Nostalgia is an inexplicable force, as people reach back for the warm, fuzzy feelings of their youth whether or not what they are reaching towards was either good or valuable. Everything that happened when you were a kid was great, whether or not it was actually great, so it’s time to start feeling affectionate for your youth and do some bizarre things in order to recapture that feeling.
This is crystal clear if you look at a local grocery store this week, as Crystal Pepsi has been introduced to the market. Precisely one good thing resulted from the introduction of the original Crystal Pepsi, that being the episode of The Simpsons where Homer got his arm stuck in a soda machine trying to reach “invisible cola,” and it’s probably a good idea to just leave it at that. But time makes memories fade, and we forget that the original Crystal Pepsi wasn’t actually very good tasting, even if you’re an admitted soda addict who has fallen off the wagon, so here it is, in stores for a limited time – namely, in stores until everyone remembers that it’s actually not something anyone wants to drink on purpose.
Nostalgia can also sometimes lead to a lot of inexplicable anger. Take the new Ghostbusters, which substituted an all-female cast for the original all-male one, and which has seen a surprising amount of aggressive vitriol from some corners of the internet. Some of this is clear sexism, there are people who hate women and don’t want a female-lead comedy made out of the franchise. Otherwise, it might just be a case where people are letting nostalgia get into their heads about a favorite film from their childhood. People are invested in Ghostbusters, and part of that is going to be that it was a popular film in their youth, especially in the impressionable age when you start having actual standards and interests when it comes to films. It was a great film if you were a twelve year old, and no matter what it does, the new one is not going to be able to recapture that feeling of being twelve. Which doesn’t mean the new film is bad – early reviews suggest that it’s fine – but that it’s going up against two different groups that are not really interested in seeing the franchise change in any meaningful way. Some of these are terrible people, but others are just people who really don’t want to see anything from their delicately preserved youth change in any meaningful way.
Not all nostalgia is necessarily bad. Some of it is simply a bit strange but otherwise positive, such as how you now have crowds of 30 year olds playing a game designed for children. That’s the case with Pokémon Go, not officially released in Canada but slowly taking over south of the border. It’s catching on with adults because it’s combining a new idea with something that they loved as a kid. Fond memories of firmly clutching a Game Boy cursing the infestations of stupid Zubats has turned into walking around your neighborhood hoping someone’s front porch has a Zubat on it.
I am going to argue that Pokémon Go, as an invention, is a great thing. One, it gets people out of the house, and gets people of all ages out of the house at that. It’s an electronic game powered by cell phones, but one that by its very design gets people to get outdoors and looking at the town around them. Sure, there have been negative effects, people using the game to rob people, and there have been unexpected consequences, like the person in Wyoming who found a dead body, but on the whole it’s a game that is designed around getting people out of the house and exercising. If finding adorable animal creatures is our incentive for doing that, this is fantastic, and something we should happily embrace.
It could really be a great thing for families, as nostalgic parents and excited kids bond over their shared enthusiasm for a game and also happen to take walking tours of their town and region. If the fascination with tiny creatures fades, maybe the families will still get excited to get out into their neighborhoods and walk in nature. Sure, we might not all understand or appreciate the game, but that’s fine, not everyone is going to enjoy everything.
If nothing else, the developers of the game have found a way to use nostalgia to build a cool idea. Given that we’ve also seen nostalgia used to revive a terrible idea and nostalgia used to stir up negative emotions through what sounds like an okay idea, it’s heartening to see that someone, somewhere is trying to use humanity’s substantial fondness for its own past to actually do something new, exciting and a bit daring with it. Sure, we could just go around drinking disgusting drinks and complaining that movies aren’t as good as when we were kids, but instead we can go around and look for silly little monsters with our phones and remember our youth, and that’s a good alternative.
