Nostalgia is triggered by the senses, the thought that leads to a sensory response that then develops into a feeling of longing or similar. The visual qualities of an image can further push this feeling as, with time, they become more and more unique as they deteriorate.
There is a difference between an individual idea of nostalgia and a collective although they’re associated with each other. Life events like childhood have a personal value but are also a time that is constantly being described as ‘golden’ or ‘precious’, which is, in the end, a demonstration of culture. It’s all about a relationship between the present and the past. Besides science and storytelling, how do we know the past? ‘Even if we are present at some historic event, so we comprehend it – can we even remember it – until we can tell it as a story?’ (Le Guin 2001, no page) makes a statement on how a past event is only a matter of imagination which means, even if we do not always recognize the presence of retro and nostalgia, it is all around us. Heritage and national identity is a perfect example of a collective feeling of longing for or recognising ourselves in. In order to understand a nation, we have the need to look back at past events, this link to the past can be crucial for generating new ideas, The Arts and Crafts movement that developed in the industrial revolution represents the sudden need to look back at medieval times and bring back the representation of organical forms and the celebration of nature another example is The Psychedelic art and design movement was also inspired by the previous Art Nouveau movement, as explored by Elizabet Guffey (2006) in Retro: The Culture of Revival.
One of the problematics of nostalgia is the misrecognition of the past, as they feed into the past ideas of stereotypes as said by Fredric Jameson (1989, p.198) ‘[these kinds of] narratives do not represent our historical past as much as they represent our ideas or cultural stereotypes about that past.’ Rosetinted views of past events commonly appear in future representations such as tv series and films, where everything is portrayed in an inaccurate approach. Retro is a disconnected reference of the past where is not necessarily romanticized relying on irony to create this connection.
To sum up, although looking at the past as a collective and analyzing the ability it has of triggering the mutual feelings in different individuals it is important to distinguish a romanticised or idealized version from the factual details of certain occasions as a way to not feed into current established stereotypes and misconceptions.
Ana Carolina Cunha 