Llight, unpredictable, enigmatic. A feeling of loss of a place and its time, which only return can remedy. Gentlemen, here’s nostalgia for us, that absence which in a poem by Paul Celan spreads out like “silk butterflies” and in a song by Francesco Guccini colors the crockery with itself. On the subject of quotes, a quick and obsequious bow goes to the absolute divinity in question, Marcel Proust’s madeleine, that combination of memory and yearning which permeates the search for a time gone by: a work of the heart, which sifts through the waste and brings to the surface only the essence of memory, like the madeleine floating in the cup of tea.
Therefore, memory, as the psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna writes in Giving voice to the heart (Einaudi), «it is a necessary premise for the birth and death of nostalgia», because «memories that nourish nostalgia are continually reborn from lived memory». So, if only in quantitative terms (of years and memories) the Boomers generation would seem to be the most entitled to bask in the sentiment. In the movie Nostalgia by Mario Martone, the director entrusts Pasolini with the warning in the exergue: «Knowledge is in nostalgia: he who doesn’t get lost doesn’t possess it». There would be greater pleasure among the Boomers in “getting lost”, in longing for a golden age that bewitches from the past like the sirens of Ulysses (the hero with a black belt of nostalgia: he could stay with the beautiful Calypso, who offers immortality as well, but longs for a return to Ithaca, not quite a five-star resort)?
«I believe that nostalgia affects all generations» he specifies Lucrezia Ercoli, teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and artistic director of contemporary philosophy festival Popsophia. «Mostly, however, those that are more transitional, that is, those that are going through a change which then, seen in hindsight, actually appears epochal» he specifies. «For the Boomers it is the moment in which mass society was born, the media and television developed. AND an increasingly shared culture is born on a global level within which nostalgia finds its own language, to explode and spread. So I am convinced that there is this situation with the Boomers because they have experienced a season of great and sudden changes.” Of which perhaps the technological revolution marks the watershed: the lack of familiarity with digital technology plunges those born between ’46 and ’64 into a condition of awkward ignorancewhich the younger generations underline with a condescending “ok boomer” (forgetting that we Boomers, in turn, did this with our elders, who, still not very Americanized, we called “matusa”).
Generations of memories. (Getty Images)
«Moreover, profound contradictions arise from which no one seems exempt: the sound of our smartphone camera, for example, reproduces the click of an analog camerainfiltrating the mechanism of nostalgia into the technological promise of the new millennium which re-imagines the past rather than inventing the future” explains Ercoli, author among other things of Yesterday. Philosophy of nostalgia (Ponte alle Grazie).
Nostalgia for the golden age
But why do certain decades take on the contours of a golden age, to be talked about in the face of a colorless present? «I call it the Fifty-Fifty» continues Ercoli. «That is, the idealization of a mythological age completely constructed a posteriori which concerns, for example, the 50s and 60s, those in which everything seemed possible, there was talk of rebirth, of exponential and borderless progress. Years later, when everything has now been defined and perhaps nothing has happened, nostalgia becomes a twilight feeling: when that possibility of happiness has passed, an impossible return to what could have been is built.” Or, on the contrary, to what has been: it is reassuring to understand how much joy, hard work, stumbles and successes we have experienced along the way. And remembering how we survived failures can strengthen us.
A bittersweet lever
Then if we wanted to have the most objective view possible, we would have to admit that it is often an artificial idea, put together above all through the external veneer of objects, styles, fashions, music: in a word, marketing. So how useful is leveraging nostalgia to push consumption or ideas? And how dangerous can this be?
«Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion. Or bitter sweet?» he asks Annamaria Testa, advertising historian, teacher and essayistnow in bookstores with The shiny texture (Garzanti). And he immediately clears the field: «In this sense, even ambivalent, it is absolutely not typical of Boomers. It belongs to anyone with a heart and a soul and a past. Therefore, only very young children are exempt.”
And everyone else? How much does an advertisement steeped in nostalgia “catch” us? «Communication passes much more easily if it leverages an emotion. Let’s think about how quickly the message that plays on anger or fear hits home. From this point of view, nostalgia is much less worrying, the most motivating feelings are negative emotions because they trigger the escape instinct, aggression. We see it on social media, where the reaction is immediate and violent. Algorithms spread messages that promote anger and fear because they have more sharing potential.”
Therefore, nostalgia would not have this intense manipulative capacity. But he has a huge amount of imagination, just think of the quantity of literature, songs, poems and works of art that have been produced with his driving force. Annamaria Testa, during your career have you exploited your creative strength a little or a lot? «I am very strict with products and their performance because it seems more honest to me. So I never thought of doing a campaign based on nostalgia. If I were to promote a toaster with a retro design, perhaps I would focus on it, but usually what guides me is relevance: content and form of the message, product characteristics. Otherwise let’s go and tell stories.” A recent one, which made a lot of noise, revolves around a peach and the nostalgia of a united family… «A corny and questionable story of divorced parents in which the message is very strong, but completely divorced from the product. Therefore, ineffective.”
Nostalgia helps us look forward
Krystine Batcho, professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New Yorkexpert in nostalgia, developed the “Nostalgia Inventory” test, which measures how deeply people feel nostalgic. She believes that people prone to nostalgia excel at maintaining personal relationships and choosing effective social skills to deal with problems. In essence they are more empathetic. Russian-American theorist and writer Svetlana Boym observes how the word is composed of nostos, “desire to return home”, and algos, “pain”, which together become “the pain of the return”. According to Boym, if nostos prevails, then we are actually living in a regressive mode, the mind is turned to the past and incapable of progressing. Those who, on the other hand, are capable of concentrating on the algos, experience a feeling of the soul, even if it is suffering, but which puts us in the same wavelength as other human beings. Then nostalgia becomes a driving feeling that looks forward, opens up to others and to tomorrow.
«Nostalgia, the anxieties of the soul that accompany it, they make our life more sensitive to the lost values of adolescence and youth that are within usallowing us to identify with those of others” writes Eugenio Borgna, underlining the great power of connection not only with one’s own identity but also between generations.
First times and missed opportunities
The first trip, the first kiss, the first time at home alone, the first slice of Sacher cake… Or the most burning of nostalgias, the one for all the versions of us that we weren’t every time we made a decision when faced with one of life’s crossroads. A powerful feeling that pushes the exile to return. And the exile longs for it and pursues it, whether it is the Ithaca of Ulysses or “the road, the friend or a bar” of Albano Carrisi, popular poet of scoundrel Italian nostalgia. Elusive feeling, which catalogs objects between memory and dream: in Istanbul in the Beyoğlu district, there is the Museum of Innocenceliterary museum built around Orhan Pamuk’s novel and, in Zagreb, there is a Museum of Broken Relationshipsand which houses nostalgic memorabilia of finished loves, coming from all over the world.
It seems licet, in Cavenago Brianza there is a Micro Museum of Nostalgia which displays record players, pinball machines, ice cream advertisements… And confirming the fact that reliving the thrills of another era is a desire that transcends generations, even online they are multiplying social profiles dedicated to past seasons. Especially on Instagram where the pages collect what was fashionable in a specific year or decade. With undeniable democratic effects. For example, when looking at a painting by Caravaggio, the demarcation between those who know about it and those who don’t immediately emerges. In front of an advertisement for Orzo bimbo or Carmencita we can all have our say. This is confirmed by someone who recently exchanged a certain barrel (which survived in the cellar) with a fellow collector. Her eyes were shining.
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