Exotica Music and White America Nostalgia
There’s a reason why exotica music in America has become associated with tiki bars, tchotchke tourism, and perpetual bachelordom.
There’s a reason why exotica music in America has become associated with tiki bars, tchotchke tourism, and perpetual bachelordom.
Is ‘Last Night in Soho’ a critique of nostalgia, or does it use nostalgia to suggest new possibilities for a cross-generational alliance among women and girls?
How do we explain 1970 America’s intense ’50s nostalgia, which took off around the time of the Paris Peace Accords and the end of the military draft?
Fandom, powered by nostalgia, is gigantic, uncloseted, and unfortunately, argumentative.
Arriving amidst the exhaustion of the past (21st century cultural stagnation), Waititi locates a new potential object for the nostalgic gaze with Jojo Rabbit: unpleasant and traumatic events themselves.
Britney Spears and Fall Out Boy try to universalize desire in their versions of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner". That may be how pornography works, but it's not how desire works, and this difference is the key to the coy allure of the song.
If Greta Van Fleet are that wonderful horrible thing called zeitgeisty, that zeitgeist is defined by desire to escape to a fantasized past where the battles were cleaner and the battle lines simpler than today's appear to be.
John Cougar Mellencamp’s "Jack and Diane" provided the soundtrack to GenXers growing up in nowhere towns that were expected to adapt to a world that pretty much dismissed them.
Kelsey Miller's I'll Be There for You, on the production and cultural legacy of Friends, is a must-read for fans and anyone interested in understanding TV culture over the past 20 years.
Adult Swim's short film "Too Many Cooks" and Cartoon Network's Rick and Morty are distinctive examples of the Vaporwave Sensibility expressed in narrative-visual form.