Note: Illustrations are forthcoming...

BRET SCHULTE, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Nov. 12, 1999) Presence of the past - Instead of looking to the future as we move toward a new age, we seem to be focused on the (real or imagined) simpler times. As the sun sets on the 1900s, and the world faces the prospect of another thousand years of human civilization, it's no wonder that much of America has hit the brakes hard. With its hands still on the wheel, uncontrollably speeding ahead, our nation turns its eyes to the mirrors ... looking back, as they say, on what a long, strange trip it's been. For the last few years, images of modern history have steadily illuminated our postmodern media. Antiques are hocked on computer screens while old movies saturate millions of satellite-fed televisions. An armchair nation of Billy Pilgrims, a population unstuck in time, happily gazes into the dimensional holes sizzling in their living rooms. ESPN chronicled the greatest sports heroes of the last 100 years. VH1 did the same work for its field of play, popular music. MSNBC, considered the cyborg of the broadcasting industry, has begun a retro news series called Time & Again, which examines 20th-century American history and culture. And speaking of history, who would have imagined 10 years ago that a 24-hour history channel would make the cut for the flashiest medium of all time, and then as a wild hit with people clamoring for seats to witness the way it was. As 2000 nears -- a symbol more than a number, suggestive of a brave new world of unprecedented space exploration, medical breakthroughs and hope for a better humanity -- we are now more than ever enamored of the past. For release in spring 2000: The Chrysler-built PT Cruiser, modeled on the prewar "panel delivery vans," says a Chrysler salesman. But this one comes with the modern amenities of front-wheel drive, power windows and automatic transmission, while still hearkening back to the late 1930s and early '40s with proud, eye-catching fenders and a long hood. The strongest image is the one implied, the Norman Rockwell vision of a milkman or florist smiling as he pulls his deliveries from the hatchback. Inside, the CD changer plays the Beatles' latest, the digitally remastered Yellow Submarine Songtrack, which debuted at No. 15 on the pop charts in late September. As we toodle around Post-Modernopolis, we guide our Cruiser through a century's worth of shopping without ever leaving the suburbs. A classic 1973 design by Citizen watchmakers, brand-new for only $129, is one choice. And thick, horn-rimmed glasses are available at every modern optical outlet with any sense of chic. Bell-bottoms flare from ankles, butterfly collars flutter from necks. Tight black denim, Charlie's Angels T-shirts, blue gas station button-downs. Derby hats topping scalps, canvas Converse Chuck Taylors gripping feet. The perfect fit for treading across the '90s. From our Cruiser we see the dorm rooms of the class of 2004, lighted by the glow of incense and lava lamps, young figures at laptops crouching under posterboard icons of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe ... . These are the images of a lingering memory not released. They are living emblems of the '90s; they are the ghosts of nostalgia haunting us today. "I think nostalgia is probably a symptom of something deeper about the '90s," says Peter Losin, a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland and instructor of the course The Beat Begins: America in the 1950s. "It's a symptom of an unhappiness or dissatisfaction about something with life in the '90s. It can't be a lack of money or a lack of general prosperity. My own guess is that it's just that everything is kind of empty. "People have a lot of money, a lot of leisure, a lot of technological devices at their disposal, but it doesn't add up to happiness." REMEMBER THE '90S? Nostalgia is a natural reaction to desperate times. When the Great Depression swept across America's cities and the Dust Bowl swallowed the breadbasket, the film industry survived by providing an escape to a better world. Movies were released at a dazzling rate in those days. Studios introduced the double feature and the B picture, short formulaic escapes so cheaply made that they could be replaced with the next Western or musical two or three times a week. They tended to be glamorous and light, full of grand costumes or swinging musical numbers. They were, in effect, an emotional display of the good times "remembered" from the Roaring '20s. In the '90s people, don't need to escape from unemployment anxiety. The decade has enjoyed the strongest peacetime economy in America's history. Real wages have climbed 6.2 percent since 1993, the first increase in more than two decades, say White House statistics. And the murder rate is down more than 25 percent since 1993, to its lowest point in 30 years. Violent crime has declined 21 percent over the same period. Unprecedented numbers of students fill college classrooms. Inflation is virtually nil. The horizon glows brighter than ever, but rather than eagerly looking toward the dawn of the 21st century we find ourselves peering ever deeper into the dusk. A large number of '90s folks, notably teen-agers and college students, are emulating the traditions, styles and values of previous decades. Young rock fans are wearing their parents' clothes to see popular bands. The Rolling Stones, for instance ... still touring. Popular among the more jocky types are T-shirts with 1940s-style logos, but rather than saying Brooklyn Dodgers the shirts read Abercrombie & Fitch. Sometimes this nostalgia is for a specific period, other times it's a dreamlike conglomeration of shaky history and sense of cool. A NEW HISTORY Beth Fitzpatrick, a student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, wears hemp jewelry, old tattered bell-bottoms and polyester flower-print shirts. She doesn't believe her look comes from an intentional desire to adopt a '60s style, though she confesses an admiration for that era of presumed student activism and revolutionary rock 'n' roll. The 20-year-old listens to Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; both bands made famous appearances at Woodstock in 1969. "There is a lot that I identify with, but it's not as if I say, 'I like the '60s today,' and I'm going to dress like the '60s today," she says. Her friend Genni Ahrens, 23, elaborates. "I think in the '60s there was a sense of unity, you know? All the young people were nice to each other and got along and made efforts to accept everybody no matter what. And now there is not that much acceptance. People say that they do but there is kind of a zero tolerance for anybody that is different than you." Well, that's not exactly what the '60s were like. Most of the decade was similar to the '50s. The activism (much of which was actually in the '70s) divided people of all ages, inciting violent conflict as much as peace and love. But that idyllic concept represents almost perfectly the modern, or better yet, postmodern form of nostalgia. It is an amalgam of periods and places, roughly pasted together with a collective sense of ignorant bliss. "The uniqueness of '90s nostalgia is its ephemeral and incomplete nature," says Andrew Wood, an assistant professor in San Jose State University's department of communications and Webmaster of several sites dedicated to 20th-century America. "It's not so much that we have one specific past to yearn for but rather we play in and through alternative, contradictory pasts, partially because we can and partially because we really don't have anything else to measure our pasts against." "The thing is we no longer trust a particular past. None of them are pure, none of them are inviolate. So nostalgia seems to be playing with multiple pasts, sort of a shopping market, a consumer mall of alternative lifestyles and we choose the one that seems most appropriate. And none of them are complete." LIVING IN THE PAST Wood's favorite example of this is Walt Disney's newest theme project, Celebration, south of Orlando, Fla., a pricey postmodern housing development inspired by a longing for small-town Americana. It's tough to say America, as no natural community in the history of the country has ever looked like it. The Victorian homes start at $250,000 and are nestled closely to modern wellness centers, an art-deco downtown area, a walking-distance town square with music piped in and, most tellingly, a state-of-the-art dialysis clinic. There's not a sign of corporate expansion anywhere. Except Disney's. Business is booming as retirees clamor to reoccupy the constructions -- some real, some imagined -- of their youth. "People are rushing to buy homes with white picket fences and broad sidewalks because they say they want to live in a simpler time. What's funny is that Celebration doesn't hearken back to a particular past but a number of pasts. The homes have an 1870s Victorian style. The movie theaters are neon lit with a 1950s marquee and some of the physical references are going to the 1930s typical Southern town," Wood says. In a critical essay, Wood refers to this as the "small-town myth." "Nostalgia for small-town America rests upon a careful balance of insight and ignorance," he writes. "Its use in the critique of the modern, antiseptic social structure depends on the willful suspension of memory and perspective. The goal is not to change one's contemporary situation, so much as to transcend it -- to escape it." The past isn't limited to this vision of America. The search for retrogressive living applies just as much to the urbanites who favor the old-fashioned hustle of pedestrian traffic; crowded, tightly quartered shops, and apartments lofted just above the action. Downtown areas in major cities across the country are experiencing this well-documented repopulation boom. And Arkansas isn't behind the times, so to speak. A Little Rock developer converted the old Tuf-Nut factory near the River Market into pricey apartments at an estimated cost of $2.4 million. With rents going as high as $1,350 a month, the loft apartment complex features wood or cement floors along with interior brick walls, a distinctly retro look. The Fayetteville Square, home to two banks, the Farmers Market and a number of shops and restaurants, is getting more and more popular as a place to live. Its vacant Campbell-Bell department store is undergoing a major overhaul to be finished next year as luxury condominiums, a health club and offices. The once-deserted building will be selling for at least a $100 a square foot. Developer Richard Alexander said people are lining up for the chance to live downtown. David Glasser, the director of the UA Community Design Center, believes Fayetteville is not unlike cities throughout the nation undergoing a sudden surge of urbanization. "People are sick of suburbia," Glasser said. "They want neighbors and they don't want half an acre of grass to mow. ... We're sick of living out on the edge of cities and pretending we have grand estates." A SIMPLER TIME Like Billy Pilgrim, Americans can travel to almost any point in time, at least in modern America, and they share his ability to view this history as a whole, like the range of the Rocky Mountains, as Kurt Vonnegut explains. Some points stick out more than others. Some are well-traveled; some are overexploited. The pits of modern history are often viewed in artificial light, while the high points are gazed on from afar as homes to gurus, gods and heroes. College students dressed in their grandparents' clothes are playing a version of pretend, a full dress rehearsal for the play A Simpler Time, which will never open, but is always in the works. Ironically, the most dramatic achievement of the '90s, the Internet, is bursting with retro Web sites that include "cybermalls" where you can buy leopard skin lamps and vintage appliances. Thrift stores complain of being ransacked by retro store employees who resell the classic clothes at high markups. What you don't see in 1999 is any particular fascination with the future. Talk of world peace and borderless democracies is usually done with a roll of the eyes. That energetic optimism of earlier decades with all their bright ideas of silver appliances and social harmony has given way to its current form of self- conscious, cynical mimicry. And science fiction, while always popular, doesn't hold the public imagination as it did when we were further from its actualization. In 1939, the New York World's Fair offered a sparkling vision of the future. It would be hygienic and safe. Leisure time would be abundant and machines would liberate humankind from life's hard facts. But now it's 1999. We know better. While we have loads of modern conveniences we still face basic everyday problems that computers can't solve. Life has become more complicated as the future unraveled, not the other way around. "In the '50s they perceived that we'd be approaching the year 2000 wearing silver space suits and flying in cars. I think we had a lot of ideas that things were going to progress in a different way than they did," says Kim Brown, 20, a UA marketing major. She speaks reflectively from behind her modern horn-rimmed glasses. Dressed in a simple, black turtleneck and old jeans, she looks like a yearbook photo from 1965. "We don't want to be these silly Jetsons kids in silver clothes and we're not flying around. It's really hard to identify and find a style that's right now," she says. "I don't think we are where we thought we'd be at the year 2000 and we're looking back and holding onto that because it's what we know. "There is a sort of comfort in that, I guess. A simpler time."

Citation

Use of this article is solely intended for students in Dr. Andrew Wood's courses at San Jose State University. Any other use is prohibited.