For my article review, I have chosen an article written by Jason Hellerman titled “Why Movies and TV Are Drunk on Nostalgia” from the website No Film School. The article talks about how nostalgia is a common occurrence in many films and television shows being produced today and how it can impact the audience of such productions. But what is nostalgia exactly? Nostalgia can be defined as the article puts it as a “sentimental longing for the past or events in the past.” Such emotions that nostalgia evokes are typically those of happiness and comfort from some point in some person’s life, such as when one was a child or maybe in college. Although nostalgia can be good as it may create good feelings and bring back good memories, it can also be seen as a tool to be used by moviemakers and production studios to better help expose their products and “create excitement” for them by using the good feeling of nostalgia. This can be done by using similar music, sounds, and visuals just to name a few.
I learned from this article that nostalgia can be used as a key element in movies and television shows to better interest and excite an audience into watching such a production as a way for the audience to recapture a good feeling they feel and remember. Prior to reading this article, I had been aware of nostalgia and how it has had an impact on what we see in movies and on television shows today, but I never thought about how nostalgia could be used as such a critical tool as to promote a production and excited an audience. I personally found the article to be very interesting, as the idea of nostalgia in movies and television is one that continues to be very popular as of current times. Just for an example, it can’t be denied that nostalgia has played some sort of role when it has come to having so many revivals, reboots, and sequels in Hollywood as of the past few years.
For filmmakers in the movie and television industries respectively, nostalgia is a tool to be used to help a film or show gain even more exposure and success, as it works to benefit the people behind the productions and the people who are watching them. However, I can also see nostalgia as a bad thing, as if reboots and sequels are the only types of movies and shows being produced, there will exist little to no new content. At a rate like this, such a concept that is reused over and over again may come to be tired and worn out, with the audience wanting change for something new and different. After reading this article, I have questions about how nostalgia is something people care about and are attracted to, and how that can be used in filmography. To find out more information, I can research more about how nostalgia works and occurs in people and how it is used in movie and television productions to where it is both a good aspect and a key tool towards selling a production to a group of people.
Article Link: https://nofilmschool.com/what-is-nostalgia-in-film-and-tv
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