In this precarious world, many
equations are more constant than we often realize.
People will age, mass transit fares
will only increase, inflation will never surge backward, and technology will continuously
advance to levels that will render science-fiction novels of sixty years ago
irrelevantly unimpressive.
On the survival front, people will
continue to love, believe in one another, and pray. Those are likely still some
of the best survival structures yet. There’s food, water, and the nearest
electronic media to settle our immediate neuroimpulses. But there’s an even more nourishing structure
upon which the most mindful of us daily soldiers will invariably rely, be it a
little or a lot, know it or not.
The traditional, commonly accepted term
is “nostalgia”. It’s a word exquisite, a precious lyric to those of us bearing
some kind of poetic or artful mind. Social
scientists in knit ties, tweed blazers and gold-rimmed frames behind elaborate
desks of prestigious universities however might not be so keen on that word as
an operative term. It doesn’t really serve to explain the nature of the ongoing
preservation of our social structure.
And that’s a shame. Especially
because those bearded pontificators are composed of two factions: Group A are those who will pleasurably and
proudly indulge in a comfy lounger before a screen full of several hours of I
Love Lucy, Our Miss Brooks, The Untouchables, The Twilight Zone, every
presentation of Studio One, Playhouse 90, and the original Diamant Collection
of top 1949-1960 TV commercials, as well as a generous farm of restored
available vintage historic television newscasts and reports, lauding it all in
the direct name of historic research and appreciation. Group B are those who denounce such reliance
upon electronic screen entertainment, in defense of the greater Arts and
Humanities. Those are the folks who get
home and snap on the TV for an hour or two of Hell’s Kitchen or My 600 Pound
Life while grazing their supper.
Unfortunately, for a true awareness
and acknowledgement of the scientific power and importance of this thing
called, for lack of a more sophisticated term, “nostalgia”, you likely won’t
find it in the collective academic community. No one’s going to reduce the significance
of their prized academic standing to a screen full of black and white flickers.
Meanwhile, one of the most
successful American creations in the last forty years, rivaling and fueling the
power of the promised information superhighway itself has been the capability
of video upload, and on many platforms the free and immediate access provided
to so many. Despite the various social concerns related to an accessible source
like YouTube, it has for the most part been proven of good use. A population of
citizens dating well back to the ancient time of tube televisions and the
earliest videocassette recorders have found a common ground to properly share
their treasured, captured broadcast television souvenirs of forty and fifty
years prior. Retired veterans of the internal broadcast industry are at last
sharing their kept reels and spools of network recordings, of full-length newscasts,
miscellaneous continuity and more, that at one time, certainly in their own,
would have bore zero fascination quality.
Now these are all stunning gems. Available to all like never before. Often
carefully described and categorized.
The benevolence of these care-driven
uploaders to provide an instantly accessible broadcast museum is serving to
nurture one of our culture’s greatest mental and psychological health-proactive
needs. And that’s only the beginning.
On-line sites composed of uploaded
newspaper and literary magazine editions of decades past, shared photograph
collections of towns and cities in times past, these are in so many
inarticulate ways the restorative medicine for a troubled world of disembodied
souls.
True, to some it may seem a little
troubling to be seduced in a world fast advancing in its increasing availability
of all things vintage and historic, into a full-time journey into the
past. Nowadays, if one wanted to, it might
not be so impossible to subsist on a modified video diet of one or two 1970s
local or network evening newscasts a day, and maybe a long-form, fully restored
Movie of The Week or NFL broadcast, commercials and all.
Guilty.
I might not even be the best
sociological example to make my own point. From the age of ten, when I was
introduced to the Renaissance of Television Retrospective in the late 1970s, I
recognized instantly the capability to genuinely study our culture’s social history
in the reflection of the cathode tube.
There were less available artifacts back then, and they were prized
specimens.
Nearly fifty years later, it’s not a
ninety-minute queue outside a museum on a freezing day. Power On is all one needs to do on their
laptop or i-pad to locate and dive into their favorite era of the past sixty
years, much like that Mary Poppins dive into the sidewalk portraits. With the right audio and video accoutrements,
nothing elaborate, one’s living room, with a well-restored long-form TV broadcast
of the seventies, eighties or sixties, can visit the era like a trip to the Holodeck
on Star Trek: Voyager. And for those of us passengers who emerged in our video-bathed
childhoods from said eras, it’s an evening of Our Town. Only this time ours, not Thorton Wilder’s.
But it’s one that Wilder would
certainly have appreciated. It’s a true revisiting of one’s distinctive and
vivid past. That annoyingly ubiquitous
designer jeans commercial that plagued you every night while watching M*A*S*H
in 1980 is now pure nectar to the eyes and ears. The virtual interior of your
mind will likely come alive with the best selective memories of what probably weren’t
your most thrilling days of yesteryear.
But chances are, the triggers that little restored strip of Channel 5
provides will feed the soul with some of the best memory one’s better mind can
serve up.
And if it’s a commonality of peace
and centered soul for which our frantic, electronically disturbed and misguided
minds desperately search to bring form to this era’s scattered, self-centered jigsaw
puzzle, it is precisely all of the above.
Probably no one who ever saw the
film Awakenings will forget the scientific magic of dementia victims becoming
cogent once more. A real-life experiment
with foregone Alzheimer’s patients many years ago saw them rendered shockingly
reversed when presented with carefully constructed mock scenery and interiors
from their cultural past. In this
finding there is indeed science.
Again, it probably doesn’t serve one
entirely one-hundred percent well to overindulge in that thing called “the past”. Almost everyone of some vintage used to have
a grandparent, aunt or uncle, whose favorite treat was to spend time poring
over a preciously kept periodical or batch of photographs from their own early
youth, maybe some prized possessions like baseball cards, or newspaper
clippings. In those days, those few little things were all they had, and it
sure kept their spirits going. No way could they overdose on the past. Fast
forward to 2024, and you and your internet receiver can dash to the childhood Holodeck
of your choice, for almost any length of time, if you’re clever enough. Piece it together with the right found
articles, genuine era books, magazines, and vintage apparel, and you never have
to leave 1977..!
I won’t live there permanently. If I spend enough “nostalgia” time there, I
will in fact come to terms with the knowledge that it wasn’t such a great time,
for reasons I’ll ultimately remember.
But if three hours of CBS Sports Sunday, with Lowenbrau and J.C. Penney Battery
ads and All In The Family promos from the late fall of ’77 can let me spend a few
hours in my uncle’s living room waiting for the pizza we ordered from Romeo’s,
I’ve got what I need to get me through tomorrow. For real.
No comments:
Post a Comment