Probably something less dramatic.
August 13th, 2008 Prime Leader ZanramonFor whatever reason, more than 17,000 people visited Addicted to Words today. I have no idea why, but rather than let this present surprise become ATW’s dying gasp, I have rallied to put actual words and thoughts down. A Prime Leader Zanramon original if you will. Let’s party like it’s November 2007.
My pen’s a bit rusty, so this probably needs lots of editing and probably some self censorship, but here goes…
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2008 will be remembered for many things. The worst US president since Andrew Johnson is leaving office. The Olympics will be held in communist China. Gas got ridiculously expensive. Britney Spears went bat shit insane.
All certainly notable things, but when it is all said in done, 2008 will be remembered as the year of nostalgia. Everything old has become new again. The Boston Celtics handily beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA Championship. 19 years after the last one, a new Indiana Jones movie was released. American Gladiators made a comeback. Even Beverly Hills 90210 has been remade. Ideas from decades past seem fresh and young, (arguably) ready to take the world by storm.
Nostalgia is a powerful weapon. It is the reason people continue to buy a new boxed set of Star Wars DVD’s each year, despite the fact that the only new feature might be that Darth Vader’s light saber is tinted 3 degrees more red. In the right hands, it can spread joy, good cheer, and free spending ways. In the wrong hands, nostalgia can be boring, mundane, or even depressing.
There are three kinds of nostalgia. Two of them are enjoyable, one of them is somewhat more tolerable than eating shards of glass. They are each embodied in current nostalgic presences in pop culture: the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the re-emergence of New Kids on the Block, and the remake of Beverly Hills 90210.
The release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The first kind of nostalgia is the most enjoyable and commercially successful kind. It has been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, the Last Crusade, was released. It was one of the strongest of the three movies, and Indy presumably hung up his hat, whip, and adventurous zeal, on a high note. As time passed, history smiled upon the Indiana Jones movies. People that were not even born yet when the Last Crusade came out discovered them. There is literally not one person in the world who does not absolutely love Indiana Jones.
Thus when word came out that George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Harrison Ford were getting the band back together, excitement began to build. Most people assumed that the new Indiana Jones movie would be the best movie of all time, which probably is not a fair assumption. Simply because of how beloved the previous Indy movies were, there is no way that this one could live up to expectations.
Yet, it came close.
For one, as previously mentioned, it has been 19 years since a Indy movie came out. Each year that went by, the nostalgia surrounding Indy simply kept growing. Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford could probably put on a shadow puppet play, and as long as it was called Indiana Jones and the Something of the Lost Something, obscene amounts of people would go out to see it.
So Indy has a significant built-in audience, which is the first ingredient of successful nostalgia. The people love Indy and have been waiting an extremely long time for this, they are coming out to see it no matter what.
The second ingredient of this nostalgia pie we are baking here, is Harrison Ford. Of course, not everything has to have Harrison Ford to be successfully nostalgic. It is how Harrison Ford is still thoroughly Indiana Jones through and through. Yes, he is much older than he was, but he can still do everything he used to be able to do. If anything, Ford seems to solve puzzles and beat up Socialists easier in KOTCS than in any of the other three previous movies. Seeing how much Ford has aged could easily make us all feel old, and make the movie feel depressing, but he has not slowed at all. It ends up making us feel younger. Age is just a number for Indiana Jones, why can’t it be for me? This is why old cartoons are the most successfully nostalgic thing ever. They never age, and take us right back to how we felt when we originally watched them. Despite dealing with real live, aging humans, Indiana Jones has somehow achieved something similar to this. The same goes for Madonna.
The re-emergence of New Kids on the Block: The New Kids on the Block had some popular songs that were awesome in that ironic VH1 sort of way, and they wore some clothes that probably were the same. Mark Wahlburg was somehow involved in the early days, and he was in Boogie Nights, so that seems significant.
After a rather long hiatus, in which TNKOTB presumably were hanging tough, they have re-emerged. Nobody expects them to do anything of note anymore, I’m fairly certain that they don’t either. This is why they are successful, they know that they were ridiculous in their prime, and they know that they are much older now, and they know that doing what they were doing before except for being much older is one of the most ridiculous things ever. And they know that run on sentences are sometimes appropriate.
It is all a big joke, and we all feel in on it because we were around for the first incarnation of TNKOTB. Everybody likes a joke as long as they get it. Like a fine wine, Indiana Jones got better with age. TNKOTB are like Franzia, it spoils with age, but drinking Franzia is kind of funny in the first place. If anybody drinks that spoiled Franzia, it will be hilarious.
The re-make of Beverly Hills, 90210: Beverly Hills, 90210 is being remade for 2008, rebadged as simply 90210, maybe to seem more modern. It doesn’t matter, the re-make of 90210 is a terrible idea. This is where nostalgia fails, where it hits the proverbial 5 second mark of “2 Girls 1 Cup”. Admittedly, the old 90210 was not ever anything I really appreciated. Any time I spent in my youth and early adolescent years watching TV was almost always spent watching cartoons or sports. I missed out on a lot of shows people my age consider important TV. Full House, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and of course 90210 got the short end of the TV watching stick. I never really watched any of them, and other than the ability to recite the entire Fresh Prince theme song, I am not aware of any details about any of them.
If I were to guess, Full House would be about a house where a few too many people live leading to lots of hilarious incidents involving somebody taking too long in the shower, the Fresh Prince would be about Will Smith’s remarkable odyssey from being wrongfully accused as the antagonist in a fight to sitting on a throne in Bel Air, and 90210, of course, would be about the glitz and glam of that famous zip code.
The fact that I don’t know a lot about 90210 doesn’t hurt my point in the slightest. It was a successful and popular show in it’s heyday, which seems to lead television execs* thinking it could be a successful and popular show today. Problem is, in the 2008 version of 90210, nothing is the same. All of the actors from the original show are too old to reprise their characters, lest it take place in a world where all high school students are pushing 40. Some of the original actors, most notable Shannon Doherty**, will have cameos in the show. As adults. Kids are adults now, which isn’t nostalgic, it is pretty darn depressing. It reminds us that we are growing old, that our lives are finite and our time in this world is short. Or probably something less dramatic, but equally as ineffective at creating that nostalgic feeling.
The only constant in the new 90210, as compared to the old 90210, is grown up kids. That doesn’t take us back to better times, and is absolutely useless at creating that warm nostalgic feeling. People will tune in to relive the good times and tune out feeling every one of their twentysomething years and unfulfilled potential hanging over them. (Am I self-projecting too much here?)
In a year where nostalgia reigns over the land like smog over Beijing, 90210 simply does not make the grade. 2008 won’t stand for such drivel, I won’t stand for such drivel, and you should not stand for such drivel. Three drivel’s should properly illustrate my point.
-Zanramon
*In the biz, we like to shorten executives to execs. We also like to say “in the biz”, in the biz.
**I claim that this is the most notable fact due to Shannon Doherty being one of the only people I’ve heard of in the new 90210.
-Zanramon