Overview

Bringing together prominent transatlantic film and media scholars, Was It Yesterday? explores the impact of nostalgia in twenty-first century American film and television. Cultural nostalgia, in both real and imagined forms, is dominant today, but what does the concentration on bringing back the past mean for an understanding of our cultural moment, and what are the consequences for viewers? This book questions the nature of this nostalgic phenomenon, the politics associated with it, and the significance of the different periods, in addition to offering counterarguments that see nostalgia as prevalent throughout film and television history. Considering such films and television shows as La La Land, Westworld, Stranger Things, and American Hustle, the contributors demonstrate how audiences have spent more time over the last decade living in various pasts.

Full Product Details

Author:   Matthew Leggatt
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.227kg
ISBN:  

9781438483481

ISBN 10:   1438483481
Pages:   294
Publication Date:   02 January 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: History in Reverse Matthew Leggatt Part I: What Is Nostalgia? 1. Clearing Up the Haze: Toward a Definition of the ""Nostalgia Film"" Genre Jason Sperb 2. Midcentury Metamodern: Returning Home in the Twenty-First-Century Nostalgia Film Christine Sprengler 3. Touched by Time: Memories of the Faded Star Daniel Varndell 4. Mimetic Tangible Nostalgia and Spatial Cosplay: Replica Merchandise and Place in Fandom's Material Cultures Ross P. Garner Part II: When Is Nostalgia? 5. A Nostalgic Exception: Warren Beatty's Star Performance in Rules Don't Apply Steven Rybin 6. The Past as a Temporal Free-Zone: The Nostalgic 1970s in Contemporary Crime Film and Television Fran Mason 7. On the Limits of Nostalgia: Understanding the Marketplace for Remaking and Rebooting the Hollywood Musical Justin Wyatt 8. ""I'm Going to My Friends . . . I'm Going Home"": Contingent Nostalgia in Netflix's Stranger Things Tracey Mollet Part III: The Politics of the Past 9. A Confrontation with History: Re-Viewing the Horror Film Sources of Get Out Vera Dika 10. ""Why Can't We Go Backwards, for Once?"" Nostalgia, Utopia, and Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One Matthew Leggatt 11. Replaying Cowboys and Indians: Controlled and Commercial Nostalgia in Westworld Christina Wilkins 12. Contradictory Reminiscences: Post-9/11 Cold War Nostalgia, The Americans, and Deutschland 83/86 Ian Peters Part IV: Not My Nostalgia 13. Remembering It Well: Nostalgia, Cinema, Fracture Murray Pomerance 14. Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be William Rothman Contributors Index"

Reviews

All 14 of these diverse and often brilliant essays are revelatory because they accept how much is at stake. - Arts Fuse

Author Information

Matthew Leggatt is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Winchester, United Kingdom and the author of Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime.

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