"Watching Shit Happen" Report #6

Is it because we are out of original ideas? Or more cynically, that nothing new is ever really new, because it’s all been done before? Whatever the reason, we continue to resurrect fads and borrow from the past to create recycled fashions, movie remakes and Nick at Nite program blocks. There is a comfort in reliving the past, especially the elements of our youth through nostalgia.

When we bring back a relic from the pop culture abyss, it goes on a revival tour that intersects with current culture. From that, another generation of cool-seekers may jump on board. The youth in search of what’s new, discover something old and make it their own. Witness the rise of cocktail culture and swing dancing after the release of Swingers (1994).

Sometimes this works in nice 20-year cycles, as when the 50s were celebrated in the 70s through Happy Days, Grease and American Graffiti. Or how disco themed nightclubs, platform shoes and That 70s Show were big in the 90s. Other times, pop culture reemerges just because it’s time. As if there is a future period of nostalgia guaranteed for anything that once attained a certain level of fame. As early as 1999, I was ready to develop a late 80s/early 90s dance club honoring the pre-grunge era. I was ahead of the natural nostalgia curve, but sure enough someone has already opened one - albeit in Australia.

Speaking of the 90s, it was the decade when this pop culture revivalism got its name – “retro.” Coming from “retroactive” and “retrospective” to denote looking backward to revive a dead trend. The term “retro” is part of our current slang. At any given mall, you may overhear phrases like “she’s so retro” or “retro-fabulous.” The name of that early 90s Aussie dance club is, naturally “Retro.”

Going retro allows for admiration of an old fad while at the same time laughing about it. In that way retro is kind of like “kitsch” or “camp” but more finely tuned. In her 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’,” Susan Sontag explains how, “Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility…what was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic.”

Of course there has always been an appreciation for the past. The Renaissance was a kind of retro movement for the Greek and Roman classical period. But revivalism is different in our modern age; it seems to touch upon culture that is still current. In your lifetime, or by watching VH1 consistently, you will probably see the same fad come back two or three times.

The key reason for the difference may be that the sum total of our recent pop culture remains accessible to us. It’s like we have the last 100 years on tape, or to break out of my 80s Van Winkle haze, we have it on demand. We can witness firsthand a former phenomenon and bring it back to our current world. From Al Jolson to break dancing, it’s all there waiting to be rediscovered.

This thought was presented in of all places, an “Ask the Movie Critic” response penned by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle. He said, “While 200 years ago the works of only a few writers survived from one generation to the next, today each era's entire popular culture is preserved. Today, we're all fans of work that was not intended for us.” For the film student who dives into the full works of Hitchcock or the stoner who realizes there is a massive back catalog of King Crimson only a download away, this is priceless.

So this is the world we live in. Everything ever created is at our fingertips. We speak, think and create while saturated with references from the past. Our culture is richer and more layered as a result. With all those influences to draw from, today’s artists are able to blend styles and cross genres like none before them. For example, martial arts and spaghetti western genres meet in Kill Bill, while the buzzworthy new band Bloc Party bridges new wave, guitar rock and post-punk music.

With the fusion of elements from various eras and movements, it seems that our pop culture is a melting pot, just like society at large.

A word about pop culture is probably needed here. It is too often passed off as silly or frivolous. Popular culture has always been around, but it was just called plain old “culture,” or “the arts.” Hamlet was pop culture at the time it was first performed. But only for those who could score tickets to the Globe Theatre. With the creation of mass media in the last century, the arts were popularized. They were now available to those outside of the immediate vicinity of the performance, including future generations.

A retro movement allows those generations to enjoy past masterpieces, and to often bring them back with a new twist. Which leads back to the question if anything is really new? Probably not, but didn’t someone say that all great art was stolen?

Performing séances to resurrect forgotten trends may occur more frequently in this age. With mass media spreading entertainment and news, our brains are becoming bigger and badder cultural encyclopedias, so we are prepared to discern between good retro and bad retro. Retro love does not have to impede the progress of current culture, but can deepen it with historical context. By preserving pop culture, we are creating a perpetual source of inspiration for future thinkers and trendsetters. Which sounds nice until someone goes and remakes Ishtar.