Mediated Nostalgia

Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media

By: Ryan Lizardi

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Hardcover | 6 November 2014

At a Glance

Hardcover
166 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.6 x 16.08 x 1.75

Hardcover

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Considering the current rash of film remakes, vintage video game downloads, and box sets of bygone television shows, media today is obsessed with nostalgia. Preoccupation with the past is not inherently problematic, as any history can teach us about the present and future. However, this is not the type of nostalgia encouraged by contemporary media. Instead of presenting a past that functions as an adaptive mirror with which we can compare and contrast our contemporary situation, the past is instead presented as an individualized version that transfixes us as uncritical citizens of our own culture. Attachments to beloved lost media objects are encouraged; ones that refuse to properly release the object of their attention. Mediated Nostalgia argues that the cultural implication of a cross-media eternal return to nostalgia is an increasing reliance on defining who we are as people and societies by what media we consumed as children. The unblinking eye toward the past knows no progress, or at the very least, does not employ the past to compare and adaptively engage with the present or future.

Industry Reviews

Mediated Nostalgia contributes to the existing scholarship on nostalgia by offering an elaborate theoretical and richly illustrated account of an individual, narcissist version of nostalgia. . . .These case studies are familiar, and make the book very practical for lecturing and offering a deeper understanding of individualized nostalgia. * Cultural Sociology *
Lizardi's semiotic analysis of contemporary media convincingly demonstrates how clever packaging of the past encourages a melancholic stance towards various media objects. Reading this book will inevitably prompt your own consideration of what constitutes your "playlist past" while also encouraging a critical analysis of how and why that playlist was constructed. -- Janelle Wilson, University of Minnesota Duluth
With thoughtful analysis and accessible scholarship, Mediated Nostalgia argues that the media love to sell us the good old days, even if those days never existed. Exploring the meanings and multiple forms of commodified media nostalgia, Lizardi effectively weaves together cultural theory with a variety of engaging examples, from the Freaks and Geeks DVD collectors' set to reboots of slasher films like Halloween. -- Matthew P. McAllister, Pennsylvania State University

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