Nostalgia

Poised at the brink of a new century, Americans are forging bravely into the past. Nostalgia is the order of the day. All the TV classics of the '50s and '60s are back in style. Re-runs are more popular than ever, and many old favorites, including "Leave It to Beaver," "Perry Mason," "Twilight Zone," "Gilligan's Island,"and "The Monkees," have been resurrected in new productions.

One of the more interesting new TV shows of the season, "Crime Story," is set in the Kennedy era. In the last year, two pop recordings more than 20 years old (Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" and The Beatles' "Twist and Shout") made the ever-mercurial Top 10. And old rock and rhythm-and-blues tunes are now the favored hook in TV advertisements for disposable diapers, automobiles, and just about everything except laxatives.

On radio the happy-days syndrome rules. Nostalgia formats aimed at generational bites of the "great American demographic" have proliferated wildly in the last few years. In chronological order, they include the big-band, swing, Sinatra, etc. format; the '50s-oldies stations modeled on the film American Graffiti; the "Motown and More" black pop format; "light rock" stations offering a heavy dose of the "Sweet Baby James " early '70s singer-songwriter sound; and the ultimate time-capsule format recreating with painstaking specificity the FM album rock sound circa '69 to '74.

Two explanations are commonly offered for the nostalgia trend. One has cultural nostalgia walking hand-in-hand with the nostalgic political appeal of Ronald Reagan. The other theory considers nostalgia the natural by-product of baby-boomers having their families and putting down their erstwhile roots. Both are probably true.

Reagan's political program has been explicitly aimed at influencing the "mood" of American culture as much as any of its more traditional public policy goals. And taking the baby-boom life-cycle theory, an argument can be made that the Reagan administration itself is just another manifestation of the nostalgia craze--Eisenhower's children come home at last.

Whatever its cause, this obsession with the past sends decidedly mixed signals about the state of the nation. The sweet smell of nostalgia could be the honeysuckles of happier times. Or it could just be decay.

It's good to see the old shows and hear the old songs. I confess to a particular weakness for "The Honeymooners" and my local "Motown and More" station. Quality is part of the appeal. An era's best stuff is remembered, and the worst is interred with its bones. Also many of the older pop artifacts have the advantage of predating the near-total corporate homogenization of American culture.

But nostalgia can also be a form of escapism. Looking back can be a substitute for facing a difficult present and an uncertain future. The crux of the ambivalence here can be found in the difference between nostalgia and tradition. Nostalgia is essentially ahistorical and reactionary. It views the past as radically discontinuous with the present. The past is a decontextualized and idealized Golden Age, ostensibly free of the real world's challenge and struggle.

Tradition, on the other hand, sees the past as a living reality continuous with the present. At its best, tradition--cultural, religious, and otherwise--gives form and meaning to the present and projects hope into the future. Instead of escape from challenge and risk, it offers roots and resources for facing them.

AMERICA IN THE '80s is largely devoid of tradition. And so we are prone to frequent bouts of nostalgia in which the resources of the past are abstracted and ripped from their moorings. And the more omnipresent the cultural idols and totems of the past become, the more they are rendered impotent to shape or animate our lives and our future.

One especially telling pop-cult example of reactionary, nostalgia-vs.-radical tradition involves the Motown tune "Heard It Through the Grapevine." For Americans, black or white, who pay any attention to pop music, that is a song with folkloric resonance and resilience. In the late '60s, it was a hit for three different artists. But the definitive version came from the late Marvin Gaye, who made the song into the very spirit and flesh of the blues. Like much of the blues, Gaye's "Grapevine" seemed to say a lot more than the letter of its lyric would indicate. It signified, and still does.

A few years ago, James Baldwin made a moving and disturbing documentary that comprised an impressionistic survey of the state of the African-American struggle in the bleak Reagan years. He visited veteran civil rights activists and their younger heirs. He found desolation and setbacks, along with pockets of joyous resistance. The picture added up to a portrait of determination, solidarity, and communal faith.

Baldwin titled his film Heard It Through the Grapevine after its theme song, which ran throughout the documentary in different instrumental versions reflecting the film's different moods. That's tradition--the past appropriated to give life and meaning to the present and future.

Today, of course, "Heard It Through the Grapevine" is enshrined and embalmed in a TV commercial for raisins. That's nostalgia.

Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.