What’s it called when you’re nostalgic for a time you didn’t live through, like teenagers feeling nostalgic and “looking back” on i.e. the 80s or 90s?
I was born in the 2000s, but somehow I feel a sort of longing to live during the 80s. I have watched a bunch of movies produced during that time, and I realise they may not be a totally realistic depiction of the time period, but for some reason I “miss” the 80s. I don’t mean the struggles of marginalised groups or the politics, but rather the feeling of “old school” and people socialising, the shows playing on TV during that time, the diners, the discotheques, the clubs, the music and fashion and hairstyles… there’s just something cozy about the 80s, how technology wasn’t super developed, how people were still discovering things. Don’t misunderstand me though, I’m glad about the technological advancements we have achieved today, and I realise my image of the 80s may be skewed since I literally didn’t exist during that time, lol.
What’s this feeling called? Has anybody else felt the same way about a time period that isn’t the 2020s?
I don’t know the word, but your question makes me remember how nostalgic “Stranger Things” made me for the 80s. Although I lived through that as a child and it wasn’t all that cool, with the Cold War looming over everything.
Even as a child, I was well aware we could do a whole fucking lot better in the cartoon dept than we were getting. Then Batman came along in the 90s and proved me completely right, setting a bar that people look up to to this day.
Some of the films and music were objectively excellent, admittedly. (T2 is a good example, rare sequel superior to the original) Regardless of how much someone may or may not appreciate that specific film or whatever, it was executed extremely creatively and wasn’t necessarily easy. Sometimes it wasn’t.
My fav thing about it is we weren’t 100% corporatized yet. We had the corporations, but they hadn’t all decided to act like corporations yet, some still acted more like small business. The world had not become data-driven yet.
I hate to correct you, because T2 is indeed better than the original - but it came out in 1991.
Take heart though, Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, Aliens came out in 1986 and Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan came out in 1982. All of these stand the test of time and could be used for your example.
Thank you.
Personally I always discard Alien/Aliens from the conversation, since the second movie departed so strongly from the first. Which one any given person thinks is better is going to be strongly influenced by which genre they prefer more overall, and the two are very different.
Where with the rest of them, it’s much closer to the second film being more of an iteration instead of a flat departure, and makes for a clearer example.
Batman was good, but Animaniacs was peak 90s TV animation.
That’s so funny because Stranger Things is also what came to mind when reading this post.
I was a 90s kid and I think the show just made me nostalgic of being a kid.