If you look at any form of popular media in the last few years, you’re likely to see some “throwback” type of movie, show, or video game. Shows like “Stranger Things” have recently started a massive fad of having your media be set in the past and have an extreme commitment to the details of that period.
While media is regularly placed at different times from our own, these shows are using that period to give the viewer a specific type of feeling as they watch.
However, this is only one way that the media is doing this. While it may be the most apparent, it is far from the only way that media is weaponizing nostalgia.
Shows and movies like “Stranger Things” and “Mindhunter” use their time to make viewers feel more connected to the show in a way they otherwise couldn’t.
Viewers who were kids in the 80’s watch “Stranger Things” and feel like them and their friends could be the characters in the show and the adventures they’re having could be theirs.
Another example of this is in the movie “Boyhood.” For those unfamiliar, “Boyhood” was filmed over a decade as a kid aged in real time.
Every couple years the film crew would pop in and shoot a few scenes of his life and eventually made a movie out of it.
With this, some of the scenes were shot over a decade ago, and one of the biggest takeaways from the movie is the feeling of transported back in time. Even things as simple as seeing the character using a Gameboy feels nostalgic since you realize that was filmed when Gameboy was all there was. It isn’t just a prop for a movie set in the early 2000s.
In the video game world, nostalgia is even more rampant than movies or television. Remakes and remasters dominate the market.
The biggest game of early 2019 was Resident Evil 2, a remake of 1998 classic that fans have been clamoring for twenty years.
While the game stands on it on as a fantastic experience, it also stands on the tomb of the original version for fans to go back and feel like they’re kids again being scared for the first time.
Another video game example and perhaps the most relevant one comes from World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft is a video game that has been running for over fourteen years.
Every few years a significant expansion comes out, and the game as it is today paying little resemblance to the game that came out in 2004. Fans refer to 2004 era World of Warcraft, before any significant changes, as “vanilla” or “classic”.
While Classic World of Warcraft was nowhere near as advanced of a game as the game is today, fans have still been screaming for Blizzard Entertainment to release servers where players could play the Classic, un-altered version of the game.
