Vintage has always been a trend. Does the '90s popular culture give us a sense of belonging? Why do we crave for a time we never even lived in? Nostalgia refers to a yearning for the past. It has been a sort of trend to sell items as "vintage." There are so many things whose values increase as they age – wine, clothing, apparel, bags, fine art, cars, coins and stamps, and even furniture. Did you know that cinema ages well, too? Films from the 1900s that helped shape cinema to make it what it is now. These are what we call ‘classics’. Streaming platforms have been bringing back classics, and we suspect it has something to do with Nostalgia Marketing. As the name suggests, they market nostalgia. Especially in the case of the new generation, they sell nostalgia in the form of “escapism.”Streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ have brought back iconic movies and shows all the way from the '70s to the '90s and even the early 2000s. Recently, Netflix even added films like The Grave of Fireflies and Gifted. Disney+ has brought back many classic animated films from the 1900s on the digital streaming platform So that the newer audience can experience cinema like they did in the olden days. Just like stories are passed down from generation to generation, cinema also seems to be passed down. Through these digital libraries, cinematic choices and film references become easier to understand, considering the huge impact that cinema has had on our world. There is a history behind every choice that is taken, and many of these choices, from new-age cinema to monuments, certain cultural aspects as well as the language itself, have somewhere been driven by cinema. Today's rat race makes us yearn for a time when ‘life was easier.’ Hearing about stories from the past when things were different for the generations that lived before us. Hearing of things that are missing today, maybe an outdated technology or a restaurant where your parents loved to go as kids. To fill in this gap, stories from the past resurface, making us crave to be in a time when deadly viruses were just a plot for a film, rom-coms were at their peak, and the Met Gala was truly a spectacle. We crave vintage! We crave nostalgia and we fear that maybe Sydney Sweeney is, after all, not fulfilling our rom-com dreams. "Our times were better," of course, all the bad in the world existed then as well. But the grass is always greener on the other side and keeping aside the heart-wrenching standards for beauty or lack of acceptance in society, their times surely were better! This fear of missing out on such a time makes the newer generation crave to experience it, creating nostalgia for a time they missed. 28 Oct 2024
Mimansha Ojha
