N O S TA L G I A A N D P O P U L A R C U LT U R E
NOSTALGIA AND POP CULTURE VIVIAN DOBBIE-GL A ZIER
V I V I A N D O B B I E-G L A Z I E R
Pop culture didn’t die in 2020. It levelled up with nostalgia. While the structures of power crumbled around us, we locked down and looked back. Borat 2. Community Zoom reunion. Cottage-core. After Hours. Pokémon cards. Skateboarding while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ and drinking cranberry juice. Sounds and visuals trigger memories within the hippocampus that reward us with warm and fuzzy feelings. Re-watching The Office in 2020 makes one yearn for a time when they were watching the show in less unprecedented times. Nostalgia is all about cutting to the core of one’s identity and allowing the past to become a safe space to cope with the now. Time travel without consequences. The past is a valuable commodity and marketing tool for popular culture and entertainment and that value has only increased in 2020. Repackaging and selling something that the majority remembers fondly is a sure-fire way to make bank. Nostalgia, after all, helps promote an array of positive responses. Who wouldn’t want an ounce of that serotonin? So, when the entertainment industry is halted by a highly contagious disease that has spread across the globe – where else was there to turn but the past? It’s safe to say that the bond between popular culture, entertainment and nostalgia will not be breaking up any time and will continue long into the future thanks to 2020. But when does popular culture of the future look back on the “good ol’ days” of 2020? A common answer lies within communing with the ghost of pop culture’s past and its
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