University of Brighton

School of Media

Edward Street Campus Lecture Theatre

28th Apr 2017 1:00pm-5:30pm

Nostalgia is a recurring theme of contemporary popular film, television and digital media. Reboots and remakes, sequels and spin-offs fill our screens. DVD box sets repackage old shows as new products. Digital techniques recreate the look of celluloid, old photography and early cinema, as older media formats, such as vinyl and audio cassettes experience renewed popularity. Indie videogames evoke retro aesthetics, streamed television conspicuously emulates the cinematography of 1980s movies, while award winning films reference the musicals of classical Hollywood in a combination of irony and sincerity. Advertising, science fiction cinema, biopics, children’s television and digital serials are engaged in a complex interplay between present and a mediated past as much imaginary as actual. What are the meanings, contexts, and consequences of such widespread engagement with the past, and how might cultural nostalgia be critically theorised?

This half-day event explores the presence of nostalgia in areas of media, art and popular culture. All welcome. No requirement to book. Papers to include:

Katherine Farrimond: Retro Noir, Nostalgia and the Femme Fatale

Louise Fitzgerald: “It feels so nostalgic”: Sensory Nostalgia and Haptic Empathy

Martin Fradley “The past does matter … it shapes the future”: Shane Meadows and Counter Nostalgia

Struan Gray: “To see ourselves again”: Nostalgia for a Dictatorship in Pinochet’s Children

Ewan Kirkland: Nostalgia, Cowboys and Western Mythology in Popular Culture for Children

Douglas McNaughton: “A Tourist In Your Own Youth”: Karaoke Sequels and Spatialised Nostalgia in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting 2

Aris Mousoutzanis: Taboo and Imperial Nostalgia