Mediated Nostalgia
Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media
Published on 27. May 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-7391-9623-6 (ISBN)
Description
Considering the current rash of film remakes, vintage video game downloads, and box sets of bygone television shows, media today is obsessed with nostalgia. Instead of presenting a past that functions as an adaptive mirror with which we can compare our contemporary situation, the past is instead presented as an individualized version that transfixes us as uncritical citizens of our own culture. Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media argues that the cultural implication of a cross-media eternal return to nostalgia is an increasing reliance on defining who we are as people and societies by what media we consumed as children. The unblinking eye toward the past knows no progress, or at the very least, does not employ the past to compare and adaptively engage with the present or future. Examining film, literature, television, and video games, Ryan Lizardi tackles the idea of why that strong sense of nostalgia is such a popular tactic for the media industry, and why it is problematic.
Reviews / Votes
Mediated Nostalgia contributes to the existing scholarship on nostalgia by offering an elaborate theoretical and richly illustrated account of an individual, narcissist version of nostalgia. . . .These case studies are familiar, and make the book very practical for lecturing and offering a deeper understanding of individualized nostalgia. * Cultural Sociology * Lizardi's semiotic analysis of contemporary media convincingly demonstrates how clever packaging of the past encourages a melancholic stance towards various media objects. Reading this book will inevitably prompt your own consideration of what constitutes your "playlist past" while also encouraging a critical analysis of how and why that playlist was constructed. -- Janelle Wilson, University of Minnesota Duluth With thoughtful analysis and accessible scholarship, Mediated Nostalgia argues that the media love to sell us the good old days, even if those days never existed. Exploring the meanings and multiple forms of commodified media nostalgia, Lizardi effectively weaves together cultural theory with a variety of engaging examples, from the Freaks and Geeks DVD collectors' set to reboots of slasher films like Halloween. -- Matthew P. McAllister, Pennsylvania State UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 b/w photos; 1 charts;
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
251 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7391-9623-6 (9780739196236)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2014
1st Edition
Bloomsbury eBooks US
€47.49
Available for download
Person
Ryan Lizardi is assistant professor of digital media and humanities at State University of New York Polytechnic Institute.
Content
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Perpetual Individual Nostalgic's Playlist Past
Chapter 2: The Explosion of Digital Archiving Nostalgic Access
Chapter 3: The Zombie Television Series
Chapter 4: Downloading and Playing an Explicit and Implicit Past
Chapter 5: The Epistemology of the Remake
Concluding Remarks
Chapter 2: The Explosion of Digital Archiving Nostalgic Access
Chapter 3: The Zombie Television Series
Chapter 4: Downloading and Playing an Explicit and Implicit Past
Chapter 5: The Epistemology of the Remake
Concluding Remarks