Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders. Claustrophobia, the fear of closed spaces. There’s even coulrophobia to describe the fear of clowns. Yet the field of psychiatry has yet to develop an adequate term for a far more pervasive and plausible contemporary condition: the fear of the present day.
To be sure, that fear is not often expressed as a fear. Those who find contemporary life and its trappings unsatisfactory, lacking in imagination and interest, or otherwise deficient do not generally withdraw from their families, schools, or places of work. They still go to movies, watch television, use the internet, and participate, often with great avidity, in our capitalist economy. Maybe they even vote. But their attention, and their affection, is directed to the past — often eras that seem not so long ago, such as the '80s and ’90s — which they judge to be superior, in ways profound and superficial, to the present moment.
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The recency of the past they long for, in fact, is what separates this condition from simple nostalgia.
Perhaps we should deem this condition “modernity aversion” or “millennium-ophobia” since, for its sufferers, the turn of the century represented a rough line of demarcation: Whatever came before was acceptable, basic, and normal, and so much of what has come since — a more chaotic political landscape, more intrusive and inescapable technology, increasingly corporate-tested and woke-approved mass media — is weird, off-putting, and abnormal.
In practical terms, these are the young men and women who have fueled the comeback of vinyl records, which, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, sold in greater numbers last year than CDs for the first time in over three decades; the emerging secondhand market for VHS tapes, which have untold listings on eBay; the fetishizing of long-outdated video game consoles, which led Nintendo to reissue versions of the NES and SNES systems; and the increasingly mainstream, non-niche interest in “dead malls,” 1980s-era fashions, and period-appropriate logos for movie studios.
Simple nostalgia is scarcely a new phenomenon, but it’s usually associated with older generations intolerant of progress. In the 1970s, Archie Bunker on All in the Family sang a song in pining for the presidency of Herbert Hoover, for Pete’s sake. Nowadays, however, millennials are the ones indulging in their own form of wistful yearning, and because that yearning is for their own youths, and even for the days just before their own youths, the process has been accelerated: 30- and 40-years-olds are reminiscing about a mere 20 or 30 years ago. Yet, far from being illegitimate, this acceleration of the nostalgic impulse among millennials is a testament to how quickly the world has changed in their short lifetimes: Even if you were born in 1989, you are just old enough to remember, or squint and imagine, the before times.
To understand the source of this burrowing into the past, spend an afternoon on YouTube — a distinctly modern means through which to channel one’s distaste for contemporary society. You will find a 1988 Coca-Cola commercial in which Robin Beck’s pop song “First Time” is heard over images of a young couple embracing ever so meaningfully, an adolescent boy making eyes at a girl in his class (and the girl returning the glance), a trio of teenage girls making a prank phone call, a young woman swaying in a long flowing dress, and so on. It’s pure corn, but the comments for the video on YouTube show the intensity with which people today connect to it: “I want to live in this commercial,” “Greatest advert of all time,” “Cheesy or what . . . . I LOVE IT!!!” By the same token, pull up one of the ’90s-era ads from the Beef Industry Council and Beef Board showing energetic, smiling families being served various meals described in the authoritative voice of Robert Mitchum. Is it not invigorating to see beef being robustly touted on TV over vegetarianism, veganism, and assorted prescription drugs? And go watch old episodes of David Letterman’s Late Night broadcast in which Dave, unapologetically and incessantly, engages in a multiyear flirtation with Teri Garr, the ultimate ’80s daffy lady (she was the Mrs. Mom in Mr. Mom) — a verbal dalliance that both sides enjoyed, nurtured, perpetuated.
Looking at all of this random stuff, we must conclude that people were, a few short decades ago, happier, surer of who they were, more relaxed about day-to-day life, and more confident in the contours of the world. Even if we admit the inherent artifice of commercials, talk shows, and the like, we also must admit that mass media reflect what a country thinks about itself, so if Coca-Cola and the beef people were presenting a more contended America, it’s because they felt that that’s what people felt about themselves.
Naturally, the huge conglomerates that now control so much of popular culture have co-opted this retro craze and have benefited from the willingness of its adherents to swipe their credit cards to experience a blast from the past. Pizza Hut is one of countless brands that, sensing prevailing winds, resurrected its original branding. YouTube channels such as Binging with Babish, which included a lesson on how to make the giant pancakes from the John Candy movie Uncle Buck, draw clicks by mining nostalgia. The Netflix series Stranger Things is merely the most competent of an endless parade of content that trades on the public’s affection for old movies and shows. The Top Gun sequel, the new animated series based on Joe Dante’s Gremlins, the fifth Indiana Jones movie, and the recent 1980s-set horror-comedy Cocaine Bear all owe their existence to a cross-section of consumers hellbent on looking back.
Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a story about the explosion of interest in auctions of pop culture artifacts, including unopened tapes of the first three Rocky movies, purchased by their original owner for $60 apiece, that were recently sold to a bidder for nearly $54,000. The takeaway? “The culture is bursting with new material ... but the old stuff offers a sweeter emotional payoff for many,” the New York Times reported. “It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had, or it might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023.”
Even so, the commodification of nostalgia does not undermine how sincerely it is felt by its adherents. No one can doubt the genuineness of those attached to vinyl, VHS, and Home Alone, or those who judge, at least on the basis of commercials, movies, music, and other mass-produced ephemera, life during the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton years to be preferable than what’s on offer today.
Now, to be perennially dissatisfied with your own epoch — and intensely focused on the objet d’art of another time, especially ones as disposable as Rocky tapes — is admittedly a little strange. I was born in 1983, and when I was growing up, I can recall no particular fascination in me or my peers with, say, the pop culture of my parents’ Silent Generation. I had no overwhelming interest in Doris Day, Jack Paar, or Buddy Holly. Life as I encountered it in the ’80s and ’90s seemed just fine. I also had the advantage of no easily accessible means (e.g., the internet) to immerse myself in earlier eras.
Undoubtedly, the present state of affairs, a whole cadre of people hankering for food courts and hand-drawn Saturday morning cartoons, is a bug of the 21st century. Why has it made nostalgists out of us? What has given us this “modernity aversion,” or whatever we want to call it? Place the blame on social media, streaming, the woke takeover of entertainment, the hardening of lines and positions among our fellow citizens, the barking by talking heads — all the things absent from that Coca-Cola commercial.
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As life has become at once more congested, convoluted, and confused, it’s to be expected that people will seek refuge in what they remember as, or perceive to be, better times. The fact that so much about our technologically advanced civilization has taken on an ephemeral quality, in which tweets can disappear or be flagged in an instant, old books can be silently redrafted in accordance with woke standards, and well-known public figures can be out-and-out canceled, makes it easy to understand why people will cling to a vinyl record or VHS tape. You can cancel people, but you can’t erase a record or a tape by tweeting about it. Admit it: It’s pleasing to inculcate oneself in a time in which looking at a phone involved setting down the receiver, consuming the news was an activity reserved for the morning paper, and people seemed to behave with greater joy and fewer grievances.
In truth, there’s nothing particularly special about the '80s or '90s except insofar as they happen to have been the most recent not-insane decades that can be recalled or easily envisioned by millennials. The fact that the winter of our discontent has led to the cultural elevation of denim jackets, Corey Feldman movies, and the Whitney Houston discography may be a historical fluke, but it’s an instructive one.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.