“The past is not dead; it is living in us and will be alive in the future, which we are now helping to make.†– William Morris
In Part One of my nostalgia-themed article, I pointed out that the cult for nostalgia is not new, discussing the Victorian predilection for an idyllic past as exemplified through the illustrations of Kate Greenaway.
This week, in Part Two, I will be exploring the contemporary predilection for all things historical. This is a phenomenon we find expressed in the popularity of vintage clothing, and ‘retro’ styles of music, but which is perhaps most interestingly expressed in the popularity of the ITV1 series, Downton Abbey.
Cast of Downton Abbey
Fashion and popular music have always inclined towards the referential, invoking familiar sounds and images that hark from different eras. Treating the past as a vast shopping centre from which one can annex any style one chooses and reproduce it in a consciously ironic reference lies at the heart of post-modernity, to cite an over-used phrase. It is what one might call conspicuous irony.
Madonna has achieved precisely this type of relentless referentiality throughout her musical career. Her video for Vogue, released in 1990, was a pastiche of Marlene Dietrich in the film noire genre and her 1989 video for Express Yourself was a direct reference to the Fritz Lang film, Metropolis.Â
Marlene Dietrich and Madonna
There is, however, a fundamental difference between this type of post-modern referentiality – self-conscious and ironic in essence – and the simple nostalgic yearning to return to an idyllic past. The post-modern sensibility is one in which there is a disenchantment with meaning.
The current leaning towards nostalgia is closer to what can be described as pre-modern, since it expresses a simple desire to revisit a time, or times, that have passed; not in order to repudiate or subvert meaning, but to recover it.
The pre-modern sensibility is more to do with taking a stand against the modern world, or expressing disenchantment with it and it is my belief that we are evolving from a post-modern culture into one that is pre-modern. That is, we have become disenchanted with disenchantment. The endless reproduction of images dissociated from their original meaning so beloved of an ironic post-modern sensibility is, ultimately, unnerving and disorientating because as human beings we have a basic need to discern meaning in our lives.
The success of ITV1’s Downton Abbey, for example, has nothing to do with irony and everything to do with the type of pre-modern nostalgia that yearns to return to a time when things seemed to make more sense.
Of course the catalyst for this current nostalgic mood is the recession. Times of economic uncertainty cause us to become introspective and nervous about the future. Instead, we retreat to the relative comfort of the past, which seems rosier and cosier than our bleak present.
Economic uncertainty can also make us feel cast adrift, unsure of our place in the great scheme of things and as we struggle to comprehend how the Western World got itself into such a mess, we may wonder if the phenomenon of the economic boom is becoming a thing of the past.
The past, of course, is a non-threatening place. We already know what the past is, or we think we do. The future, on the other hand is, as Shakespeare would say, “that undiscovered country,” an unknown place that, in times of recession, can become a terrifying one.
It is of particular note that in the equally economically depressing 1970s – also a time of recession – there was the power shortage; the oil crisis of 1973, when the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath imposed a three day week as an emergency measure. During this time, there was a plethora of period dramas such as Poldark, The Onedin Line, Flambards, and of course, Upstairs, Downstairs.Â
Cast members from Upstairs Downstairs
The fashion for period dramas says much about our collective fears, our cultural aspirations and perceptions. The Edwardian era, in which Downton Abbey is set, was a time before the world changed irrevocably, before the carnage of the First World War, when the collective consciousness of the nation was still relatively naïve and idealistic.
In Edwardian times, the climate of optimism and innovation so characteristic of the Victorian era was still very much in evidence, as the Edwardians lived through a host of new-fangled innovations: the automobile, electricity, the telephone, central heating.
Indeed, there are some amusing scenes in Downton Abbey where characters struggle to cope with new inventions. Carson, the butler, has no idea how to use the newly installed telephone and holds it the wrong way round, then jumps out of his skin when the operator comes onto the line.
Downton Abbey's Carson played by Jim Carter
It is easy to see why, as well as envying what we perceive as their comparative complacency, we might identify with the Edwardians. They struggled to adjust to their new world much as we have struggled to ours – in our case, grappling with the complexity of computers in the often too-rapid advancement of technology; coping with the consciousness shifts brought about by global capitalism.
Like us, the Edwardians lived and worked in an uncertain, ever-changing world, in which the everyday lives of ordinary men and women were being revolutionised, both economically and culturally. The Edwardian world, contrary to popular belief in the myth of the Long Summer – was not a stable and secure one, but one fraught with protests and strikes. It saw the rise of the working man, through the founding of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, as well as the long and often violent struggles of the Suffragette movement, which by the First World War, had secured votes for women.
Yet somehow our lives seem so much more troubled and uncertain than those of our Edwardian predecessors. It is not with irony that we follow the story of Downton Abbey’s cast of characters, but with a sentimental and perhaps rather self-indulgent fondness for times past, for ‘better’ times.
Until the recession ends, if it ever does, our days of conspicuous irony are over.
Images reproduced from madblackcat.com, thepixeljunkie.blogspot.com, guardian.co.uk and itv.com
