Category: Nostalgia

We currently notice that people are having a strong interest in new media culture in media technologies from the past and its sense of nostalgia and it is seen clearly in Instagram filters nowadays. People instead of sharing airbrushed and photoshopped photos, they keep trying to filter their digital photographs to design an old stylistic effect, vintage filters, film scratches, discoloration and polarization effects to actualize the present through a lens of the past. Instagram and many other apps allow their users to quickly retouch their pictures by playing with lighting, preset filters and frames to simulate the physical nature of the analog photography. Filter and effect apps are taking advantage of the growing nostalgia for the analog by highlighting the age signs, such as torn borders, film scratches and yellowish colors.

Media technologies are affected by memories with the development of digital media technologies and the online platforms. Media technologies not only play the role of an archival and mnemonic means but often act as ‘performative’ tool for self-representation and memory dissemination. Accordingly, more than working as a digital equivalent for an analog photo album, many social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook work as an existing achieve that is defined by having dynamic, unstable, interactive, and temporary qualities. The immateriality that the digital media is attributed are often referred to as one of the explanations for the return or reassessment of tactility and physicality in the new media culture. With the spread of digital media, it appears that we embrace things like old typewriters, watches and physical books many old things in the digital era. As we spend more time in the digital world, we increasingly appreciate the time we spend with real people weather they are our family or friends and real things. (Heijden 2015)

People nowadays shoot family photos and videos in an old- fashioned way, as the return of the analogue aesthetic has been affected by the loss of the physical nature of family photos and memory practices with the emergence of digital media technologies. People nowadays rarely print any family photos, but instead of that they prefer storing them on their computers as files. Therefore, the return of analogue aesthetic can be seen as compensating for the loss of the material importance in family memory practices. (Sapio 2014)

Although Sapio indicates how this actually recreates the analog look she doesn’t explain how the analog aesthetic is not able to recreate act previous family rituals like watching a group for home movies or family photo albums. She also does not take into account the degree of the materiality which is still involved in digital media practices, for example, the use of hard drives, memory cards, and computers on which digital data depends. However, she also highlights the importance of the symbolic dimension and the potential of technostalgia to go between the past and the present.

To conclude, this essay uses the concept of technostalgia to examine briefly how the materiality and aesthetics of the past media technologies have been treated in new media memory practices. Furthermore, this essay shows how Instagram was affected by nostalgia according to Giuseppina Sapio. It also shows how people are having a strong enthusiasm in new media culture in media technologies from the past and its sense of nostalgia.

From an evolutionary perspective, we all come from different environments and genetic combinations. These factors, along with many others, influence the development of humans. Life History Theory categorizes two different life strategies between slow and fast lifestyles. To distinguish one another, fast life strategists derive from unstable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable environments. Slow life strategists derive from stable, predictable, and controllable environments. These environmental conditions lead to different population densities to each’s own respective environment (Figueredo & Wolf, 2009). Each have their own different mortality along with their different characteristics of counterbalancing mortality. Leading to intrinsic motives for fast life strategists regarding starting a family earlier. And the opposite of slow life strategist who would exemplify more of an extrinsic motivation or would rather focus on furthering their education or career choice before starting a family. These are each different outcomes of environments, along with the different strategies of optimizing time and resources necessary for reproduction or survival (Griskevicius, Delton, Robertson, & Tybur, 2011). However, no matter what environment that one comes from, people still go through similar psychological states such as loneliness.

In research done by (Mittal & Griskevicius, 2014). Childhood environmental uncertainty gave a lower of a sense of control for those who come from less fortunate backgrounds than does from wealthier. Backgrounds were depicted via SES and either classified as a slow or fast life strategists depending on their socio-economic status from both childhood and current environment. In another study they found that those from wealthier childhood SES reported higher control perception. These studies contribute by demonstrating that sense of control is a psychological driver of behaviors. Contributing to the consistent findings of wealthier childhoods tend to feel that they have more sense of control. Does having this sense of control contribute to adulthood personality through childhood environment?

(Chen, Shit, & Sun, 2017) Hypothesized that a slow life history, was correlated positively with conscientiousness, openness, extraversions, and agreeableness. Along with childhood environmental unpredictability was indirectly associated with personality traits through the mediation of life history. They did that people pursuing a slow LH strategy to show more characteristics of agreeableness, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and a negative relation to neuroticism. Follow by the confirmation of their second hypothesis of early-life unpredictability may calibrate LH strategists, which result in individualistic differences in personality of adulthood. While know can say that childhood background contributes adulthood personality development, how could LH strategy lead to certain adulthood personality traits.

(Choi & Suh, 2018) Looked at the differences in childhood background and how differences in environments could extend to the remembering of past events. However previous research has found that fast life strategists use past experiences to a lesser extent than its counterparts to solve present situations. The way a person from an unpredictable environment may not live the same lifestyle that a person who has a manageable pattern to use as guidance. An example of this would be the opportunity to continue ones education compared to providing for one’s family. While everyone would like to attend college, not everyone has the same opportunity. Those in unpredictable environments may find it more convenient to start working immediately after high school to provide financial support for their families and themselves. They would plan their future according to their finances at hand compared to waiting four years to get degree until they start making steady income. However, slow strategists’ have more supportive environments with patterns at hand for producing desired goals. This can cause a more predictable mentality that can generate longer term goals and further their education. With this mentality of a predictable world, it may be more sensible to look retrospectively to extract meaning and structure from past events or experiences. Meaning, the capability to plan long-term goals is important for a sense of control (Mittal & Griskevicius, 2014).

Feeling lonely can be discomforting for many different reasons, but it is a universal feeling, symptom of depression, and can occur at any time with the perception of a lack of social support. No one enjoys feeling lonely and often we find ourselves trying to cope with loneliness through various methods. There are worse side effect correlations of suffering with loneliness than there have been with any positive correlations. No matter age, gender, or health, loneliness can impose its will on people that could lead to worsen symptoms or daily functioning. At some point in everyone’s life they have felt lonely and have handled it on their own. However, what if the use of another psychological state is used in order to counteract another? While loneliness is all about negative connotations and side effects. Nostalgia arguably gives the opposite side effects and even a sense of positive affect. One positive affect that nostalgia can induce is a feeling of being socially connected (Wildschut et al, 2006). The purpose of this study is to examine and further the current literature by investigating personality traits between life history strategies. The way a person can cope with certain psychological states can be different from the next, but, could there be similar characteristics from these different categories of life history that can be seen when facing loneliness?

Thinking of the good old days usually implies recollecting a past event that has sentimental value to it. This could have been the typical weekend of going to Blockbuster to pick out a movie to watch, or a favorite family vacation, even a memorable holiday that had emotional meaning to it. There is typically a happy personal association with a nostalgic event. Another way of putting it would be longing for the good old days. In previous studies (Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 20006) the most common objects of nostalgic reverie are momentous evets such as birthdays or vacations and takes settings into accounts such as sunsets or lakes. Recollecting the past or nostalgic events include higher levels of happiness and more frequent expressions of it (Wildschut et al., 2006). Nostalgia is a predominately positive and a social emotion arising from fond memories mixed with reminiscing about one’s childhood, positive event, or close relationship. Nostalgia can be induced by a varied of stimuli’s. However it is universal and can be experienced no matter what age. While nostalgia has more positive affect, this could help counterbalance the feeling of loneliness. Loneliness gives a sense of lacking in social support, nostalgia is a social emotion thus manifesting in stronger social connectedness. While one is a psychological state of rejection the other acts as acceptance. This counterbalance could further be examined regarding life history strategy, slow life strategists also tend to look further back into the past to recall nostalgic events than fast life strategist. Fast life strategists also look back into the past but their nostalgic events tend to be more recent compared to those of slow life strategists (INSERT CITATION HERE CHOI & SUH?). Knowing that both life strategies have different time frames regarding recollecting nostalgic events, does one use it more to feel more socially connected? Or does one tend to use nostalgia more than the other? We hypothesized that fast life strategist would not employ nostalgia to cope with loneliness to the same extent slow life strategists do.

Life History Strategy. The Mini-K Scale (Figueredo et al., 2006) will be used to assess life history strategy. Differential K theories of humans describes individual differences in behavior and biological characteristics indicative of differences in life-history strategy. Low-K characteristics could manifest as short-term thinking, impulsivity, little social support, and extensive risk-taking in correlation with fast life strategist traits. The opposite would be the case of high-K characteristics that would involve long-term thinking, substantial social support structures, monogamy, and consideration of risks in correlation with slow life strategists. Participants would be given a 20 question survey that measures social deviance “I would rather have one than several sexual relationships at a time” and impulsive behaviors “I avoid taking risks”. Participants rate each item on a scale of -3 (disagree strongly) to 3 (Agree strongly).

Nostalgia would be induced through the Event Reflection Task (Sedikides et al., 2015). In the Nostalgia condition, participants would read a definition that defined nostalgia as: “sentimental longing for one’s past or feeling sentimental for a fond and valued memory from one’s personal past (e.g., childhood, close relationships, momentous events).” Followed by the instruction to “think of a nostalgic event in your life. Specifically, try to think of a past event that makes you feel most nostalgic. Bring this nostalgic experience to mind. Immerse yourself in the nostalgic experience for a couple of minutes and think about how it makes you feel.”

In the control group, ordinary autobiographical condition, participants would instructed to “think of an ordinary event in your life. Specifically, try to think of a past event that is ordinary, normal, and every day. Bring this ordinary experience to mind. Immerse yourself in the ordinary experience for a couple of minutes and think about how it makes you feel.

All the participants listed four keywords summarizing their conditioned event and spent a few minutes describing the vent. Followed by a 3-itemt manipulation check (Wildschut et al., 2006). “Right now, I am feeling quite nostalgic”; 1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree.

Potential participants will receive either an e-mail sent out through an e-email blast specifically targeting the student body of the University Of Central Oklahoma, link sent out through social media such as Facebook, or through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Some students from the UCO student body will gain participation credit and those whom participate from MTurk will receive monetary compensation of $1.25. Those whom participate via social media will receive a warm thank you through meme.

Those interested in completing the study will open the survey on Qualtrics, provided by UCO, by clicking on the linked provided. There they will either consent or not into participating in the study. If they do not consent it will automatically take them to the end of the survey and their data will not be accounted for. However if they do consent, they will complete a demographics form and background questions. Followed immediately by the Mini-K scale, Emotional Frequency Questionnaire, and one of the two Nostalgia group conditions. Followed by a 3-question manipulation check of nostalgia.

The purpose of this project is to examine not only the effect nostalgia has with counteracting the psychological state of feeling lonely, but, also how environmental backgrounds can influence the use of nostalgia to feel socially connected when facing loneliness. Not only do I expect slow life strategists to use nostalgia more, but they will report feeling more socially connected than fast life strategists. On top of having more certain than uncertain patterns on the emotional frequency questionnaire due to the environmental shaping of slow life strategists. From previous research this is what could be expected but could also be used further understand slow and life strategists’ characteristics. Given that fast life strategist focusses on the present and their devaluation of social connections, we expect that fast life strategist may not employ nostalgia to cope with loneliness to the same extent as do slow life strategists.

Preliminary examination of the data appears to confirm our hypothesis and if done so individuals are more likely to handle loneliness with nostalgia due to the source of social connectedness that nostalgia can harness as a possible interpretation. However possible limitations could hinder the results of our study or give different interpretation of the data. It could also serve as a potential preliminary stage to a multi study research examining life history theory, nostalgia, and social connection to further explain or examine a multitude of studies dealing with the same variables. This could help understand how the environment shapes its individuals. How Nostalgia is used, induced, and defined to deal with negative affect states compared to its positive counterparts. And the importance social connection can play as a role for self-esteem, emotional IQ, and the effect it can have to regulate psychological distress. In regard to any of these potential examination, there are also potential limitation that would need to be accounted for and sought after to limit or take into consideration.

One potential limitation this study can have is using the proper materials to account for what we are specifically trying to examine. On top of having the data be generalized to the entire public. There is the risk of having more college participants in the study than the general public we are trying to represent. However we have implemented Mturk in order to counterbalance this potential limitation. Mturk is a database that allows one to make money by accomplishing tasking approved by the requestor, meeting completion requirements. Anyone can access and make an account, hopefully being more representative of the generalized public. We did contribute money out of our pocket in order to fund these participants. Participants will not know of this to avoid any conflict in our data.

Another limitation that we may find is using the right form of measuring life history theory, social connection, and nostalgia. With life history theory there are traditional measures and new with high validity, but our intention is to implement each one in our multi study research of life history theory and social connection. However to avoid experimenters fatigue we used the Mini-K, but in our future research we could use the newer K-SF-42 in which it has a few more questions than the Mini-K scale.

Nostalgia was used as another factor in our study with numerous of articles or research done about. However in this study we used one of the many forms of manipulation for nostalgia, from our research we could have done a different form of nostalgia manipulation that could be a potential future implication. This manipulation would deal with collective vs. individualistic nostalgia. This could further look into how nostalgia within a group could feel more socially connected than individualistic nostalgia. There are many future implications that we could address and hope to accomplish through our extensive research.

References

1. Griskevicius, V., Delton, A., Robertson, T., & Tybur, J. (2011). Environmental Contingency in Life History Strategies: The Influence of Mortality and Socioeconomic Status of Reproductive Timing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 241-254.
2. Figueredo, A., & Wolf, P. (2009). Assortative Pairing and Life History Strategy. Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective, 20(3), 317-330.
3. Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2008). Nostalgia. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(5), 304-307
4. Figueredo, Aurelio José, Geneva Vásquez, Barbara H Brumbach, Stephanie M.R Schneider, Jon A Sefcek, Ilanit R Tal, Dawn Hill, Christopher J Wenner, and W. Jake Jacobs. ‘Consilience and Life History Theory: From Genes to Brain to Reproductive Strategy.’ Developmental Review 26.2 (2006): 243-75. Web.
5. Cheung, W., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2016). Induced nostalgia increases optimism (via social-connectedness and self-esteem) among individuals high, but not low, in trait nostalgia. Personality and Individual Differences, 90, 283-288
6. Choi, S., & Suh, E. (2018). Retrospective time travel in life satisfaction judgment: A life history approach. Personality and Individual Differences, 129, 138-142.
7. Kagan, J. (2009). Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 166(3), 375-376.
8. Olderbak, S., Gladden, P., Wolf, P., & Figueredo, A. (2014). Comparison of Life History Strategy measures. Personality and Individual Differences, 58(C), 82-88.
9. Chen, Shi, & Sun. (2017). Life history strategy as a mediator between childhood environmental unpredictability and adulthood personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 111, 215-219.
10. Mittal, C., & Griskevicius, V. (2014). Sense of Control Under Uncertainty Depends on People’s Childhood Environment: A Life History Theory Approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 621-637.

Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class is a fascinating depiction of the 1960s. X-Men dabbles in period nostalgia as it gazes into the future, using the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop to explore how the past informs the present. First Class is primarily a historical fantasy that places its characters at the center of the most contentious time in American history. Vaughn’s film exhibits Boym’s idea of historical emotion and how past events can be altered to fit into someone’s fantasy. Svetlana Boym’s notion of nostalgia is broken up into two categories: reflective and restorative nostalgia.

Nostalgia is defined as “a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. It is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy” (Boym). In X-Men First Class, we see how specific movements in history are discussed through the lens of mutant and human relations. It is no surprise that this film alludes to the civil rights movement and the treatment of oppressed minority groups that exist in the American landscape. After watching this film, there’s one question that needs to be answered: What form of nostalgia is X-Men: First Class? To answer this question accurately, I must define and discuss the distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia.

In Boym’s work, The Future of Nostalgia, she discusses the history of the word “nostalgia” and its usage by a 17th-century medical student named Johannes Hofer. Hofer used “nostalgia” to describe a brain disorder that was affecting Swiss soldiers and others who were far away from their homeland. Restorative nostalgia emphasizes the root word nostos which means returning home. From a restorative nostalgists perspective, their ‘home’ is always being attacked, so they have this overwhelming urge to protect it. This form of nostalgia focuses on rebuilding what was lost and safeguarding the truth.

On the other hand, reflective nostalgia focuses on the root word algia which means aching. Boym states,” Reflective nostalgia dwells in longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance. It lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time” (Boym, p.233-234). Reflective nostalgia is aware of the idealizing momentum of the desired past, it reflects critically upon its own desires, and it highlights possibilities in the past regarding the present – often playfully or with irony. It is also escapist by nature.

What’s interesting about the X-Men franchise, in general, is that it has created its own “alternate history” that is full of intriguing deviations from our interpretation of history — along with similarities that stress the grave mistakes society has made over time. With that being said, I think that First Class is an excellent example of reflective nostalgia. X-Men was first published in 1963 and given that First Class takes the film series back to 1960s allows for a re-evaluation of the series based on the identity politics and social issues that inspired it initially. First Class starts with a young Erik Lehnsherr destroying the gate of a German concentration camp after being split up from his mother. First Class continues with Erik’s heartbreaking childhood, refusing to weaken the correlation between mutant life and the excruciating circumstances that come with being an “other.” Thus, Eric’s motive is no longer based in a horrific historical moment but has become a part of his life-long mission of fighting social hatred on behalf of the oppressed “other.”

Mutant’s appearance is also an essential part of the film as well. Eric’s Jewishness is more evident than his mutant status. However, when Charles accidentally tells Frank’s secret of him being a mutant to his boss, Frank replies, “You didn’t ask, I didn’t tell,” which refers to the failed military policy Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. This event draws a connection between being a mutant and being in the closet which is associated with queerness. The fact that some mutants can appear “normal” while some are “abnormal” suggests that mutant life stands for all kinds of identity-based stigma with varied visibility (as homosexuality is “invisible,” and race is “visible”).

Thus, the film calls into question the social standards of what is deemed normal. It is in this way that First Class symbolically addresses the struggle for civil rights not in a historical context associated with the early 1960s. Superhero movies always reflect the social and political climate of their time. First Class is not focused on recreating the 1960s but analyzing and allowing audiences to think critically of the ideas and politics that existed during that time. Social issues such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are all mentioned in the film as metaphors or symbols, but they aren’t mentioned directly.

Since First Class takes place in 1962, during the height of the Cold war, it is considered a Cold War film. It’s accurate in its portrayal of historical events leading up to Cuban Missile Crisis. In Movies to the Rescue: Keeping the Cold War Relevant for Twenty-First-Century Students, Gokcek and Howard discuss how film can be an effective medium in understanding Cold War concepts and politics. For the movie selection, they chose The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Crimson Tide (1995). They argue that big Hollywood films produced after the Cold War are compelling teaching tools to make abstract Cold War concepts more understandable and to motivate college students to become active learners. In terms of nostalgia, it is integral for students to know how policy decisions of the past impact the world in which we live in today.

Even in our class, we used films, tv shows, etc. to help us better understand the Cold War. For example, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) was released to the public while the Cold War was going on. Fear of annihilation was prevalent during this time, so Kubrick decided to make the famous political satire film. Dr. Strangelove poked fun at the people in charge and showed us how easy it would be to wipe out both the US and Russia. Young people can appreciate Dr. Strangelove’s transformation from existential dread into a comedy. It’s nostalgic but doesn’t dwell on creating the perfect Cold War scenario where both sides learn their lesson in the nick of time. It’s a nightmare scenario where both sides annihilate each other. The film is not reclaiming the past but providing a harsh reality of what could’ve happened.

In There’s No Nostalgia Like Hollywood Nostalgia, Thomas Leitch discusses how nostalgia appears in American culture especially in the film industry. He also explains how nostalgia occupies specific Hollywood genres and the distinct ways in which those genres have altered their use of nostalgia. Leitch points out that America is more focused on the future than the past and that there’s little to no investment in our country’s history. Leitch states, “any nostalgic longing for the past has a strictly limited place in such a resolutely future-oriented world” (Leitch, p.3). He makes an argument that American culture is not accustomed to restorative nostalgia like other European nations. Leitch mentions heritage cinema which came to fruition in Great Britain in the 1980s. These films focused on historical accuracy and portraying the ‘perfect’ version of Great Britain.

However, the United States has never developed anything close to heritage cinema. Heritage cinema’s restorative nostalgia has no equivalent in America because of the nation’s futuristic orientation. America’s lack of desire to look for asylum in an idealized past has prompted them to alter restorative nostalgia. Instead of using the “restoration of origins” as a cornerstone, they focused on conspiracy theories. Leitch mentions the rise of Trump and how he helped usher in a new wave of restorative nostalgia by his well-known phrase Make America Great Again.

Hollywood nostalgia and its alienation from MAGA nostalgia is noticeable given the economic conservatism of the US film industry, which has led to the constant backing of retro superhero franchises and other sequels and remakes. This resurgence of retro superhero franchises comes from the convergence of the political climate that has repeatedly made superheroes relevant to their contemporary audiences and the new film effects (CGI) and franchising of the twenty-first century.

Restorative nostalgia takes place in films about films. For example, the movie The Artist (2011), is a nostalgic interpretation of the days of silent cinema, whereas Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is reminiscent of the transition from silent films to “talkies.” Restorative nostalgia also appears in family movies represented by Little Women (1994, 2018) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). The past about which these films invite younger audiences to become increasingly nostalgic is not remembered but established by films whose purpose is educational as well as sentimental. In films like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Matilda (1996), and A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), childhood is less likely to be considered as an object of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is everywhere in tv shows, movies, art, etc. As a nation we recover artifacts of the past for entertainment to calm present troubles and anxieties. We discuss the present in terms of the past, and we judge the present by the standards of long ago.

The word Nostalgia derives from the Greek word nóstos, which means ‘return home’ (Davis, 1977) and álgos that signifies ‘pain’ or ‘longing’. This term is frequently interconnected to the suffering from “homesickness”, melancholy and anxiety (Wilson, 2014). By the late twentieth century, nostalgia is no longer looked upon as a mental disorder, but regarded as an emotion, a wistful longing for the past (Wilson, 1999). This nostalgic feeling as mentioned by sociologist Davis is mostly characterised primarily with positive effects of emotions such as pleasure, joy, satisfaction and goodness, and secondarily the negative ones (Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt and Routledge, 2008). That being said, it is evident that nostalgia has to somewhat be a personally experienced past rather than drawing from history books, manuals or documents (Davis, 1977). Hence, the notion of nostalgia is often linked with our memories reminiscing past events. However, professor Wilson stated otherwise where nostalgia can be experienced collectively through activities of a group who shared the events being recalled (Wilson, 1999). It is thus, possible for those who have not experienced a particular decade, to feel nostalgic, looking back to those eras with a sense of fondness.

Professor Boym broke down two types of nostalgia, mainly restorative and reflective where she states that (Wilson, 2014). In this case, reflective nostalgia seems more appropriate in relation to the context of this research where films is a medium that can be used to transmit past information that sparks one’s emotions and memories. These memories are ideally known as cultural or collective memory (Astrid, 2008) ranging from individual acts of remembering to group memory and it relates its knowledge based on an actual present situation (Assmann and Czaplicka, 1995). Nostalgia on screen is a reconstruction and imagination of the past. Therefore, it shows how films have the ability to capture and recreate the past through the visual aesthetics and narratives.

Nostalgia as a narrative device

As technology evolves, so does the use of technology in the film and entertainment industry. Oral traditions such as prints and words were no longer the only gateway to articulate the past from the present. Mass Media has also played a major part in transferring knowledge of the past in the means of communication (Misztal, 2003) where it can also act as an important source for cultural memory by virtually accessing the past (Niemeyer, 29). Media comes in many forms and today, social media applications like Instagram is another way for younger generation to capture photographs or videos on their mobile as a way to preserve memories (Fallon, 2014). Sociologist Fred Davis termed nostalgia as a bittersweet emotion (Davis, 1977) that evokes a sentimental longing or affection for the past (Hepper and Ritchie, 2011; Wilson, 1999). As such, films have the capability to reflect the notion of nostalgia on screen where the content and storylines can serve as nostalgic remnants of the past, subsequently encouraging individuals to develop emotional and social connections with particular stories or scenes. Film is often used to either preserve a certain memory, values or meanings that can be transported to the minds of the audience and be preserved in their memory (Sam Kim, Sean Kim and Petrick, 2017). These nostalgic experiences can then affect and stimulate either positive or negative feelings (Wilson, 1999).

Evoking authenticity in local films

Storytelling of Royston Tan’s 881 (2007). According to historian Prasenjit Duara, the images of authenticity can (Chong, 878) and is said to engage in a non-standardised positive image (Yoo-lee, Fowler, Adkins, Kim and Davis, 2014). In today’s context, authenticity in films does not mean questioning its original work of art, rather the relationship between reality and the content of a film (Skare, 2016). Most of Tan’s films address the problems of communication within Asian families, alienation as well as separation issues as a result of modernisation (Tan, 233; Liew and Teo, 28). 881 is an exemplification of showing how Chinese Singaporean directors disobeyed the government’s rule of making films only in the official language of Mandarin (Khoo and Metzger, 2009) by bringing back the exuberant real life of Singapore getai (song stage in English) scene that was held all around the city’s heartlands during the annual Chinese “Hungry Ghost Festival”. This nostalgic getai performance was once a live entertainment largely welcomed by the older generations in Singapore where it is no longer apparent and appreciated by the young today (Uhde and Ng, 150).

Tan’s 881 demonstrates the use of extravagant costumes alongside colourful makeshift stage sets that shows how the getai scene was like in the past. Hence, in a way discovering the golden age period of showing historical costume movies (Uhde and Ng, 74). Not only that, the film portrays the use of Mandarin language and Hokkien dialect, which are mainly the languages, used by the getai performers in the past. In 1979, the Singapore Government implemented the Speak Mandarin Campaign Language (SMC), where the use of Chinese dialect was banned in the broadcast mass media of film, radio and television (Silver and Bokhorst-Heng, 2017). The use of dialect shows how Tan is trying to challenge the language policy ever since the government launched the ‘Speak Mandarin Campaign’, as a result suppressing the use of dialects (Ng, 2014) for fear it results in a (Newman, 1988). Language in this sense is vital to bringing the significance of authenticity to the film (Uhde and Ng, 150) which comprises of cultural values (Yoo-lee, Fowler, Adkins, Kim and Davis, 2014). The notion of nostalgia, in this case, is being reflected through the way in which Tan portrays the forgotten culture and people through the narratives of this film.

Nostalgia Construct

The term “nostalgia” was first used by Johannes Hoffer in 1688, and since then has been studied from a variety of perspectives.

Looking into nostalgia’s origins, it derives from two Greek roots nostos and algos. First, nostos, “to return home/ to one’s native land”. Secondly, the root algos, or “pain, suffering, or grief”, completes the term nostalgia, referring to its original connotation of the pain or suffering related with the return home. Nostalgia as an emotion has both pleasant and unpleasant elements, it is a myriad of physiological and psychological symptoms. This bittersweet emotion refers back to an earlier period time in one’s life, ranging from ten to seventy years-old, creating a selective recall of the past experiences. Nostalgia may induce memories of peaceful and pleasant times, or it may evoke times of tension and turbulence (Hofer, 1688; Holak & Havlena, 1992).

Nostalgia is a complex feeling, emotion, or mood produced by reflection on things (objects, persons, experiences, ideas) associated with the past. It is both an “evocation of a lived past” (Davis, 1979) and a “wistful mood that may be prompted by an object, a scene, a smell, or a strain of music” (Belk, 1990). Although this emotion is based on a lived past, it may not reflect the reality of the actual past, but a distorted memory that produces a better picture than the actual truth. (Davis, 1979).

Nostalgia is an experience/sensation particularly private, what is nostalgic for one may leave another indifferent. B. Daniels even compares a nostalgic experience to Straus’ comments on attending an opera: “The audience comprises a group of individuals; whether their number is small or large, each one sees and hears for himself, alone; nevertheless, all of them see and hear the same performance, together. The view is ‘public’ while the sights are private…” (Straus, 1969, p. 229).

Opposed to Hofer, Yearning for Yesterday, written by F. Davis in 1979, addresses the concept of nostalgia as a positive feeling towards a personally experienced past, a belief that “things were better… then than now”. The author emphasizes the personal nature of nostalgic experiences. Davis suggests three “ascending orders” of nostalgia: simple nostalgia (unexamined experiences of the phenomenon), reflexive nostalgia (critical consideration of the historical accuracy of nostalgic experience) and interpreted nostalgia (critical treatment of the nostalgic feeling itself). Although the concepts created in this book were not fully developed, Davis concludes with an analysis of “contemporary nostalgia” and the connections of nostalgia to economic institutions and the mass media, that historical facts that characterize our times, can later on be used in “nostalgia industries” (e.g., the deliberate planning of future nostalgic revivals in the marketing of new products).

Developing this view of nostalgia, Holbrook and Schindler (1991) define it as “a preference toward objects that were more common when one was younger”. Four aspects are drawn from it. First, preference, meaning the consumer’s degree of liking toward various objects used in consumption. Second, the objects refer to any kind of product (both goods and services). Third, with respect to the concept more common… when one was younger, differences of opinion emerge on whether nostalgia relates only to one’s own store of remembered events from a “personally experienced past” (Davis, 1979, p. 8) or reaches back historically so that it “engulfs the whole past” (Lowenthal 1985, p. 6). While nostalgia might attach itself to experiences recalled from one’s own youth, it might also focus on the womb (Fodor, 1950), on objects “recalled” via collective memory from an historical era (Lowenthal, 1985).

At last, this definition focuses on the temporal orientation of one’s product-related attitudes and does not necessarily bear on the degree of sentimentality or other bittersweet, wistful feelings that may influence those positive affective responses towards objects from days of yore.

Influence of Consumers’ traits in Nostalgia effectiveness

Nostalgic brands enhance consumers’ brand familiarity, trust, and brand preferences by reminding them of childhood memories and imprinted emotions (Braun-LaTour et al., 2007; Holak and Havlena, 1998; Schindler and Holbrook, 2003). Consumers using nostalgic products better recall the past (Goulding, 2001), feel more connected with the past and people (Brown et al., 2003; Goulding, 2001; Loveland et al., 2010), and more likely to volunteer and donate (Zhou et al., 2012a).

Nostalgia Proneness

The ability of an individual to travel back in time only using his mind, creates the opportunity to have meaningful past experiences. The recollection of these personal memories often elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia is a predominantly positive, social and past-oriented emotion. Experimentally-induced nostalgia increases positive affect, elevates self-regard, fosters social connectedness, and instils a sense of meaning in life (Routledge et al., 2011; Wildschut Sedikides, Ardnt, & Routledge, 2006).

Nostalgia itself is not a preference, but rather a feeling or mood that can lead to a preference for things. There are two major factors that influence nostalgia in consumers, age and the propensity to have nostalgia, also named nostalgia proneness.

Davis (1979) introduces the concept of nostalgia as a mechanism that allows people to maintain their identity in the course of major transitions that serve as breaks in the life cycle (e.g., the identity change from childhood to pubescence, from adolescence to adulthood, from single to married). Therefore, the tendency to engage in nostalgic experiences varies over an individual’s lifetime. Nostalgia Proneness has been hypothesized to peak as individuals move into middle age and during “retirement” years. (Holak & Havlena, 1992).

Nostalgia Proneness can be distinguished between two contrasting views, the “sociality view” and the “maladaptation view”. The first one emphasizes the rich social collection of nostalgic memories. Nostalgic recollections typically involve meaningful interactions with close ones, such as family members, partners and friends (Wildschut et al., 2006). Not only, linguistic analyses showed that nostalgic narratives had more first-person plural pronouns, social words (e.g., mother, friend) (Robertson, Wildschut, Sedikides, & Vingerhoets, in preparation), but also individuals who are high in nostalgia proneness manifest a stronger preference for activities and song lyrics in which social relationships are central (Batcho, 1998, Batcho, DaRin, Nave, & Yaworsky, 2008).

On the other hand, the “maladaptation view” entails that nostalgia proneness is a form of emotional instability or depression. In this scenario, nostalgia is a retreat into the past forbidding the individual to deal with the demands of adulthood. (Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006, Sedikides Wildschut, & Baden, 2004). Consistent with this view, research showed that neuroticism is positively linked with nostalgia proneness (Barrett et al., 2010).

Consumers’ self-concepts

In addiction to nostalgia proneness, nostalgia also functions differently depending on consumers’ self-concepts.

Self-concepts are the ways in which people perceive themselves (Morse and Gergen, 1970). People often conceptualize themselves according to two basic aspects of human beings: agency and communion (Bakan, 1966, Wiggins, 1991). Agency represents personal interests and values such as self-asertion, self-improvement, self-protection, and self-esteem. Communion, on the other hand, focuses on social bonding, connections with others, kindness, cooperation, care for others, and group harmony (Bartz and Lydon, 2004). Hence, while agentic individuals tend to show self-centered behaviour and try to differentiate themselves from others, communal individuals are inclined to be part of a group and try to maintain social connections (Bakan, 1966; Wiggins, 1991).

Consumers purchase products corresponding to their self-concepts as a means of self-expression (Braun et al., 2002; Kotler and Armstrong, 2012), and nostalgia may fulfill the needs of either personal or social selves (Hart et al., 2011; Loveland et al., 2010; Wildschut et al., 2010), therefore it is important to investigate the role of self-concepts in the influence of nostalgia.

When people engage in nostalgic reflections, they feel high levels of self-positivity (Sedikides et al., 2008; Wildschut et al., 2006), which satisfies the needs of agentic selves. On the other hand, nostalgic engagement also enhances feelings of social belongingness (Loveland et al., 2010; Wilschut et al., 2010), which meets the needs of communal selves.

Social psychologists have demonstrated that there are two essential functions of nostalgia: enhancing perceived feelings of social connectedness (Loveland et al., 2010; Routledge et al., 2011; Wildschut et al,. 2006; Zhou et al., 2012) and enhancing perceived feelings of social positivity (Hart et al., 2011; Sedikides et al., 2008; Wildschut et al., 2006; Wildschut et al., 2010). Nostalgic experiences lead individuals to consciously recollect positive relationships with others they had in the past, and this process enhances their feelings of self-positivity. The recollection of positive self-images, results in an increase of self-esteem (Hart et al., 2011; Vess et al., 2010; Wildschut et al., 2006; Zhou et al., 2008).

Jiyeon Nam et al. (2016), proposes that these different functions of nostalgia can be facilitated by different types of self-concepts. Nostalgia, which enhances feelings of social connectedness and of self-positivity, can fulfil the needs of either personal or social selves.

An Experiment was ran to test the predicted hypothesis that nostalgia functions differently when consumers have agentic versus communal self-concepts. A two (agentic vs communal) by two (nostalgic vs non-nostalgic) between subjects was employed to test these predictions. A fictitious nostalgic Starbucks advertisement was created by adopting Muehling and Sprott (2004) approach. To induce participants’ nostalgic feelings, Starbucks’s 1971 logo was inserted into the ad and nostalgic taglines emphasizing a meaningful past moment were used. To manipulate agentic versus communal self-concepts, the ads were designed to include images of objects, people, or events that characterized either agency or communion (images of success, achievements and aspirations for agentic, and images with family, friends and loved ones for communal). Participants rated the ad with agentic contents as significantly more agentic than the ad with communal contents. On the other hand, participants evaluated the ad with communal contents as more communal than the ad with agentic contents. Participants in the nostalgic condition felt significantly more nostalgic feelings than did those in the non-nostalgic condition. Agentic participants were more likely to buy a nostalgic product and recommend it to others through enhanced self-positivity, whereas communal participants were more likely to buy a nostalgic product and recommend it to others through enhanced social connectedness. The fact that there were no significant indirect effects of self-concept through social connectedness and self-positivity on purchase and recommendation intentions in the non-nostalgic condition further confirms the different functions of nostalgia depending on different self-concepts.

Nostalgia Across Age

The general levels of nostalgic consumption experienced by consumers depend on changes over time, therefore associated with age. In western society it is adolescence and early adulthood that has the most impact when forming memories that will later on be used as nostalgic emotions/experience (Holbrook, 1993).

Not only brand’s physical attributes and personality characteristics influence consumers, nostalgic memories can also play a major role in shaping the ‘future’ consumer/brand relationship (Braun-Latour et al. 2006; Nedungadi 1990; Biehal and Chakravarti 1986).

Relationships are formed early in life. This also applies to brand relationships. Brand relationships formed early result in the strongest consumer-brand relationship. (Fournier 1998, Ji 2002). Early childhood exposure to a brand is a way to create an emotional attachment, building childhood memories that will influence their future brand consumption decisions.

The tendency to engage in nostalgic feelings varies over the course of an individual’s life. According to Holak and Havlena, ‘Nostalgia Proneness’ has its peak as individuals move into middle age and during retirement years.

Childhood Brand Nostalgia

Marketers have repositioned brands that have been continuously available in ways designed to capitalize on consumers’ feelings of nostalgia. (e.g., Vaqueiro’s new retro packaging). Marketers have even attempted to add nostalgic appeal to brands that are not really old, a new product with a ‘retro’ design intended to appear as though it comes from an earlier time and evoke feelings of nostalgia. Retromarketing differs from nostalgic marketing in that while these items were developed and designed to feel as though they come from decades past, they come with all the bells and whistles that are expected of a product in today’s marketplace.

An examination of the marketplace shows that these attempts to market products based on nostalgic feelings can be successful. In other cases, the updating or reintroduction of the brand is met with passive acceptance or even negativity. This suggests that marketers do not fully understand how to effectively use childhood brand nostalgia as a marketing tool and would benefit from a better understanding of how brand nostalgic individuals differ from their non-brand nostalgic counterparts.

In marketing, nostalgia has most frequently been studied as a psychographic variable, as seen in Holbrook and Schindler’s work examining nostalgia proneness (Holbrook and Schindler, 1989, 1991) and bonded nostalgia (Holbrook and Schindler, 2003). However, neither of these constructs fully addresses the tendency for a consumer to develop feelings of nostalgia towards a brand.

Nostalgic bonds have also been mentioned as one way an individual can develop a relationship with a brand. (Fournier, 1998; Smit et al., 2007). Fournier suggests that these nostalgic relationships may have greater significance for the consumer than other brand relationships, which enables them to endure through the consumer’s lifetime despite infrequent contact with the brand. Nostalgia is also included as one of the seven dimensions in Fournier’s (1998) construct of brand relationship quality, and as a component of Smit et al.’s (2007) Brand Relationship Quality (BRQ) scale.

Childhood Brand Nostalgia can be defined as a positively valanced emotional attachment to a brand because of the brand’s association with fond memories of the individual’s nonrecent lived past. This definition is distinct from a more general emotional attachment to a brand, as a nostalgic attachment to a brand must be based on fond memories of experiences with the brand in the individual’s non-recent lived past. Distinct from bonded nostalgia, as it does not consider an emotional connection to a specific object or possession, but a nostalgic connection to a brand. Finally, this definition is specific to the relationship between a consumer and a particular brand, distinguishing it from the more general dispositional tendency of nostalgia proneness.

The only existing measure of consumer nostalgia is the Nostalgia Proneness scale (Holbrook, 1993), which is designed to measure the psychographic variable of an individual’s overall tendency towards nostalgia. The BRQ scale developed by Smit et al. (2007) does capture nostalgic brand connections as one dimension of the scale, but this dimension is only measured with two items.

The findings of this study suggest that the Childhood Brand Nostalgia scale is able to detect variance in brand nostalgia among consumers across multiple brands within multiple product categories. In addition, Childhood Brand Nostalgia scale is able to capture variance in a single consumer’s nostalgic feelings towards more than one brand. (Shields and Johnson, 2016).

Nostalgic brands enhance consumers’ brand familiarity, trust, and brand preferences by reminding them of childhood memories and imprinted emotions (Braun-LaTour et al., 2007; Holak and Havlena, 1998; Schindler and Holbrook, 2003). Consumers using nostalgic products better recall the past (Goulding, 2001), feel more connected with the past and people (Brown et al., 2003; Goulding, 2001; Loveland et al., 2010), and more likely to volunteer and donate (Zhou et al., 2012a).

Nostalgia itself is not a preference, but rather a feeling or mood that can lead to a preference for things. There are two major factors that influence nostalgia in consumers, age and the propensity to nostalgia, also named nostalgia proneness.

Nostalgia in Advertising

Nowadays, more than ever, advertisers face the challenge to use innovative techniques to communicate to a selected target market in an effective way. Nostalgia advertising is one of the techniques available to facilitate this communication.

This technique of using artefacts and/or themes that make consumers relive or remember the past, has gained notable attention in recent years. There are different theories that try to explain and comprehend the emergence of nostalgia. Some theories (Miller 1990; Stern 1992) argue that nostalgia is particularly effective in the end of the century. This period is usually a time of cultural anxiety, when the public would rather look toward the less threatening and comfortable past than to face the unknown future.

Another explanation regarding the emergence of nostalgia, explored by Lowenthal (1985), argues that nostalgia increases as consumers become more dissatisfied with life as it is. Consumers look into the past for comfort.

Although the term ‘nostalgia’ has been around for a while, a rising opportunity of turning the ‘yesterday’ into new is emerging among consumers. This new trend of retro-marketing is emerging and gaining each day more visibility.

Nostalgia is being used in different areas, from reintroducing a product in the market, as the example of VW Beetle or MINI, to using an old package as advertising, as Coca-Cola did when recreated the famous contour bottle in 1994. Coca-Cola increased by double digits after this new package. Nostalgia is also being used in advertising, Ford Motor Company has shot commercials that look historic and vintage, with grainy footage, hoping that consumers will associate longevity with quality.

(Holak, Matveev, & Havlena, 2007)(Holak & Havlena, 1998)(Holbrook, 1993)(Stewart, 1990)(Chi, Yeh, & Tsai, 2011)(Muehling, Sprott, & Sultan, 2014)(Reisenwitz, 2004)(Gardner, 1985)(Muehling & Sprott, 2004)(Muehling et al., 2014)(Kokkinaki & Lunt, 1999)(Holak & Havlena, 1998)(Schuman & Scott, 1989)(Merchant & Rose, 2013)

Effects of Advertising in Brand Attitude & Purchase Intention

A positive brand attitude directly affects and promotes brand selection; therefore, marketing and advertising rely heavily on the formation of a favourable brand attitude.

When studying the attitude-behaviour relationship, it is mandatory to study the concept of involvement. The term involvement is generally used to refer to the personal relevance or importance of an object (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979). Studies based on these authors show that attitudes that have been formed under high involvement conditions have a strong impact on behaviour, whereas attitudes formed under lower levels of involvement are less influential.

Other conceptualizations integrate involvement, accessibility and other moderators of the attitude-behaviour relationship as multiple dimensions of the more general construct of attitude strength (Krosnick & Petty, 1995; Raden, 1985). Attitude strength can be defined in terms of the qualities that strong attitudes possess: “Strong attitudes are persistent, are resistant to counter persuasion and have a strong impact on decisions and behaviours”.

Inducing favourable brand attitudes is not sufficient for advertising to be effective, these attitudes need to be strong in order to influence purchase intentions and behaviour. Findings suggest that increasing consumers’ motivation to elaborate on advertising messages enhances the accessibility of the resulting attitudes, therefore advertisers should focus on increasing consumers’ involvement with the advertised message (Kokinaki & Lunt, 1999).

In a fast and competitive marketing environment, if a product/service wants to be fast known to consumers, it must rely on advertising campaigns to make consumers memorize product messages. Since consumers contact with multiple advertisements in a day, marketers use different methods to catch consumers attention and influence on their buying decisions. Purchase intentions can measure the possibility of a consumer to buy a product, the higher the intention, higher the willingness to buy the product. According to Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), consumer’s attitude and assessment and external factors construct consumer purchase intention.

Effects of Nostalgic Advertisement in Brand Attitude and Purchase Intentions

Nostalgia-themed advertisements may be capable of prompting nostalgic thoughts and pleasant memories in consumers, resulting in a more favourable brand attitude and purchase intention. (Muehling et al. 2014; Baker and Kennedy 1994; Holak and Havlena 1998; Muehling and Sprott 2004).

Nostalgic advertisements are most pronounced for those who have a personal attachment or a meaningful connection with the advertised brand. Therefore, the effects of nostalgia on consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intentions should be influenced by one’s past associations with (i.e. in-home childhood exposure and past personal attachment to the advertised brand (Muehling et al., 2014). However, it has not been studied the influence that past brand associations has on consumers’ response to advertising. Findings in Muehling et al. research suggest that consumers’ past does indeed moderate the effects of nostalgia-themed advertising.

When associating Nostalgic advertisement and purchase intentions, there appears to be a direct relation between this type of advertisement and low-involvement purchase situations, where there are minimal differences among brand alternatives (Belch and Belch 1998).

Marconi (1996) notes that even though nostalgic advertising may catch attention and be entertaining, its effectiveness in influencing communication effects, such as increasing the level of brand awareness and brand attitude, and ultimately increasing sales, has not been firmly established and proved. This type of research will contribute to understand what products, and which are compatible with the nostalgia advertisement technique.

However, in practice little can be done to increase product or purchase involvement, as they depend on individuals’ values, interests, consumption needs etc. It is in low involvement situations that attitude accessibility becomes of particular importance, as such situations are more likely to be associated with automatic, unconscious decisions (Herr & Fazio, 1993). It is in such situations that brand attitudes need to be accessible in order to influence purchase intentions and behaviours. Research findings indicate that certain executional cues of an advertisement can enhance advertising message involvement.

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In the play Waiting for Godot, the two characters Vladimir and Estragon wait for an unknown person named Godot who never arrives. When the two hobos thought about taking their lives, they waited to hear what Godot thinks. While Godot never shows up, the two men also forget about what happened in the previous day. Forgetting enables their life as the hope of eventually meeting Godot dissolves their fear and paranoia, preventing them from drowning to nihilism. Amnesia is Vladimir and Estragon’s way of eliminating uncertainties in their lives and attaining stability in their fantasies. Nostalgia, the antithesis of amnesia, carries with it the separation from the past and the desire of not letting it go. It is an alternative way from amnesia to cope with our present. Nostalgia can be in two dimensions—one for space and the other for time. Nostalgia is such a prevalent emotion that it is experienced virtually by everyone (Boym, 2001). We could be thinking about the past whenever a place or an object evokes our memories. As the scenes of the past in our mind segue into the present, what role, then, does nostalgia play in our lives? How are we to thrive when we are imbued with nostalgia?

Andre Aciman, a French-speaking Jew expelled from Alexandria at an early age with his family during the later stage of the Egyptian Suez Crisis, now lives in New York. He has a nostalgia about space and writes that he sees himself as an exile from Alexandria and every European cities he had lived in. In his essay “Shadow Cities,” Aciman tells us that he builds for himself a home when he contemplates in Strauss Park somewhere in the upper west side of New York. As an exile from Alexandria, a person who is forced to be unwillfully displaced, Aciman is constantly looking for his “homeland” abroad. His notion of an exile is “not just someone who has lost his home,” but “someone who can’t find another.” Therefore, he writes that exiles tried to “reinvent the concept with what they’ve got.” When he was in Strauss Park, he could tie to his childhood memories and imaginations of Europe with everything happening in the park. The park became the place for him to “retrospect” and “finds himself”: he was in one place that had “at least four addresses,” mind drifting in four directions—his nostalgic escapes to his imagined past worlds. He increasingly drifts into the imagined reality of a painted city called New York from the rose-tinted glasses through which he sees the shadow cities for his nostalgia. As a consequence, he was very much disappointed when Strauss Park was dismantled. He writes as if part of himself was “lost.”

In addition to nostalgia for lost spaces, Aciman indulged himself in the lost times. He pictures himself somewhere in the 50s in New York, visualizing Kurt Appelbaum, Mrs. Danziger, and the Busch Quartet in Strauss Park and thus projecting them onto the park as well. The present New York is such an unsettling place that it leads to Aciman’s nostalgic journeys to a better past world. He likes returning to the park as a “ritual” of “remembering the shadow cities hidden there.” He admits that he loves “not so much the beauty of the past as the beauty of remembering.” Remembering his past is a way of “grafting himself to New York.” And he is able to see New York as the “ersatz’ of all the things he can remember and cannot have much less love, the “parallels” of home. Through creative and reflective use of nostalgia, Aciman is able to remember and write against the forgetting, retaining his link to his past.

Apart from assisting in keeping in touch with one’s history and better transforming to the present, can nostalgia help people’s identity formation? Aciman claims that what he fears the most was that his feet are “never quite solidly on the ground,” that he has “lost everything,” including his roots. He is envious of others who have “rootedness,” something continuous that he also wishes to bring along with him. Pip, the protagonist of Great Expectations, was raised up by his sister and her husband Joe, a blacksmith. When Pip was patronized with a great fortune, his social status changed. He felt ashamed of Joe’s manner upon his visit, something he never felt before. Through later obstacles that he encountered, Pip realized to evolve to be mature is not through a change of wealth or status, but through authentic self-reliance. And this transformation could not have been done if it weren’t for Joe’s love—one of the most important parts that he retained from his past. Although nostalgia has a notorious tendency to simplify and romanticize the past, sociologist Fred Davis argued that the act of remembering the pleasantries of past events helps to deal with current discontinuity and displacement. According to him, “nostalgia thrives on transition, on the subjective discontinuities that engender our yearning for continuity” (1979, 49). As an important part of identity formation, nostalgia connects our present to our past (and future) self and thereby establishes a feeling of continuity. By imagining positive aspects and events of the past, Acimans’s present self can find strength and meaning in his present life, and “putting together pieces of past lives through nostalgia” (Sedikides et al. 2004, 206) can contribute to create a sense of a unified, str654321 Universal claim

Moreover, as a multicultural nationless person, Aciman’s nostalgia and his search for his roots is also crucial for the formation of nationhood. As Fred Davis points out, “Nostalgia is an existential exercise in the search for identity and meaning, a weapon in internal confrontations with existential dilemmas, and a mechanism for reconnecting with important others” (Sedikides et al. 2004, 202–203). The establishing of coherence, as Hutcheon (1998), Boym (2001) and Ritivoi (2002) indicate, is particularly immediate to emigrants who are forced to leave their homes.

Escapes to the past—via mental constructions of home in a time when it resembled security—can take a major supporting force in the adjustment to changes. Aciman recalls when his favorite statue in Strauss park, the Greek nymph, disappeared, he felt gloomy and lost. Because Mnemosyne is avoiding “looking at what was around her.” This is a resemblance to himself, who has been avoiding looking at the “real New York.” Hence, nostalgia can be a way to escape the insecurities of the present and to take relief in the positive memories of the past. In that way, even a restorative nostalgia can be crucial in maintaining a stable identity and surviving difficult times. Be it Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, or Egypt, Aciman can never be at one place at a time. This is also his hope of inventing his identity on his own, combining all his experiences in different places to a virtual place in his mind, and projecting that on to a real place—Strauss Park, a place he could call home. Admittedly, the border between psychological help and escapism is thin and mental visits to the past can also enforce alienation from and denial of the present. A research has shown that “dysphoric,” dissatisfaction with life would sometimes stir visions and “upbeat and imaginative thoughts,” which would be helpful for a person to find himself and get more connected to the outside world. As long as Aciman realize that what he falsified New York to be more “habitable” is a “figment”, he is able to “draw a line” from extravagant fantasies. In a nutshell, in negotiating present and past self, nostalgia not only assist in keeping in touch with one’s history, culture and tradition, but also can be a decisive ingredient in giving meaning to the present identity and in dealing with the changes.

Aciman reflects that exiles “may be mobile, scattered, nomadic, dislodged, but in their jittery state of transience they are thoroughly stationary.” He seems to be a wallow in nostalgia, melancholy about his loss but unwilling to get out of his status quo. In constructing his new identity, he chose nostalgia over amnesia. Though painful, he refused to stop pursuing the unattainable. Another writer, Rebecca Solnit, writes in the same “wallower” state as Aciman. The most persistent theme throughout Solnit’s book A Field Guide to Getting Lost is the color blue. “The Blue of Distance” is a term Solnit uses as a recurring title to link several of her essays and create a thread of color throughout the collection. Through Solnit’s own curiosity, we learn of artists in the 15th century—the first generation of painters concerned with verisimilitude, with the way the world appeared before the eye—who used the color blue in their paintings to connote distance, “the color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away.” Solnit writes that “Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.” She examines the relationship between desire and distance, and argues that we deal with our desires with restless resistance. Solnit’s opinion opens up Aciman’s essay by suggesting that he indulged in his nostalgia for the reason that he does not want to trivialize what he has experienced, that he’d rather drown in the sorrow for the lost past than letting it go. When Solnit ends her essay with “Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant” she points out the duality of distance—both destructive and generative. She also offers solutions to prevent the destructive aspect of distance. As Aciman says in one of his interviews, “What protects me from grief is writing about exile.” That poetic dissonance—of richness and loss, wandering and purpose—enables Aciman to portray life and loss with a riveting complexity. Aciman found in his experiences a creative energy that could imbue the helplessness of exile, for himself and his audience, with meaning and beauty.