MAYBE THE 80S WILL BE RADICAL

Superimposed childhood nostalgia

In a 2016 interview for Vulture magazine, Matt Duffer, one half of the creative team behind Netflix’s Stranger Things, said of the show, “[it] will appeal to people who grew up on these movies, and they will see those movies in our show. But it will also work for an entirely new generation.” And work for an entirely new generation it has. Stranger Things unmistakably draws on references from the 80s. Pulling from summer blockbusters like E.T., The Goonies, and Poltergeist, the show itself functions as a sort of megamarathon blockbuster event, especially considering the release strategy of the Netflix platform. Films and series based in the 80s were to be expected in the mid-2010s, considering the 30-odd year nostalgia cycle in cinema. Although not an exact science, the motivating force behind these revival pieces is the shift from a generation of media consumers to media producers, some of which inevitably draw from their childhood cultural milieu. This current nostalgia cycle, as opposed to those of the past, does not only function as a grainy VHS of your dad’s greatest movie-going experiences, but offers a new childhood for those currently experiencing their own. The largest demographic of fans for two recent behemoths of 80s nostalgia, Stranger Things and It (2017), are not those that lived it first-hand, but their children. And it asks the question: what has changed for today’s youth that makes the pull of others’ childhoods so strong? In the span of 30-odd years, the way we think about raising children has changed drastically. The image of children leaving their house to play freely and unsupervised or to meet up at the local spot has all but disappeared. The dominant way of thinking with regards to free time is now characterized by organized playdates, always with an adult present, or an after-school activity professionally designed to encourage developing acceptable hobbies and skills, which will hopefully translate

Words by Sonia Scarlat Illustration by Wandy Cheng

into success in adulthood. The number of parenting handbooks being published has risen, and with them comes a set of guidelines to ensure your child will grow up to be the most well-balanced version of themselves they can be. It is, of course, a noble and loving pursuit, but it is erasing a major part of childhood development— freedom. In Man, Play, and Games, Roger Caillois outlines the many forms games take in our lives. Distinguishing its six core characteristics, Caillois asserts that play is always free. Play theorist Sutton-Smith disagrees, stating that in leisure-based Western society play is constrained by an expectation to use free time ‘wisely’, and so is transformed into yet another goaloriented practice. This is certainly reflected in the way children are regulated during their ‘free’ time. Moreover, without falling into the fallacy of generationalism, it is important to note the substitution of digital spaces for the outside world in the

realm of play. Superficially, video games seem to be based on freedom of choice, like many childhood games, but they are actually highly regulated and do not truly allow for this freedom, as exemplified by another nostalgia-fueled piece, the interactive Black Mirror movie, Bandersnatch. Digital spaces are in fact what sets the 80s apart from other recent time periods as a vehicle for nostalgia. The 80s are, in many ways, the turning point of many aspects of our culture. Children began to be watched more closely, and the rise of arcade and video games presented new avenues for play. And yet, the philosophy of the 70s was still present in the fact that most children were allowed to roam freely around their neighbourhoods. A distinguishing characteristic of the retro pieces popping up today is that they draw not from great historical events, such as the depictions of the Vietnam War in 90s films, but rather from film itself, pulling from huge cultural landmark blockbusters marketed towards children. As such, many stories’ central characters are the very children that would have been seeing these films in theatres. For instance, It’s (2017) acclaim is not due to its largely conventional application of horror tropes, but the coming of age story within it. In fact, this is the core narrative of other 80s nostalgia pieces, most notably Stranger Things. Even Riverdale, as egregious as its referential nature is, holds a certain power over today’s children through its caricature renditions of the 80s “Biggest Hits.”

But, once again, nostalgia is nothing new. In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym offers a typology of nostalgia, asserting that the strongest periods of nostalgia often occur following revolutions. And although the cinematic nostalgia cycle is often tied to the time it takes for the established working directors to reach a time where they begin to ruminate on their childhood, it does have its

roots in great cultural shifts as well. In the case of 80s nostalgia appealing so much to newer generations, I would argue that it does have something to do with the enormous technological shift we’ve experienced. The 80s are a period of in-between. There is the familiarity of the first waves of video games and on the other hand the possibility of free the first of these, deftly submerging its protagonist into the world of the internet. But this new generation will not truly be able to look back on itself, with all its clichés and period-specific speech, until it becomes outdated. It remains to be seen what truly dominated their formative years and its impact.

This current nostalgia cycle, as opposed to those of the past, does not only function as a grainy VHS of your dad’s greatest movie-going experiences, but offers a new childhood for those currently experiencing their own.

play. As such, it is both foreign and familiar to generations born into a digital space.

All of this is not to say that play has been completely replaced by online games and YouTube videos, or that childhood has disappeared forever. Fundamentally, children play, learn, and grow in many of the same ways they always have. However, they are now growing in a restricted environment, and must in some way feel robbed of the formative experiences other generations had. The strong interest in nostalgic materials, whether in film or fashion, functions as a highly specific response to a highly specific symptom of our transforming childhoods.

However magnetic the pull of these false childhoods is, there are still currently real ones being lived. And if the nostalgia cycle is to be counted on, we may start to see them represented on film in the next ten-odd years. Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is arguably

What this current nostalgia cycle of film and television truly offers the children of today is not a costume to try and recreate, but a moment in time where they can distinguish their own upbringing.