s in a palatable, non-threatening way (though the whole mass culture taking over and owning grunge culture itself was hilarious) ala Sassy Magazine. That whole time was a very distinct change in culture for tweens, teens and young 20s… not unlike the late 60s and early 70s and I think the nostalgia for it is very similar to having 85 classic rock stations growing up.
That being said, I watched a TON of 70s game shows and sketch comedy shows and old TV when I was home sick and I really wish you could get that on demand or Hulu or whatever. Now I have to watch American Dad to get my Paul Lind fix.
That being said, I’ll never forget the time around 1999 that Hallmark or the like started rerunning ALF and it was fucking painful to watch.
If you want to watch old game shows, watch the Game Show Network in the early morning or late night hours. Old school Family Feud, Card Sharks, Match Game, etc.
I dunno. I think the Internet has certainly made it more prominent/apparent, but we reached the nadir of postmodernism way before the wild online tubes. The only thing that seems drastically different is that then pastiche was often purely self-referential (ie, emotionless) whereas now–perhaps because the memory of the reference is so prevalent–many references are embedded with sincerity or genuine affection for the thing of the past. One can be critical of that sincerity I suppose, as it opens the person feeling it up to manipulation through things like remakes, rereleases, calculated references, etc, yet that strikes me more as a sin of the person doing the exploitation. I don’t know that we should necessarily criticize the affection people have for something even as silly as a kids Nickelodeon show. I’d much rather have society openly appreciate goofy little things from their past–even if it meant their inevitable recycling–rather than acting indifferent towards things they liked because they’ve “grown out of it.”
Which isn’t to say it has to be A or B. I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about this.
Max, I don’t think the nostalgia wave is as postmodern as people would like to presume. I think it’s actually postmodernism turned infantilism. Take a classic example: there are people in their 30s or older who spend A LOT of time working on Star Wars crafts projects (see: every other entry on Laughing Squid). These are often clever, but ultimately weird and empty — a dead vacuum of creative impulse. Are these people somehow commenting on or exploring the motivations of their backward glance? Or are they actively trying to recapture something? And what is their medium of childhood’s return? A piece of mass culture created to sell dolls or soft drinks or whatever. In mythology Mnemosyne (memory) was the mother of the arts and sciences, not the mother of Narcissus.
Replying to this late, so I don’t know if will you see it but oh well.
Almost as soon as I entered my comment, Jeb, I wanted to add something to the effect you’re making. I don’t think I was saying that nostalgia is exactly the same as postmodern, but I would argue that it is a postmodern condition in which we look backwards instead of unifying forward. Postmodernism itself, though, I think was a–eventually vapid–intellectual exercise (here I will admit my own bias in that most postmodern architecture after Venturi, Rossi, etc became a kitschy game of archetypal form referencing that has soured me on the movement as a whole) while nostalgia comes from a desire to feel. That “desire to feel,” I would argue, exists within everyone and simply manifests itself in different ways but is possibly most prevalent as a desire to be entertained.
Wanting to be entertained is the constant source of Nostalgia’s frequent belittling of modern tastes. The comments of “Thumbs up if you think Clarissa is way cooler than iCarly!!1″ to “Popular music in the 60′s was smarter and better than the trash now,.” (tossing aside the objective validity of such statements) are comments of nostalgia; people both recalling being entertained and, whether explicitly or not, wishing modern things to entertain them to the same degree. As a response they return to the things that once did bring enjoyment to them in that way. What I was originally saying is that I don’t think I can begrudge them of that.
You make a good point, though, about the “dead vacuum of creative impulse,” and I agree that nostalgia can reach a point where it’s unhealthy. Yet everything can. The person spending days slaving over his Star Wars diorama doesn’t strike me as any less “weird and empty” as the person spending all week prepping his fantasy football roster. If we could somehow take away nostalgia and remove it altogether from the equation, I don’t think we would suddenly find ourselves up to the eyeballs in Rembrandts and Picassos. I think those people who turn to nostalgia for entertainment and solace would find something else. Ultimately, I think we move further away from a discussion on the merits of nostalgia to observing and critiquing a symptom of the modern human condition.
Apologies for the length and the rambliness.
Well, if Nickelodeon had just released these shows on DVD or Netflix, people wouldn’t have pined for them to put them back on the air.
That said, I hate when I talk to people that are 4-5 years younger than me and their idea of Nick nostalgia is garbage like Rocket Power and The Wild Thornberries. Awful, awful, children’s programming.
You bite your tongue. How can you NOT enjoy the concept of 3 12-15 year old kids who were pro level at skateboarding, snowboarding, ice, roller, and field hockey, roller blading, surfing, soccer, football, BMX, mountain climbing, pogo-sticking, freestyle walking, and mostly any other XXXXTreme sport that you could think of. THAT is entertainment.
On the one hand, kudos to Nick for knowing their audience and not presuming that 20 year old kids want to watch The Cosby Show and Cheers. On the hand hand, fart noises.
I am 20 and want to watch those shows all the time because they are fantastic.
A half-hour of Clarissa helps the “unemployed, broke, and depressed” reality-medicine go down. The present is horrible. The future is bleak. When I was 10, it wasn’t. It’s nice to be reminded of a time when the country was waging one war the Middle East and the weight of the world had only just begun to rest on my little shoulders.
Your example has Kenan and Kel beating out Lopez Tonight, some crappy rerun of some crappy show on MTV, and reruns of middling and somewhat above middling sitcoms on the Lifetime network, and what is the problem here? How is that not just an awesome a slap in the face to the other networks for putting out shitty tv shows? (I know the ones on Lifetime aren’t necessarily crap but the other two are enough crap to balance them out). Kenan and Kel might not be the best, but oh man does it beat out everything MTV has ever shown on their entirely garbage network, and I don’t blame nostalgia as much as I blame the shitheads running MTV not caring about quality because dumb teenagers are going to watch it regardless.
Pretty sure the Puppy Bowl would beat out Lopez Tonight. Or maybe that channel on cable with rotating rings on a lazy susan.
it’s not an empty surrogate, nostalgia has a lot more to do with our state of mind now than you are giving it credit for. I personally love the 90s nostalgia and the internet art that comes with it but I’m too drunk to defend why i love it so much so I will just say this:
[img]http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_liwixiS5Va1qzk2upo1_500.jpg/[/img]
ughhhh i swear to got that was the lame as coding that worked here last time. Anyway that was a ref to nostalgia, that early 2000s BB forum tag.
“You look like Babe Ruth’s gay brother, Gabe Ruth, haha,” said the Future Monster, who was 10 in 2009 when he first saw Knocked Up, the edited version on TNT. “You remember that movie, right, Old Man Gabe?”
“[MUMBLE MUMBLE] FUCKING [MUMBLE] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] GODDAMN [SOMETHING SOMETHING] GOOP,” screamed Old Man Gabe, as they put a Hannibal Lecter mask on him and wheeled him to his new home on Shutter Island. “GOOOOOOOOOOOPPPMMMMMphhppphhffffffffff.”
Sometimes I do get nostalgic for the 90′s and then I remember that I was a depressed teenager that slept 16 hours a day that grew into a depressed twenty something that slept 16 hours a day. So….. yeah.
You know what I miss? Drive-in movies.
This is what happens when one meta mates with another meta.
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see
I don’t think nostalgia is that bad. Did you see the recent remake of True Grit? Did you know that The Adventures of Pete & Pete is actually kind of genius and still holds up extremely well? Wet Hot American Summer was a nostalgic look at 80′s summer camps and summer camp movies, and also a very funny movie. Sure, for every True Grit there are five other awful remakes out there, but isn’t that kind of like the typical ratio of bad-to-good movies? 5:1 seems right, but I dunno, I’m not a mathy person.
On a strictly factual note, the argument that we’re suddenly in some super nostalgic time in our culture is kind of ridiculous and just wrong. Nostalgia has always run rampant, forever and ever. People in the 60′s pined for the simplicity of the 50′s. People in the 70′s wished they were in the 60′s again so they could be cool. In terms of culture, movies have been being remade almost literally since movies were invented. Before board games, filmmakers were turning every classic book in existence into a movie. Rick from Casablanca (best movie of all time no nostalgio) was nostalgic as a mofo. “We’ll always have Paris,” right? If he’s cool with it, then we all should be, too.
BECAUSE HE’S HUMPHREY BOGART.
DOWN AT THE ROUNDHOUSE!
Hi, I run a 90s Nostalgia tumblr called fuckyeah1990s.tumblr.com and I’ve been on the nostalgia train for awhile now and I’d just like to tell everyone, from someone that has been blogging about the 90s every single day since Dec of 2010, that Gabe is 100% right here. I’m miserable, I hate the 90s now, and I kind of want to die. Nostalgia is the worst.
An admittedly delayed reaction here, but did anyone else notice the WMFU sticker in the background of the image for this post? It is making my brain hurt, and not just for the color scheme. I demand an explanation!
err, WFMU. my bad.
My, my, Tom Scharpling was such a nice looking young lady back then.
So we can all assume that Clarissa grew up to be Julie from Cincinnati, right?
I agree with everything that has been said here. I saw a discussion of this on Twitter and agreed everything that was said there too. Bottom line (as someone stated upthread) – the world is shit right now, and people flock to nostalgia for comfort. It’s not too different from emotional eating. If they put out adult sized Sit-N-Spins and/or Big Wheels right now, I’d be all over it. And since nothing else is selling (ask me, my husband owns a store), you can bet that corporate America is jumping all over any and everything that will sell. The remakes can go to hell, though.
This post totally reminds me of my favorite episode of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.
Mostly I don’t think things are better or worse than they were before. Some people said something blahblah Michael Bay sucks, and that is a very good point! And someone else said blahblah Lost is good original programming today, and that it is also a very good point! And I think we’ve always had this sort of struggle between what’s old is new again and actual originality, but it’s hurting our little blog-happy sensitivities because this is OUR stuff people are getting nostalgic about. We were there at the first pass and it seems like someone is misappropriating our childhood sacred cows. (Have you seen that JRPG Thundercats remake?)
As a total Asidegum, what struck me most watching Clarissa was how much more calm and refined it was than say iCarly or Hannah Montana where everyone is just shouting crazy hammy nonsense the whole time. It made me wish kids’ programming today was less obnoxious, because next to today’s Disney Tween Empire, the dialogue on Clarissa seemed downright Sorkin-esque.
My case, it is rested.
I watched more Brady Bunch, Loony Tunes and Batman more than Clarissa or Captain Planet. That’s cuz that late 80s / 90s shit sucked then and sucks now. Clarissa is a ho.
The fact that I am too old to have nostalgia for either of those shows makes me sad. The fact that I didn’t have to watch either of those shows is a pretty nice silver lining, though.