Is All of This Nostalgia Good?

Psychologists have identified that there are two types of nostalgia: reflective nostalgia and restorative nostalgia.

Robert Yaniz Jr. of Rewire breaks them down for us.

“[Reflective nostalgia] accepts the fact that the past is, in fact, past, and rather than trying to recreate a special past experience, savors the emotions evoked by its recollection.”

Restorative nostalgia, on the other hand, “romanticizes the “good ol’ days” in stark contrast to the current harsh reality and longing for a simpler time that may not have really existed in its idealized form in the first place. This type comes up a lot in the political sphere.

And according to professor Hal McDonald,

“Restorative nostalgia, involving a desire to ‘rebuild the lost home,’ views the past with an eye toward recreating it — a desire to relive those special moments. It is what spurs us to pull out our phone at 1 a. m. and call up an old boyfriend or girlfriend because we just heard ‘our song’ on the radio.”

So there are two sides of the coin.

Reflective nostalgia is generally seen as a positive psychological resource with many benefits, such as increases in optimism, openness, social connectedness, and self-esteem, and it gives a sense of continuity across time. According to Bettina Zengel, research fellow of psychology at the University of Southampton,

“Nostalgia is anchored in the past, but with a positive trajectory into the future.”

From a consumer and creative perspective, restorative nostalgia would fall under remakes and recreations of existing properties. For film and lots of consumer products, Patrick Metzger of the publication The Patterning mentions that remakes tend to follow a 30-year cycle.

Questlove, drummer and founder of the hip-hop group, The Roots, has similar thoughts:

“For me, I look at music within a 25-year cycle, a way of giving people in their thirties a last go-round of traveling through their childhood memories before they are required to be wise older statesmen and stateswomen.”

The timing makes perfect sense; you have a consumer base that grew from children to adults with disposable income who want to recapture a bit of their childhood. That’s not a bad thing, but it can easily fall in place with restorative nostalgia if people are trying to avoid taking that step Questlove mentions of moving forward.

Restorative nostalgia is a yearning to recreate a past that no longer exists. It’s more of a regression.

We see companies employ it often. The same series and movie is rebooted with a lack of vision or new ideas. A childhood classic is quickly re-released or remade, but doesn’t contain the same spirit as the original. There’s the constant re-releases of retro Jordan’s we saw a few years ago until the market became oversaturated and hype died. Artists are releasing greatest hits albums or a previously aging artist takes up a Vegas residency, which has recently drastically changed.

For consumers, it often leads to feeling like there is a lack of original ideas or that companies and creatives are stalling out on innovation.

For creatives, it may feel like originality isn’t rewarded when there’s so much restorative nostalgia present.

On the other side of the coin, creations stemming from reflective nostalgia, don’t seem to draw the same ire and often feel fresh and pleasant.

They seem to get more to the heart of what we’re searching for when we engage in nostalgia, a search for a pleasant and familiar feeling. At the same time, as is the case with reflective nostalgia when reminiscing creative works built on reflective nostalgia still pushes forward.

We see reflective nostalgia in lots of recent pop culture hits like “Stranger Things.” It takes inspiration from 80s sci-fi in aesthetic and feel for the setting, but tells a new story while giving an older audience a familiar feeling from childhood and introduces those feelings to a new audience.

In fashion, we’re seeing it in a lot of the clothing and shoes being released, especially by upper-echelon fashion houses.

We see it a ton in music, especially hip hop. Songs sampling oldies excite older audiences as they hear a tune from their youth infused into a new rendition, yet layers are added so it sounds fresh, and at the same time, introduces that older song to a new audience. Think back to the reaction Kanye still gets when he uses soul samples. We also see it when popular samples are flipped in new ways or when an artists flips a sample they used in an earlier song.

We’ve seen it when artists recreate well-known sounds. Think Joey Bada$$ coming out with 1999. It’s definitely sonically old-school boom bap, but it’s old-school boom bap brought to you by a young artist and producers that weren’t directly shaped by that era. They didn’t have their formative years in it, but they were obviously influenced by it. So the music still had an element of freshness, while capturing what people loved.

We saw it again with Leon Bridges’ first album, “Coming Home.” It had a distinctive oldies sound, but with all original songs. Then again we see it with Childish Gambino’s “Awaken My Love.” To see different direction of impactful infusion of nostalgia while still sounding very modern, look at artists like Bruno Mars, Goldlink, Brent Faiyaz, and Anderson .Paak to name just a few. There are distinct uniqueness and style that don’t truly fit any era but their own, but you can recognize the influence from other eras while still pushing the medium forward.