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Nostalgia and Style in Retro America:Moods,Modes, and Media Recycling

Paul Grainge

If current levels of U S . retro consumption are allowed tocontinue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by assoon as 2005.

U.S. Retro Secretary,as reported in Th e Onion, 1997In the last three decades of the twentieth century,

nostalgia was commodified and aestheticized inAmerican culture as perhaps never before. One mayposit a variety of factors contributing to this emergentretro fascination, including diversifying markets formemory, the growth of the heritage industry, the polit-ical aesthetic of Reaganism, the demographic size of ababy-boom generation entering middle age and theattendant selling of the boomer past, the prolifera-tion of technologies of time-shifting and digital repro-duction, and a representational economy of recyclingand pastiche. In no singular way, these all helpeddevelop nostalgia as a cultural style, a consumablemode as much as it can be said to be an experiencedmood. Mocking the prevalence of American pop-cul-tural kitsch appreciation in the late 1990s, the irrever-ent online magazine The Onion ran a headline storythat cautioned of an imminent national retro crisis,stating: U S . Dept. of Retro Warns: We May BeRunning Out of Past. In many ways, this was satiri-cally engaged with the kind of crisis scenario envis-aged by critics who often read the proliferation ofnostalgia as a sign of 1) creative bankruptcy, 2) mil-lennial longing, 3 ) temporal breakdown, 4) postmod-ern amnesia, 5 ) other kinds of prescriptive malaise.The reservoir of American popular nostalgia has beengenerously tapped in recent times and this has encour-aged a trend in rather foreboding cultural diagnoses.Instead of joining the warning calls levelled againstthe current retro crisis, satirically couched or other-wise, I want to explore the status, as well as histori-cize the development, of nostalgia as a popular stylein American media culture.

There is a critical tendency, across various disci-plines, to explain the new preponderance for the pastin terms of what Jim Collins has called, and criticized

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as, a Zeitgeis t model: that is to say, a mode ofanalysis that accounts for the rising stock of nostalgiaby relating i t to a governing narrative or culturaltemper (7). The zeitgeist model is especially prevalentin accounts of the initial nostalgia boom of the1970s, a phenomenon that can be seen to includefilms like The Sting and American Grafliti , sitcomssuch as Happy Days , the flourishing of retro-chic inthe fashion industry, the turn towards historic preser-vation in city architecture, and the burgeoning interestin heritage evidenced in, and inspired by, dramas likeRoots. Explaining the growing currency of nostalgia,emergent in the 1970s, critics often refer to a sense ofnational crisis. Writing in 1979, Fred Davis arguedthat the current nostalgia boom must be understoodin terms of its close relationship to the era of socialupheaval that preceded it (90). For Davis, nostalgiais a social emotion but also a distinctive aestheticmodality that can emerge in climates 01 transitionand in response to the yearning for continuity. In cul-tural terms, Allison Graham relates the production ofnostalgia in the 1970s and 1980s to a moment of cre-ative exhaustion, a time where popular art no longersprings from creative associations with a contempo-rary social reality (364).She suggests that America isdrawn to its recent history and the re-creation of cul-tural artifacts because of a certain alienation anddetachment from vital issues experienced in the pre-sent. In different ways, these arguments l ink nostalgiato a prevailing cultural experience and condition, theconsequence of socio-political disorientation and cre-ative enervation.

While the production of nostalgia m a y havegrown in tandem with a sense of cultural crisis, i tcannot be reduced to this explanatory model; the com-modification and aestheticization of nostalgia, in the1970s and beyond, cannot be contained mithin theo-ries of loss and malaise. While the selling of the pastmay have developed in accordance with social rup-tures, notably in the 1970s, theories that reduce com-modified nostalgia to a climate of enveloptng decline

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28 Journal of American & Comparative Culturesand dislocation do not always account for the moreparticular technological, economic, and design histo-ries behind specific nostalgia modes, or for the econ-omy of pa stness that has developed w ithin the textualand taste regimes of contemporary culture. At thesame t ime , theor ies l ike tha t o f Fredr ic Jameson ,which relate an emergent nostalgia mode to a cul-ture of amnesia and historicist crisis, do not alwaysallow for t he particular narratives of cultural memorythat can be produced through the recycling and/orrandom hybridization of past styles. Beginning withan exploration of critical tendencies in modern nostal-gia theory, this essay will examine the production ofnostalgia in th e cable and broadcast industries, sug-gesting that modes of (media) nostalgia have devel-oped in a culture that is neither reeling from longingnor forgett ing, but that is ab le to t ransmi t , s to re ,retrieve, reconfigure, and invoke the past in new andspecific ways. Like Jim Collins, I take issue with thecomfortable fictions of zeitgeist theories; I seek toanalyze nostalgia as a media style, but without col-lapsing my argum ent into any exp lanatory metanarra-t ive.

Theorizing Nostalgia Isn t What It Used To BeIt is necessary to begin with nostalgia theory ast h e r e w o u l d s e e m t o b e s o m e t h in g of a c r i t i c a limpasse in finding adequate ways to make sense of,and engage with, nostalgia as a cultural style. In gen-eral terms, there are perhaps two dom inant tendencies

at work in modem nostalgia critique, captured in thedistinction between mood and mode. These terms donot represent a binary opposition but distinguish thepoles of a theoretical continuum. The nostalgia moodarticulates a concept of exp erience. Theoretically, nos-talgia is understood as a socio-cultural response toforms of discontinuity, claiming a vision of stabilityand authenticity in som e conceptual golden age.This approx imates the conventional sense of nostalgiaas a yearning. As a form of idealized remembrance,the nos talg ia mood emerges f rom, and i s made torelate to, a grounding concept of longing or loss.Much important work has been do ne analyzingthe progressive, as well as reactionary, potential ofnostalgia as a mood, a rhetoric, and a structure offeeling.2I do not want to question the validity of nos-talgia critique of this sort, of w ork focused conceptu-ally on the (politicized) experience of absence anddiscontinuity. Rather, I want to question particularassumptions that can emerge from it and that tend toreduce any form or style of nostalgia in cultural life to

a question of manifest longing. In this view, the popu-larity of, say, retro fashion, products of the heritage

industry, or the resurgence of the television rerun,would be explained in terms of discontent or uncer-tainty in the present. While the relationship betweenmood and mode cannot be ignored, neither should i ts im p ly b e a s su m e d . N o s t a lg ia m o d e s a r e n o t , bynecess i ty , genera ted by nos ta lg ic moods , o r v iceversa. Reducing sentiment and style to a fixed andcausal relation can underestimate th e way that, as acultural style, nostalgia has become divorced from anecessary concept of loss; such a critical sleight doesnot allow for images and objects frodof the past tob e u n d e r s t o o d o r c o n s u m e d in w a y s o t h e r t h a nthrough a tendent ious re la t ionsh ip with y earn ing .Writing of the contemporary culture of nostalgia,Donna Bassin suggests that: The current nostalgiaamong baby boomers for their fifties childhood is evi-denced by th e increased seeking and collecting ofretro artifacts and the surging increase of flea marketsand vintage stores ( I 64). Not only does this assertionignore the significant popularity of retro and vintagestyles among the children of the baby boomers towhich Bassin refers, it overdetermines the relationshipbetween middle-age longing and acts of consumption.Bassin does not account for the taste regimes thatmake retro artifacts popular, the broad developmen t ofnostalgia as a commodified genre, or the means bywhich the fifties might exist simultaneously withother kinds of period nostalgia. I would suggest that toget any sense of nostalgia as a cultural style, one mustcomplicate theories which conflate mood and mode,and which read the popularity of commodified/aes-theticized nostalgia in terms of political dislocation,baby-boom longing, fin-de-sikcle syndromes, or otherkinds of personal and cultural anxiety.The second m ajor conceptual tendency in modernnostalgia critique involves th e conception, and exami-nation, of nostalgia as a cultural ly specif ic m o d e .Critics are often less concerned with the basis andpolitics of nostalgic longing than with its stylisticform and significance in a world of media image, tem-poral breakdown, and cultural amnesia. At issue hereis not the substance of nostalgic loss bu t t h e speci-ficity of postmodem memory itself. This reaches itstheoretical apogee in the work of Fredric Jameson.For Jameson, postmodernism involves a profoundwaning or blockage of historicity. In a culture distin-guished by the spatial logic of the simulacrum, his-toricity has been replaced by a new aesthetic nostal-gia mode. This describes an art language where thepast is realized through stylistic connotation and con-sumed as pastiche. Symp tom atic of a crisis in thepostmodern historical im agination, the nostalgia m odesatisfies a desperate craving for history, while rein-

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Nostalgia and Style in Retro America 29forcing the past as a vast collection of images, a mul-t i tudinous photographic simulacrum (18). InJamesons influential theory, the historical past isreplaced by fashionable and glossy pastness. Evidentin the contemporary nostalgia film (a genre whichcan be taken to include movies like American Graffiti,Body Heat, Boogie Nigh ts, and Forrest Gurnp),repre-sentations of the past are replaced by our culturalstereotypes of that past; periods are plundered forstyle in the attempt to satisfy ou r image fixation cu mhistorical cravings. The nostalgia mode represents astylistic hyperrealization of the past in a time when,according to Jameson, the past has become fundamen-tally estranged.

Jameson identifies, and usefully conceives, some-thing new about nostalgia and its aesthetic place incultural life; he posits a concept of nostalgia that canbe distinguished from more conventional ideas ofloss, absence, and an idealized past. More problem-atic, however, is the way that he almost entirely jetti-sons concepts like memory, history, and time. WhatJameson and other critics who warn of a new viralamnesia fail to see are the particular negotiations ofmemory and meaning undertaken by the so-callednostalgia mode. Critics like Kaja Silverman suggestthat retro- meaning a stylistic currency that borrowsand quotes from the past-is not a mark of culturalamnesia o r creative bankruptcy, but a way ofacknowledging that the past exists through textualtraces in cultural and ideological mediation with thepresent. There is, in other words, a more acute sensi-tivity in the nostalgia mode to the fact that access tothe past is never direct or natural, but realized througha complex history of representations. Silverman readsthis in the context of fashion, suggesting that the styl-ized nostalgia of retro problematizes the binary ofold and new. She argues that retro fashion insertst h e wearer into a complex network of cultural andhistorical references, At the same time, it avoids thepitfalls of a naive referentiality ; by putting quotationmarks around the garments it revitalizes, i t makesclear that the past is available to us only in a textualform, and through the mediation of the present (1 50).According to Silverman, retro need not entail memorycrisis, but can suggest an increasing semiotic aware-ness of the textuality of the past.

The mood/mode distinction should not be taken tosuggest mutually exclusive categories; I do not wantto exaggerate or schematize the difference betweenthe two critical orientations. Many critics haveaddressed nostalgia as a feeling and a style, as a cul-tural emotion and a representational effect. The rela-tionship bet ween each will often be understood, how-

ever, through conceptual presuppositions that I havecharacterized in the distinction between loss andamnesia. To illustrate, one might compare Fred Davisand Fredric Jameson. In his sociological studyYearning for Yesterday, Davis is concerned with nos-talgia as a collective mood, a way of adapting tosocial change and responding to the experience of dis-continuity. When Davis considers nostalgia as a cul-tural style, it is an aesthetic figuration of this mood,the symbolization of an emotion. In his theory, themode grows from and helps enact the mood; nostalgiais a collectively felt and culturally realized experienceof longing. By contrast, Fredric Jameson is concernedwith nostalgia as a mode, a form of pastiche sympto-matic of the postmodern crisis of historicity. WhenJameson considers nostalgia as a mood, i t is only as acasualty of the depthless and spatial logic of late capi-talism. The mood has become a bankrupt emotion andhas been replaced by a stylistic regime characterizedby the historical waning of effect. Whrle Davis haslittle sense that nostalgia may have become a consum-able style reflecting economies of taste and textualityrather than compulsory feelings of loss, .lameson dis-connects stylized nostalgia from any conc ept ofmemory at all.

In accounting for the development of nostalgia asa style, I would argue that a culturalist position needsto mediate between the poles of loss and amnesia.This involves a particular kind of analysis that willneither ignore the development of nostalgia as i t isbound in specific configurations of taste and textual-ity, nor underestimate the capacity of aestheticizednostalgia to construct meaningful narrai ives of cul-tural memory. More attention needs to be given to thegenesis, development, and function of particular nos-talgia modes, but without scripting their potential sig-nificance into general models of cultural longingand/or postmodern forgetting. The remainder of thisessay will focus upon the case of recycling inAmerican culture, demonstrating how modes of medianostalgia are not the necessary reflection of a mood(longing) or cultural condition (amnesi a), but theresult of specific technological transformations andstrategies of niche marketing.

RecyclingIn 1985, during the highpoint of Ronald Reagans

new politics of old values, a new 24-hour cable sta-tion was launched called The Nostalgia Network.Offering a unique blend of non-violent , feel-goodprogramming with traditional values, the new stationseemed commensurate with a political culture traf-ficking heavily in a mythic, pre-l960s, past. Products

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30 . Journal of American h Comparative Culturesof popular culture cannot b e divorced from the politi-cal c l imate in which they emerge. If, as LawrenceGrossberg sug ges ts , the new con serva t i sm of the1980s was put in place through peoples relation withpopular culture, one might be especially inclined torelate the nostalgia of the Reagan presidency to cer-tain manifestations in film, television, and music. Thism i g h t r a n g e f r o m t h e p a s t o ra l i s m o f G a r r i s o nKei l le r s na t iona l rad io show, The Prairie HomeCompanion, to the re-creation of family values in theenormously popular sitcoms The Cosby Show an d TheWonder Years. While there is considerable scope forideological critique of this sort, the production of nos-talgia in the 1980s cannot be explained, or examined,through the interests and agenda of the New Rightalone. Indeed, the genesis of The Nostalgia Networkmust be measured, first and foremost, not in relationto a political project or pervasive cultural temper, butto the massive expansion in cable television duringthe 1980s.

In 1976, 90 percent of television viewers watchedprograms broadcas t by the th ree major ne tworks ,ABC, CBS, or NBC. By the mid-l980s, this f igurehad dropped to 75 percent. Making use of new satel-lite technologies that could reach large geographicalareas, and encouraged by the deregulation of the cableindustrys pricing structure in the free-market frenzyof the 1980s, there was a proliferation of cable net-works, including the likes of MTV and CNN (Cullen259-69). The Nostalgia Network was one of a largenumber of cable creations that emerged in the 1980s,helping to segment television viewing by targetingspecific demographic group s. Exploiting a vast televi-sion marke t , and targeting post-49-year olds, Th eNostalgia Network combined niche information andlifestyle programs with acquired shows like The LoveBoat, The Rockford Files, and The Streets of SanFrancisco. In the early 1990 s, the network reach ed asubscription peak of nine million, tapping one of thefastest growing segments of the population, that ofmiddle-aged baby-boomers.Market demographers generally split the baby-b o o m g e n e ra t io n in to tw o c a t e g o r i e s : t h o se b ornbetween the end of World War I1 and the mid-1950sand those born between the mid- 1950s and the m id-1960s. Together, they comprise w ell over a quarter ofthe population. With high disposable incomes andincreased leisure time, the aging baby-boom genera-tion has become a major target group w ithin the mar-keting community. If cable networks acquire revenuethrough subscription fees and paid advertising, th eNostalgia Network provides a programming service,as well as an advertising platform, aimed at the post-

4 9 m a rk e t . C o m p e t in g w i th su c h a s T h e H i s to ryChannel, TV Land, Hom e and Garden Television, andAmerican Movie Classics, The Nostalgia Network is alifestyle channel that targets the interests, concerns,a n d e n t e r t a in m e n t p re d i l e c t io n s o f t h e g re y in gsector. Ron Neeson, who hosts an information pro-gram on t h e network called Issues and Answers,suggests that while those in the post-49 market arediverse, they may nevertheless share certain attitudestowards money, leisure time, entertainers, food, andmusic. Of his own program (the title of which, Issuesand Answers, was bought by Th e Nostalgia Network,having been a long-running show on ABC), Neesoncomm ents: We try to deal with serious issues, partic-ularly issues to people over 50, no t a lot of shoutingand yelling. He continues: We try to prov ide infor-mation because thats the other thing people over 50are looking for, information: what to do with theirown money, whats the government going to do tothem or for them , what candidates best represent theman d so forth. Just as MTV, with its fast cut formatand high degree of yelling, serves a youth market, TheNostalgia Network provides a programming option atthe other end of the demographic scale.The Nostalgia Network is not about the past, perse, but about niche marketing and th e taste and valued i f fe ren t ia ls o f par t icu la r demographic segments .Significant here is perhaps the connotative drift expe-rienced by t h e very word and concept of nostalgia.In commercial terms, it need not depend on a specificidea of the past but can designate anything which hasbeen culturally recycled and/or appeals to a marketwhere pastness is a value. It is not, in other words,symptomatic of cultural or consumer long ing but is anindex of commodities, media products, and program-ming orientations, that draw upon notions of tradition,o r u se an idea o f t h e pas t to pos i t ion themselveswithin particular niche m arkets. After a drop in view-ing figures in the mid- 1990s, The Nostalgia Networkunderwent a process of rebranding. This entailed theadoption of a new name to portray th e contemporaryaspects of its revamped schedule. Nostalgia Good-tv was deemed by management a better descriptionof its value-oriented rather than past-oriented pro-gramming. As President and CEO of The NostalgiaNetwork, Squire Rushnell identified the network inthe following way:Audiences have been set adrift in a clut tered, fast-pacedtelevision environment characterized by sex, violence, andsocial cynicism. Nostalgia Good-tv provides an entertain-ment oasis that is especially attractive to viewers , becausewe offer more than old programming; we present innova-

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Nostalgia and Style in Retro America 31t ive , original programs built around friendly personalitieswho uplift , relax and entertain without assaulting ones sen-sibilities.

Rushne l l p l ays upon a certa in nosta lg ia for anidea of television as warm and wholesome; there is apicture of decline based around the apparently clut-t e red , v io l en t , sex - r i dden t e l ev is i on cu l t u re o f t he1990s. He is also quick to emphasize, however, thatNostalgia Good-tv is not about returning to a goldenage, or re l iv ing a better past . It is about innovationand originality. In a business cl imate where cable sta-tions must fight desperately for broadcast audiences,Nosta lg ia Good-tv ca ters to an o lder media genera-t ion, a specific dem ograph ic market , whose values aresponsored and then serv iced in the development ofcontemporary niche programming.

Nostalgia has be com e something of a genre in amedia culture of narrowcasting, a term denoting thepursuit of narrow but profitable segments of the view-ing audience . As a commodity, nostalgia designatesa particular kind of programming in the radio as wellas the television industry. Capitalizing on the grow ingm a r k e t f o r r a d i o s y n d i c a t i o n in t h e 1 9 9 0 s , t h eNostalgia Broadcasting Corporation (a company thatopera tes NBG Radio and tha t went publ ic in 1996)offered foul- networks of radio program ming, includ-ing the Financial N etwork, Nostalgia Netw ork, SportsNetwo rk , and Enter ta inment N etwork . According toits own corporate profile, the companys approach toradio syndication is to produce and/or acquire special-i ty audio shows and enroll radio stat ion affi l iates tobroadcast these programs . NBGs new product devel-opment i s market dr iven; n iche rad io programmingimportant to specific national advertisers is the firstt a r g e t. N o s t a l g i a i s t h e r e f o r e o n e o f f o u r n i c h eoptions in this context . NBG sells two radio shows,The Golden Age of Radio and Big Band Classics,to s ta t ions f i l l ing what rad io ins iders have come tocall an Oldies format.

With the marked increase of rad io s ta t ions andtelevision chan nels in the 198 0s and 1990s-all tryingto fill schedules and in competition for listeners andviewers -syndication bec am e an extremely lucrativebusiness. The rerun became an especial ly cheap andreliable source of material in this context, providing abase co mp onent of contemporary broadcast nostalgia.Of cou rse, the rerun has a long syndication history. Intelevision, i t dates back to the 1950s where the pro-duction costs of live television became too expensiveand stations cam e to rely on film ed, and hence repeat-able, programm ing. Th e expansion of the cable indus-try and the growth of commercial radio in the 1980s,

however, gav e the rerun an invigorated life . Old seri-als and sitcoms were targeted not only at the post-49ma rket, but also framed in programm ing form ats thathelped foster a cult youth fol lowing. Nick at Nite isperhaps the best examp le of this, launched in 1985 aspart of the evening sch edule of the childrens cablestation, Nickelodeon. Hosted by Dr. Will Miller, andthen by Dick Van Dyk e, Nick ut Nite specializes in oldsi tcoms and te lev is ion reruns. This i s expedient forV i a c o m , th e c o m p a n y w h i c h o w n s N i c k e l o d e o n ,because i t has at its disposal a large stock of old net-w ork p rog ramm ing . A ccoun ting fo r t he success ofNick at Nite, Lynn Spigel writes: The popularity ofNick at Nites reruns probably has less to do with theuniversal app eal of telev ision art-its ability to lastthrough generations- than with the networks strate-g ies of representa t ion . Nickelodeon crea ted a newreception context for old reruns by repackaging themthrough a new camp sensibility (18). This repackag-ing involves a certain playfulness in the way that sit-c o m s a r e i n t r o d u c e d , e m p l o y i n g s t a r s l i k e D a v idCassidy to host specia l p rogram marathons. I t alsod e r i v e s f r o m o r i g in a l p r o g r a m m i n g s u c h asN i c k e l o d e o n s o w n 1 9 9 1 s i t c o m H i , H o n e y , ImH o m e . This show was based on a b lack-and-whi tererun family displaced into t h e 1990s, a concept thatwould be rep l ica ted and reversed by Hol lywood inP l e a s a n t v i l l e ( 1 9 9 8 ) , a f i l m i n w h i c h t w o c o l o rteenagers from the 1990s are displaced into a black-and-white fifties sitcom. By replaying and recontextu-alizing reruns in programming formats aimed at par-t i cu la r dem ograph i c segm en t s , cab l e s t a t ions havesold nostalgia both as generational reminiscence andpostmodern camp.Within the broadcast industries, the commodifica-t ion of nostalgia has not been a market response togene ra l i zed cu l t u ra l l ong ing bu t can be exp l a inedthrough commercial imperatives such as market seg-mentation and media syndication. Cable channels likeThe N os t a lg ia N e tw ork , rad io synd i ca to rs l i ke t heNosta lg ia Broadcast ing Corpo ra t ion , and m ore spe-cific programs such as Nick at Nite are fairly indis-criminate abo ut the constitution of nostalgia in theirbroadcast form ats . As a generic ca teg ory , nosta lg iacan encompass anything from ballroom dancing andBig Band interviews, to multi-lingual versions of TheStreets of Sun Francisco and rerun marathons of ThePartridge Family. The content and m eaning of nos-talgia is, in many respects, secondary to strategies ofproduction and the imperatives of niche consumption.If nostalgia is a marke t ab l e mode i n t he b roadcas tindustries, it has becom e so in the context of the frag-mentation of the television and radio a udie nce . While

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32 . Journal of American & Comparative Culturesnot denying that nostalgic loss may well be experi-enced and played upon in contemporary media cul-ture, the commodification of nostalgia perhaps moreaccurately demonstrates the contingencies of nichemarketing than any particular index of cultural long-ing.The proliferation of nostalgia in American popu-lar culture must be set in relation to a cumulation offactors. One must account for the strategic deploy-ment of nostalgia within specific consumer indus-tries, but one must also bear in mind the significanceof new technological innovations and their ability torescue, recycle, and reconfigure the past in the cul-tural and media terrain. The digital and video revolu-tions have, in particular, transformed our ability toaccess, circulate, and consume t he cultural past. Thesur fe i t o f in fo rmat ion in con tempora ry cu l tu re ,enabled by information technologies like computers,cable television, VCR and digital recording, has had adramatic imp act both on our engagement with the pastand our sense of the archive. Whether through theclick of a mouse or the push of a TV o r CD remote,the past has become, in the words of Jim Collins, amatter of perpetually reconfigurable random access(3). If nostalgia is a style based on a particular econ-omy of pastness, one must recognize the culturalinfluence of technologies that enable th e recuperationof images, styles, and sounds drawn from the past.In a Herald Tribune a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d Ne wNostalgia on Record, Bernard Hollard suggests thatclassical music is recycling with the best of them(12). Owning the tapes of classical recordings madethirty or forty years ago, Hollard notes that comp anieswill prefer to pay the re-use rights rather than hire anorchestra to record a new version. Sony C lassical, forexample, has gathered many performances from itsback-catalogue and reissued them on compilationCDs. What l ies behind this strategy are the digitaltechnologies that enable old recordings to be pro-duced and sold as high quality merchandise. Sellingthe musical past has grown exponentially with CDs.Whether jazz, classical, punk, or folk, there has beenan extremely profitable outpouring of musical boxsets and single-album reissues in th e 1980s and 1990s.The se are produced by record companies who own themaster tapes of old recordings and can make profitsthrough reselling their archives as classic.Nostalgiahas become a musical category in its own right withinthis context. The music magazine Gramophone gath-ers under this title compilation CDs by artists such asNat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, PeggyLee, Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra( 1 02-4). I n th e music industry, nostalgia denotes a

particular kind of pre-rock performer-mainly jaz zartists, croon ers, and torch singers-who can be soldunder ready rubr ics such as t imeless and leg-endary.If the record industry experienced a commercialwindfall in the digital remastering of old music, thefilm and television industries have also capitalized onthe possibilities of cultural recycling opened up byvideo. As a technological and aesthetic form, videohas enormous possibilities for repetition and recy-cling. From a commercial point of view, it providesthe film and television industries with a means ofrepackaging their products, enabling consumers towatch again their favorite movies and shows, includ-ing the classics that might otherwise have been laidto rest in company vaults. A video revolution occu rredin the 1980s. While in 1978 there were just 440,000VC Rs, by 1983 there were 4.1 million. By 1990, 75percent of American homes owned a video recorder(Gomery 269-74). One consequence of this techno-logical tide has been a newly figured relationship w ithth e here-and-now of television presence. Central toth e impact of video is the capacity for time-shifting.Practically, this gives the individual far more controlover the way that television can be watched; viewersare released from network programming scheduleswith the possibili ty of replay, and are given morechoice through th e advent of home-rental. DouglasGom ery states that by the beginn ing of the 1990 s rev-enue from tape rentals was exceeding $10 billion ayear (276-93). The video market vastly increased theinterest in m ovie w atching. By the mid- 1980s, morethan one hundred million cassettes were being rentedeach month. Marketing the filmic, as well as the tele-visual, past became integral to this new media envi-ronment. Catering to niche markets, companies likeVideo Yesteryear have come to specia l ize in o ldmovies , adding to the range of f i lms drawn fromstudio archives that are broadcast and sold throughcable and video outlets. Marketing the past has, inshort, become a lucrative by-product of the new rela-tionship being forged in the age of video betweeninstitutions, texts, and viewers.The central point I want to make from these vari-ous examples of media recycling is that nostalgiamodes do not emerge from, or reflect in any simpleway, nostalgia moods. If nostalgia has developed as acultural style in contemporary American life, it cannotbe explained through any single master narrative ofdecline, crisis, longing, or loss. This does not mean tosay that modes of nostalgia have not developed in thecontext of crisis, or that longing and loss are not pow-erful and operative narratives within certain kinds of

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Nostalgia and Style in Retro America . 33discourse. Instead, I want to suggest an approach thatres is ts a cr i t ica l reduct ion where no sta lg ia modesbecome the reflex result of anxieties and dissatisfac-tions with the present. As a cultural style, nostalgiahas developed in accordance with a series of cultural,demographic, technological, and commercial factorsthat have made pastness an expedient and mar-ketable mode. The aestheticization of nostalgia hasemerged in a cultural moment able to access, circu-late, and reconfigure the textual traces of the past innew and dynam ic way s, that has taken up nostalgia inparticular representational and taste regimes, and thathas generally disjoined nostalgia from any specificmeaning located in the past. Rather than suggesting anamnesiac culture based on sanitized or hyperrealizedmemory, I would argue that the proliferation of nostal-gic modes, markets, genres, and styles may insteadreflect a new kind of engagem ent with the past, a rela-tionship based fundam entally on its cultural mediationand textual reconf igurat ion in the present . RetroAm erica need not describe a culture in crisis, but mayrather suggest a mom ent distinguished by its re-evalu-ation and re-presentation of the forms, contexts, andvalues of the past.

Notes T h e O n i o n began as a sa t i r i ca l co l l ege magazine ,

established by graduates of the University of Wisconsin in1988. By the end of the 1990s, the magazine had growninto a global Internet phenomenon, reaching two millionreaders a month via its website.

S ee , f o r e x a m p l e , S t u a r t T a n n o c k , N o s t a l g i aCr i t ique , C ul tura l S tud ie s 9 (3 ) 1995 : 453-64 ; JamesC o m b s , T h e R e a g a n R a n g e : T h e N o s ta l g ic M y t h i nAmerican Polit ics (Bowling Green: Bowling Green StateUniversity Popular Press, 1993); Fred Davis, Yearning fo rY e s t e rday : A Soc io logy of Nostalgia (New York : FreeP r e s s , 1 9 7 9 ) ; a n d J a n i c e D o a n e a n d D e v o n H o d g e s ,N o s t a l g i a a n d S e x u a l D i f f e r e n c e : T h e R e s i s t a n c e t oContemporary Feminism (New York: Methuen, 1987).

I n t e r v i e w w i t h R o n N e e s o n . 2 7 A p r i l 1 9 9 8 .www .flightalk .corn.

Nostalgia Good-tv Launches Fall Season with NewVariety, Spo rts, and Personality Program s. 27 April 1 998.www .goodtv.com.

NBG Inves to r Rela t ions . 27 Apr i l 1998 . W W W .nbgradio.com

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34 . Journal of American & Comparative CulturesUS. ept. of Retro Warns: We May Be Running Out o f

Past. 7 N o v . 1997. .

American Studies, Cultural Studies, and American Studies.In 1998, he won the British Association for AmericanStudies Essay Prize for an article on nostalgia in Time mag-azine and he is currently completing a book entitledMonochrome Memories : Nos ta lg ia and S ty le in 1990sAmerica.

Paul Grainge is lecturer i n American Studies at theUniversity of Derby, UK. His work on memory and con-temporary media has been published in The Journal of