Nostalgia for pre-Ground Zero pop culture is a subject that comes up a lot on this blog. Pining for the awesome 80s and rad 90s is such a defining feature of Generation Y that this cohort is almost solely responsible for the glut of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles retro action figures and G.I. Joe pre-faded tee shirts. Ys based their identity on the entertainment product they consumed in their formative years. And they’ve been unable to grow past it.
Author David Stewart and I have talked about the nostalgia trap that snares folks whose major developmental influences predated 1997. Retro fashion, endless cape movie reboots, and even the Funko Pop plague make sense when you understand Gen Y’s main driving motive. They’re desperate to retreat from the chaotic, nonsensical world of their adulthood into the secure, intelligible past of their childhood. By re-watching The Real Ghostbusters, playing Bart vs. the Space Mutants, and and wearing TNG-era Starfleet uniform hoodies, they hope to relive the same feelings that consuming those products gave them in 198X.
None of that will be news to anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while. But one crucial piece of the puzzle you might have missed is the profusion of kids’ TV shows among nostalgia trap bait.
And you may be thinking Of course Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Care Bears, and Punky Brewster are gonna be nostalgia fuel. After all, you just said that the whole movement is about adults trying to relive their childhoods through media they consumed as kids.
That’s all true, but it’s focused on the what. The new angle that’s the main thrust of this post seeks to examine the how and the why. In particular, how did the children’s TV shows that today’s adults watched as kids affect their current mentality, and why did these shows have the effect they had?
A breakthrough observation that bears on these questions was made by independence guru Dr. Luke Smith. He noted that one structural feature common to most kids’ TV shows of the past 40 years is episodic storytelling.
Watch him explain:
In short, Ys, Millennials, an Zoomers grew up stewing in elaborate fantasy worlds wherein the status quo ante was always restored after 30 minutes. Every change, however drastic, was temporary. Lex Luthor might destroy the Hall of Justice, but it’d be rebuilt with super speed. Master Splinter might get zapped into Dimension X, but he’d be back before the end credits. Mr. Krabs might fire Spongebob, but our hero would be right back at the grill flipping patties next time.
Take multiple generations conditioned to believe that whatever upheavals came, life would always return to baseline, and throw a full-scale civilizational collapse at them.
Yes, you can talk about how internalizing episodic storytelling led to the epidemic of snowflaking in the workplace and skyrocketing depression. But this conditioning has produced just as insidious an effect in the arts themselves – one that perpetuates this unhealthy cycle.
Call it the Nostalgia Jukebox Effect.
The same craving for repetition that Dr. Smith noted among his YouTube viewers; asking him to produce videos on the exact same topic over and over, runs rampant in the arts.
Being a novelist, I can sympathize – as many others no doubt can as well. It may sound odd, but authors do get frequent requests from readers to write the exact same books we’ve published before. And it’s hard not to notice a similar impetus behind a lot of the rapid-release, 20 to 50K style book series.
Because to people under 50, pop media really is a nostalgia jukebox they can load with quarters to replay their favorite half-dozen songs over and over and over.
Which would be fine if the motive was pure enjoyment of the song. But that’s not enough for Gen Y, who have a deep, pathological need to experience the exact same emotions they did as kids again and again.
What the nostalgia jukebox effect has done is turn Gen Y into middle-aged Marty McFlys compulsively punching the controls of a fake time machine. And it’s left Millennials and Zoomers trapped in a state of learned futility.
The answer, as David Stewart and Luke Smith explained, is to stop chasing the childhood dragon that can never be recaptured. Instead, seek out new and challenging experiences in the present. Not mainly to create new memories, but to broaden and deepen your character.
Because if there’s one trait that would raise Ys, Millennials, and Zoomers out of their ruts, it’s the attainment of character.
Give it a shot. You have nothing to lose but your mental fetters.
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