Written by: Chintan Rout
“It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.”― Ally Condi
Recently a lot of posts on Instagram containing a series of opening songs to old cartoons went up; they were a huge hit. There were tens and thousands of likes, and people were commenting on how every piece had a memory attached. Watching all those opening songs, our brains throw themselves in the past, and there is an influx of all the memories of watching these shows after returning from school, those long discussions about the episodes watched last night and humming the opening song as they played on TV. A smile spreads across our face, and we would feel calm and peaceful. This little trip that our brain makes to our past is referred to as Nostalgia.
According to the report, “Nostalgia: A Neuropsychiatric Understanding” by Alan R Hirsch —
“Nostalgia may be considered a yearning to return home to the past — more than this; it is a yearning for an idealized past or, in a more fancy way of saying it, it’s a longing for a sanitized impression of the past.”
Nostalgia is a bit more than just recollection of memories; it envelopes you into a constructed memory of your past, it screens all the bad memories and experiences, and for a brief moment, our present self escapes the pain of reality and goes into a fairyland, and you start feeling like you are wrapped in a cozy blanket on a cold evening sipping hot coffee or tea, whatsoever might be your poison.
The word ‘Nostalgia’ is actually formed by 2 Greek words nostos, or homecoming, and algos, or pain. However, you might be surprised to know that the origin of Nostalgia wasn’t always thought to be this warm. In fact, it was considered to be an illness until sometime back.
Nostalgia— A mental disorder?
As mentioned above, nostalgia wasn’t always referred to as a positive feeling. There are many pieces of evidence to support the said statement. In the 17th century, a Swiss physician Johannes Hoffer proposed that nostalgia was a mental disorder. The disease came to be associated with soldiers, particularly Swiss soldiers, who were reportedly so susceptible to nostalgia when they heard a particular Swiss milking song, Khue-Reyen, that its playing was punishable by death. In another case, after the Civil War, an American military doctor Theodore Calhoun said that nostalgia was something to be ashamed of; his tactic was to bully the nostalgia out of the soldiers’ systems by calling them unmanly and weak. Many strange cures were proposed to help them get rid of nostalgia, which included and not limited to purging, leeches, and inflicting pain upon oneself.
Doctors did sometimes go with the obvious solution of just letting the patients go home, which, more often than not, cleared their symptoms right up. But even that wasn’t guaranteed to work if the home they longed for had changed significantly or just no longer existed.
With time people’s perception of nostalgia has changed, people have been educated about this stuff, and it’s no longer considered to be a mental disease. In fact, it’s something that common people like to relish from time to time. But as we all know that just as there are two sides to a coin, there are two sides to this too.
An antidote or an addictive drug
Nostalgia may not be a mental disease, but it does affect the brain in a significant manner. Research conducted showed that when nostalgia is triggered in our mind, the parts of the brain responsible for the “reward system” are activated. This also helps our brain to counter feelings of anxiety and depression. The sadness that envelopes you when someone close to you dies, or when you are going through a challenging period, nostalgia acts even stronger, helping diffuse those negative thoughts and act as a coping mechanism. It also helps us in making major decisions of our lives and motivates us to have higher self-esteem to look towards the brighter side of the future.
As you grow older and much more stable, you start feeling less nostalgic, and this is why young adults like us are more prone to nostalgia. With the fast-paced and competitive world that we live in, it’s easy to forget ourselves, and thus when you come across an old advertisement or a familiar song gets stuck in your mind, your brain starts drifting towards the simpler times.
Nostalgia, as mentioned above, can be a great tool for a positive coping mechanism, but like any good tool, its excessive use can be harmful. For some people, nostalgia can be a harmful drug; they can choose to just live in the constant thoughts of their past to escape reality’s harsh truths. While nostalgia can provide a warm memory in occasional moments, repeated patterns of nostalgia are actually akin to a difficulty mourning unprocessed losses.
Being too nostalgic or delving too much into it may lead to a saturation point, where the warmth that came along with may stop altogether. For people suffering from depression or those who are more prone to sadness, there is a chance that nostalgia may end up adversely affecting them, and because nostalgia amplifies your feelings by pushing you into the past, chances are you end up feeling even more depressed because you are still hung up over your past experiences. There are various subreddits where people talked about how nostalgia was never a positive feeling for them. Their brain stuck in the past, constantly reminding them of the opportunities they messed up on, the life they had to give up on because they didn’t take full advantage of their potential when they had time, this constant state of nostalgia which fills them with anxiety and pain. Nostalgia’s subsequent false recollections can have incredibly harmful repercussions on those who already suffer from excessive worrying or anxiety.
In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Bas Verplanken, a professor of social psychology at the University of Bath, discovered that, after being exposed to nostalgic stimuli, participants who exhibited a “strong worry habit” showed “enhanced symptoms of anxiety and depression” compared to those with the same predisposition in the control group. In other words, the nostalgic triggers caused those who worry “habitually” to become more depressed and anxious than they would have been otherwise.
As Dante so poignantly wrote:
“There is no greater sorrow.
Than to recall a happy time,
When miserable.”
Nostalgia may have its side effects, but has that ever stopped Walt Disney or, the matter of fact, any other company from exploiting it.
Nostalgia in marketing
A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that nostalgic feelings made participants more willing to spend money on consumer goods and services.
We have obviously come far from where we were; nostalgia is not only acceptable, but its also the most marketable device out there. Disney is milking their money cow by releasing live-action films of their old classics, and there is no doubt they are hitting the bullseye. Alice in Wonderland and Beauty and the Beast both earned more than $1 billion at the box office, while The Jungle Book came mighty close with $966.6 million. Their recent release, The Lion King live-action, went on to gross over $ 1.6 billion worldwide. Reboots and remakes of old classics are just some ways to monetize old memories. These people aren’t giving you new stories; they make you seek the older ones in the guise of improved filmmaking techniques and making the most out of the nostalgic brains of adults around the world.
Many products have piggybacked the idea of Nostalgia to have the customer invest in their products; Paperboat, Nestle, Google, etc. In India, the effect of nostalgia on people is really strong. One of the most famous ads of Google India ‘The Hero — A Bollywood Story’ is a six-minute ad released on YouTube. Without delving much into the story, the ad starring Vicky Kaushal deals with a father who wanted to become a film star but had let go of the dream a long time ago, and it’s up to his son to help his father relive that dream. The ad brings up all the famous old Bollywood dialogues and tries to recreate famous scenes. The ad was a huge hit; with this ad, the company was not only able to showcase their rich, immersive search experience and win Indians over, using their love for Indian cinema, unfulfilled dreams, and obviously nostalgia. A keen understanding of the target audience and the past’s cultural milieu is fundamental to nostalgia marketing. Brands are capitalizing on our need for simpler times.
Through nostalgia marketing, brands are able to invoke positive emotions from their audience, put their products in the spotlight, and generate more revenue and visibility. Older audiences will enjoy the stroll down memory lane — and the younger market is likely to get a kick out of it, too.
From large MNCs using it to sell products or college clubs using it to get likes on their posts, nostalgia is the fastest and most efficient method to get someone’s attention. These ideas may seem like a cheap way to exploit the customers, but you can’t help but wonder at how this simple underrated emotion has played a stronger role in your life than you might think. All we can really do is just marvel or wonder, and before we know it, we are already walking down the memory lane.
We’re never going to be able to fully describe or understand how an individual thinks, or what an individual’s memories might be and how those memories contribute to what those individuals are.
Why our brain does what it does will be a mystery for a long, long time. Nostalgia is undoubtedly a gift to our minds, a way for us to revisit the past, relive it without physically being there. It’s also necessary to know that these come with their consequences. It’s good to experience a fabricated past once in a while, to help you forget about all the unpleasant things in the present. Stay a bit too long, grow a little too attached to it, and chances are the fog might just start clearing up to reveal the horrors from your past your brain was hiding all along.
Sources:
- Nostalgia Marketing
- Hindsight Isn’t Always 20/20: The Dark Side of Nostalgia.
- Anyone else feels paralyzed by nostalgia? : depression
- Does Nostalgia Fuel Depression?
- Why does Nostalgia Marketing Work so well?
- Passion For The Past: Nostalgia Marketing And The Retro Revolution
- From Paper Boat to Google, how brands bank on nostalgia
