Nostalgia is such an interesting emotion. It brings out longing for the past, but a very idealized version of the past. It makes us overlook flaws in books or other media from our childhood, tinging it with rose-colored glasses. Because it’s a powerful emotion, lately, marketing seems to be saturated with appeals to nostalgia. This is especially true of the movie industry. Beyond reboots and remakes and sequels made decades after the original movie or series, I also think of the use of 80s music or aesthetics in many popular films. Nostalgia appeals are everywhere nowadays. Which made me wonder: is nostalgia a bad thing?

My initial response is: no, nostalgia itself is not bad. However, some of the ways nostalgia is manipulated (and manipulates us) might be. Starting with how I opened this reflection, nostalgia can blind us to hard truths or realities about our past that we might need to work through in our adult life. Dwelling too long or too frequently on our nostalgia can keep us trapped in the past. Nostalgia often motivates us to pursue anything and everything that will recapture a sense of our childhood, regardless of the cost. When nostalgia consumes your wallet and your thought-life and your lifestyle, it’s dangerous. It keeps you from living in the moment, and drives you to chase after a past that you’ll never be able to recapture. Nostalgia becomes a tool of idolatry through this angle, too. Like any good thing in life, nostalgia can be twisted for evil, and that’s when it becomes perilous.

To bring the topic at hand back to storytelling, another unfortunate result of nostalgia is the production of bad stories. Hollywood and others have capitalized on our culture’s recent trend of chasing nostalgia, using that as a powerful marketing tool that gets us to go see more movies and engage in content that rehashes or revives old series, franchises, etc. Yet all too often, these reboots and late sequels just feel like soulless cash grabs, which we keep falling for because of how powerful an influence nostalgia can be. Nostalgia is oversaturating the storytellers’ market, and it seems like every big studio’s strategy is to rely on remakes and reboots and all of the stuff that triggers nostalgia.

(As an aside, I will grant that some of these remakes and reboots have hit the mark. Disney’s Cinderella in 2015, notably one of their first live-action remakes, was a beautiful update to their original cartoon; Top Gun: Maverick was an exciting, thrilling film that told an original, heartfelt story while playing off of its predecessor; and Star Trek: Picard finished out Captain Picard’s story from The Next Generation with a satisfying conclusion that made up for the sudden end of The Next Generation movies. However, these good examples seem to be far fewer in number than the poor ones.)

Now, as I’ve already said: nostalgia itself is not a bad thing. But like all good things, it can be used in terrible and manipulative ways that can keep us stuck in the past, stuck chasing after something we’ll never be able to regrasp, and stuck in a whirlpool of uninspiring stories. But there is certainly a good power to nostalgia that can impact us positively on the spiritual level. When nostalgia points us back to God and to hope, it is a very, very good thing.

In a recent conversation with my mom, we were speculating on why we enjoy feeling nostalgic and why nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Both of us concluded that the longing of nostalgia, the desire for our idealized childhood of our memories, might actually be, at its heart, a callback to the Garden of Eden and our origins as human beings. After all, before the Fall, the Garden of Eden was a place of sinlessness, of innocence, of unhindered friendship with our Creator. Childhood is similarly a time in our lives usually marked by a sense of innocence, of lack of knowledge of evil, and often more openness to the miraculous wonder of God, before our lives get bogged down by shattered innocence, cynicism at the state of the world, and more. Nostalgia, then, can point us back to the way the world is supposed to be: unbroken, innocent, and saturated with clear connection to the presence of God.  

Nostalgia often brings up memories and often prompts us to remember our past. Remembrance is also a spiritual practice, something I especially noticed in my recent study of Deuteronomy. Throughout this book of Scripture, Moses is constantly calling the Israelite people to remember all that the Lord has done for them. This repetition of the need for constant recalling of the Lord’s work, which is not exclusive to Deuteronomy and found in many other places in the Bible, signals to us that remembrance of God’s goodness is a spiritual practice that we should engage in. Nostalgia, then, can be a starting place: reflecting back on our pasts and helping us to see the good, to see the blessings and work of God in our lives, and celebrate the good work He has done in us and through us and for us all our lives.

What, then, is the right use of and appeal to nostalgia in storytelling? Well, my first thought is nostalgia is a tool to be used in moderation. It is a powerful emotion, particularly in today’s cultural moment, so as storytellers, we should honor others by not overusing appeals to nostalgia and not provoking some of the problematic results of this emotion. Also, make original content that doesn’t rely on appeals to beloved sagas, and by doing so, change the narrative on what really sells. I don’t think all use of nostalgia in marketing is bad, but we could certainly do with less of it. We as storytellers should be good stewards of this emotion.

Nostalgia also needs to be used carefully in our stories, motivating us towards its positive attributes. Considering my comments on Eden and how nostalgia might connect us to the original innocence of the world, we can respond to nostalgia by letting it drive us to hope in the promised restoration of the world, and writing stories filled with that future-oriented hope. One day, we will regain what was lost in Eden. In our stories, we should remind readers of this hope and encourage them to move forward, rather than dwell incessantly on the past.

When we attempt to recapture the past through an appeal to nostalgia, it is almost always guaranteed to fall flat in stories and in our lives generally. It is perilous to let nostalgia drive us to recreate our perfect, idealized pasts. But it can be a powerful tool of remembrance, reflection on the Lord’s goodness, and prompting us to look ahead when He makes all things new. These are the powerful themes we should seek to emphasize in our own stories and our own lives.