The first time I watched the movie “Grease,” I was very confused. Granted, I was 10, so this was understandable. Most of the jokes and references went over my head, but the music and poodle skirts were too good to resist. As I danced around my room singing “Summer Nights” oblivious to the sexual undertones, I realized that something didn’t quite make sense.
I might have been young, but I had a basic grasp on addition by then. If this movie was made in the ‘50s, shouldn’t John Travolta be … way older by now? This puzzled me for a while until my mom explained that “Grease” was made in the ‘70s about the ‘50s. This cleared things up a bit, but I couldn’t help feeling cheated. I had built my entire juvenile perception of the ‘50s around this movie, and it wasn’t even authentic! But alas, I was 10. I had better things to worry about. “Grease” remained one of my favorite movies, we learned about Harry Truman and Rock n’ Roll in middle school and that was that.
Except it wasn’t. As I got older, more and more of my favorite movies and TV shows followed suit. From “That ‘70s Show,” which featured costumes and references so stereotypical that it seemed to mock itself, to “Mad Men,” which has been praised for its detailed portrayal of the ‘50s and ‘60s, it seemed like every type of show was hopping on the Retrospect Express.
I had, of course, heard of a period piece before. But this term conjured up images of “Pride and Prejudice”-esque works, full of promenades and corsets and British people. The shows and films that I was growing accustomed to depicted more recent decades. And in any case, they weren’t specifically about these decades, just set in them.
The urge to capture the 20th century decades in film and television is only becoming more common as time goes on. Recently, the ‘70s have been a popular choice, inspiring movies like 2013’s “American Hustle” and 2014’s “Inherent Vice.” The latter ascribes mainly to the beach hippie image of the ‘70s, while “American Hustle” takes a more upper-class route (big hair, plunging necklines, etc.). In December 2013, “The Wolf of Wall Street” even paid tribute to the ‘80s, perhaps the most recent decade to be portrayed by a film set in the past. Much like its ‘60s and ‘70s-based predecessors, “The Wolf of Wall Street” painted the late ‘80s just as we might imagine them: with bulky computers and lots of drugs.
The issue with movies and TV shows like these, which take place in other decades but aren’t necessarily about their history, is the image they create. These pieces use costumes and music that we commonly associate with each decade, exaggerating them to ensure that we understand. And with the right background knowledge, that’s great. It paints a dreamy picture of greasers or beatniks or hippies for us to swoon over. The pitfall, however, comes when there is no background knowledge. Just like with my childhood “Grease” experience, film and TV can cultivate a distorted image of the past. For example, “Grease” might have you believing that every guy in the ‘50s wore a leather jacket every day, and every friend group named itself. These things aren’t so true.
Of course, viewing the past in a sensationalized way is not, in itself, a bad thing. Nostalgia always makes things seem better than they were. That’s why we miss them so much. The problem lies in what we don’t remember. With only superficial things like fashion trends defining our cultural memory, we ignore the bigger issues behind them. We forget the music and poetry that inspired the beat generation or the political climate that created the hippies. There was a method to the madness of each decade, logic behind the archetypes, and Hollywood has generally ignored it.
This tendency to appreciate the past only insofar as its aesthetic value reflects a greater problem of our culture. It’s the same phenomenon that justifies buying glasses when you don’t need them, or the colorful but notoriously low-quality record players they sell at Urban Outfitters. We’re concerned with how things make us look, with trying to prove to everyone else that we are “cultured.” The irony in this effort is that we’re becoming less “cultured” by doing so.
I’m not saying we should stop doing things we admire from the past. If you like records, buy a record player. Dance around your room, that’s fine. But make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, and not to back up some empty claim that you were “born in the wrong generation.” You weren’t. You’re just pining for a world that only ever existed onscreen. And when they start production on films depicting the 2010s, we’d like to give them something more interesting than that.
