The role of childhood nostalgia in shaping culture.

[Wolveryeti]

Does anybody else feel that quite a lot of art, advertising etc taps into this rich seam of memories from a period in our lives in which we accumulated memories and visual experiences without having the cognitive capacity to appreciate them beyond the visceral, like 'wow - big dog' or something.

Jeff Koons' famous work like the massive dog made of flowers or the big shiny bendy balloon was what originally made me wonder this, but I also see it in advertising; a current example being British Gas' ads on some bus shelters depicting peoples' faces with big chins and small foreheads. This is basically how someone's head would look to you as a baby if they were bending over you - their chin would be bigger because it was closer.

Childhood is basically a happy time when you have a lot of your needs met without having to work for them... people fuss over you, and you have a lot of free time to play. It would not surprise me at all if there is a Pavlovian association with some of the memories that come from that period, and that quite often when people look at a piece of art and go 'oh that's quite good' but can't articulate why, that this could be the reason.

 

[paimei01]

What culture ?
Our culture is to sell our lives and to compete among us for this privilege.
Our culture applauds the great inventors, but somehow forgets that their inventions were meant to help people work less and have an easier life than the first "civilized" people.

Our culture says "each on his own", we are at the level of some locust swarm, not human society.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962/

Today “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.

 

[kyser_soze]

Does anybody else feel that quite a lot of art, advertising etc taps into this rich seam of memories from a period in our lives in which we accumulated memories and visual experiences without having the cognitive capacity to appreciate them beyond the visceral, like 'wow - big dog' or something.

Jeff Koons' famous work like the massive dog made of flowers or the big shiny bendy balloon was what originally made me wonder this, but I also see it in advertising; a current example being British Gas' ads on some bus shelters depicting peoples' faces with big chins and small foreheads. This is basically how someone's head would look to you as a baby if they were bending over you - their chin would be bigger because it was closer.

Childhood is basically a happy time when you have a lot of your needs met without having to work for them... people fuss over you, and you have a lot of free time to play. It would not surprise me at all if there is a Pavlovian association with some of the memories that come from that period, and that quite often when people look at a piece of art and go 'oh that's quite good' but can't articulate why, that this could be the reason.

This all started in the mid-90s when the first round of late baby boomers started working in journalism/advertising and had to come up with something equally trite and nostalgic as the idiots who spent the early 90s banging on about the 60s.

It's all driven by shite journalism and an ad industry that ran out of fresh ideas, and the budgets to do anything with them, decades ago.

It also ties into the contemporary notion of urbanised extended adolesence/university years. Loads of meejah types living the same way they did at uni, refusing to 'grow up' and endlessly rehashing their childhoods.

It's no different to Daily Mail readers harking back to the good old days of the 1950s, when Everything Was Better or a lefty griping about how the 70s were the acme of worker-power in the UK. It's all nostalgia, and it gets more credence in this country because as a culture we're small 'c' conservatives.

 

[IMR]

Yes, have seen a few telly ads recently that reproduce sort of washed-out Kodak Ektachrome colours or a lo-fi look that hints at Super8 home movies. Themes of comfort and ressurance do seem quite common, but what is strange is that they're apparently aimed at a quite young demographic, not Reader's Digest or Daily Express readers.

Also note there seems to be a small revivalist trend among some young professionals, giving their kids 'On the Buses' era names like Sid and Charlie, alt-knitting, ukeleles, an appreciation of formica.

 

[dilute micro]

What culture ?
Our culture is to sell our lives and to compete among us for this privilege.
Our culture applauds the great inventors, but somehow forgets that their inventions were meant to help people work less and have an easier life than the first "civilized" people.

Our culture says "each on his own", we are at the level of some locust swarm, not human society.

agree with that ^

but not with this, entirely

Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962/

We're sold on this too. ultimately it's money that we're after, same as the employers. We don't want higher productivity we just want whatever that item is. And we need money to get it.

What technological advancements are made anymore for the sake of advancement alone? In the end if there isn't going to be a huge profit made from it don't expect it to be in the stores. Then think of things that are in the stores that are really good for nothing but profit.

 

[isitme]

i'm so sick of this retro thing, i remember when it started when i was about 13 and it was funny to laugh at wacky 70s fashion and things from my childhood etc but it just became an excuse to not come up with new ideas