peach acid- nostalgia's role in contemporary media

 Nostalgia’s Role in Contemporary Media

We all have fond memories and our senses may be strong enough to associate distinct smells, tastes, sounds, and sights that bring us straight back to those times and places, stimulating a sense of comfort and longing. The Hippocampus is an organ attached to the Temporal lobe of the Human brain, where memories are stored, certain conditions like Alzheimer's and Concussions can significantly impact the Hippocampus, causing memory loss. It’s usually between the ages of 2 to 4 that children start making memories and remembering previous events, It’s very uncommon for children below the age of 2 to remember specific details but some Developmental psychologists have hypothesized even newborns can store basic sensory information in the deepest parts of their hippocampus even while in their mother’s womb. However, retrieving that information to active consciousness is still not entirely understood considering the brain is not considered to be finished developing until the age of 25 in females and 27-30 in males.  Nostalgia, originating from Greek roots meaning “Homecoming Sorrow” is defined as a a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Some say, you know your childhood is over when the responsibilities of the working adult lifestyle step in, and you dream of the untouchable past that was so much easier before you realized they were. A large part of maturing is the ability to accept the past for exactly how it is, communicating how you interpreted the past through a more Innocent lens and sharing it with people who witnessed it with you. In 2014, a study was done by Smith College students that looked at medical, psychological, and psychiatric descriptions of nostalgia as a pathological condition and concluded that nostalgia is described in terms of developmental delays, excessive attachment to one’s mother, habitual idealization but, importantly, aberrated mourning and melancholia. When Freud claimed in his 1917 theory of “Mourning and Melancholia” that, “Hysterics suffered mainly from reminiscences,” he used a paradox to describe the recollection of past events can result in psychic maladies, and that recalling previous traumas proves cathartic, and many Modern Psychotherapists follow this belief today.  Catharsis employs a sense of relief of tense emotions, thus prompting Nostalgia. Our Generation, (Gen Z) born 1997 to roughly 2012, now experiences Nostalgia just like the generations before us. Nostalgia of course depends on the environment where those memories originally toke place, In our case, The Western part of the world, moderately upper middle-class societies, in the American K-12 education system, with working-class parents and guardians. With this in common, we share a relative pride for our 21st-century technology from the decades we first remember it applies to our lives, the American architecture, food and the melting pot of a culture in Urban areas of the U.S, all while the War in Afghanistan was going on between the 9/11 attack and the US invading Iraq in 2003 before the Great Recession of 2008 making Obama the first African-American president. These were big controversial talking points during our Early Childhood.  With that same Psychological lens, Nostalgia can be broken down into two different forms. Reflective Vs. Restorative. Restorative Nostalgia involves happy memories and positive associations with the past, these Restorative Nostalgia flashbacks usually make us motivated to seek new experiences to create more of these memories.. On the Other hand, Reflective Nostalgia is a gloomy and depressing perspective on recalling old memories, sometimes making it seem that the present moment doesn’t compare with our memories, preventing us from moving forward and making new positive experiences., this can be caused by traumatic experiences, Childhood neglect or abuse. Reflective Nostalgia though can be used in treatment for CPTSD and PTSD cases, when it comes to contemplating and rationalizing unhappy past events. In other words, Nostalgia plays a role in Entertainment as well.  shows such as Friends, Gilmore Girls, and Full House make a resurgence, and as new media develops set in older time periods, like Stranger Things, The Derry Girls, Young Sheldon and many more all capitalizing on the retro aesthetic, bringing us as close as we can to relieving the past.  With literature, Nostalgia is capitalized on taking a prior proposition and twisting it into a plot-significant one, whether that is emphasizing the foil of a Character or embedding a quality caused by past events.. In Eric Sanberg’s essay “The Double Nostalgia of Literature” he proposes a thesis about Homer’s The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel offers a particularly clear example of how nostalgia can operate as a theme in a literary text, as the desire to go home is contrasted with the impossibility of doing so. But Kazantzakis’ poem is also an indication of another way that literature can be seen as an inherently nostalgic form of expression. The very fact that he has looked to the Odyssey for his main character and point of narrative departure indicates how literature, and perhaps cultural production more generally, tends to rely on its predecessors for material, using an interpretation of the past to make sense of the present.  Moreover, Nostalgia is a marketing method and Publicity opportunity in Modern Media. The marketer uses symbols from the past to associate the modern product with the audience's fond memories. Symbols, in this context, refer to images, signs, icons, or other representations that are recognizable and carry particular meanings or associations based on shared experiences. For example, several U.S. department stores sell reissued retro children's toys from the 1980s -- such as Lite Brite, Hot Wheels, My Little Pony, and Care Bears -- that evoke positive memories in the buyer's mind and find a new audience with the current generation of children. Companies can use nostalgia marketing to sell products that promise to return the customer or audience to an early, simple, and happier life. Companies often evoke nostalgia through reboots, remakes, and throwbacks. Nostalgia marketing also works because it feels uniquely personal while still working for thousands of people at a time. This makes it a social emotion, where people can bond over rosy memories of the past together, catalyzed by a nostalgic advertisement.