Commodified Nostalgia and Capitalist Necromancy
🔄Commodified nostalgia thrives on our longing for a romanticized past, manipulated by capitalism to justify its existence and sell us a manufactured brand of nostalgia at a markup.
🧟♂️Capitalist necromancy reanimates ideologies and aesthetics from bygone eras, transforming beloved franchises into cultural zombies that generate profits while diverting attention from present issues.
Media Landscape and Cultural Impact
🎬The current media landscape is dominated by remakes, sequels, and prequels, often reducing original creations to hollow replicas stripped of innovation and risk-taking.
🕰️The nostalgia cycle is an inevitability driven by the acceleration of trend cycles and inflation of nostalgia due to social media, as noted in Tom Vanderbilt's 1993 essay "The Nostalgia Gap".
Psychological and Societal Implications
🎭The spectacle, as accumulated capital in the form of images, mediates social relationships and evokes longing not for the media itself but for the original feelings and time associated with its consumption.
🔍Capitalist necromancy constructs ideological fantasies around nostalgia, presenting a distorted perception of history that perpetuates the illusion of capitalism as the solution to our deepest desires.