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As people change and grow there’s often a time where they reminisce when things were much simpler back in the sweet and innocent (or maybe, not so sweet and innocent) days of childhood and feel nostalgic. Maybe you’re walking around the neighborhood they grew up in and seeing the park they spend what felt like countless hours in. Maybe it’s seeing a simple childhood dish you ate a lot as a kid. Maybe it’s a faint smell that reminds you of a memory in childhood. There’s numerous ties and connections that can be associated with Nostalgia and whilst they’re often associated with positive fuzzy emotions, that isn’t always the case. Nostalgia can cause people to become bitter, myself included at some point in time. There was a point in my life where I felt bitter and the overwhelming feeling of nostalgia consumed me for months on end. It was a complex feeling. I clinged onto the childhood experiences I had while longing to feel the same things I once did when I was younger. I felt as if the world wasn’t as enjoyable as it was just a few years ago. I wasn’t able to enjoy anything that had more recently been produced whether it was music, films, novels or anything else. Yet I also wasn’t able to revisit the things that comforted me such as the music I listened to growing up or the countless films I enjoyed as a child due to how overwhelming the realization of how things had changed so much and how I didn’t feel the same as I once was and The overwhelming nostalgia affected my perspective on the world around me and I wasn’t able to recognize or appreciate the beauty and appreciation for the new things being created or produced around me due to the overwhelming fear of change and how experiences changed me growing up. I wasn’t the only person who had this mindset, there’s numerous other people in the world who have felt or are currently feeling similarly. I’d like to discuss and analyze how nostalgia can cause people to feel bitter over the world due to the fear of change and missing the way they once felt.
Nostalgia in the negative sense seems to stem from fears, one of them being the fear of change. It’s quite a common fear people experience at some point in their lives but it ties heavily with nostalgia. One article in particular demonstrates just how the fear and anxiety of change ties in with nostalgia written and edited by Roantree called, “Nostalgia Isn’t Fun For Everyone: When Looking Back Makes You Feel Anxious”. A young twenty-three year old called “Alice” was interviewed for the stellar magazine article about her personal experiences with nostalgia. On numerous occasions she was quoted saying “For as long as I can remember nostalgia has made me feel queasy.” As a hook for the article. As she goes on she details her intense reaction to seeing a home-made wedding video her parents made. “Old toys, family photographs, even home videos. So much so that my parents still often recall the time I vomited up Creme Eggs all over the sitting room carpet while watching their wedding video for the first time. I just didn’t like looking at all the changed faces smiling back at me from the television screen, all the faces that are now missing from our family photos.” The realization of how things have changed between the time her parents had gotten to now was a trigger for her fear of change which was so intense it caused her to become physically ill. She goes on later to describe and explain her fear in more detail by saying “I know nostalgia is supposed to be a happy thing, and don’t get me wrong I have the best memories of my childhood but for me it’s just always a reminder that time is marching on and there is nothing we can do to stop it.” and further emphasizes how fear and nostalgia tie together by detailing how emotional she felt after receiving a twenty one minute montage video of her life for her twenty-first birthday. She spent the whole day watching it in tears saying, “I spent the entire day watching it in tears. It was the nicest present I think anyone has ever given me but it just made me realize how much we’ve all changed and how things will never go back to the way they were when we were growing up.” People experiencing overwhelming negative nostalgia often have a fear of change as seen from Alice and her personal experiences. Due to this fear of change and overwhelming nostalgia people experience they can see what changed around them as bad. Any change due to fear can at times make people bitter. I personally had experienced that as previously mentioned that made me bitter. I was terrified at the realization that I’d never get back the experiences I once had and how while I was hung up on everything things would continue to terrifyingly change and that there was nothing I could do about it. It turned me bitter as it felt like I couldn’t handle that realization. I hated everything that was different from when I was younger while simultaneously being afraid of it. I refused to look at anything that wasn’t a childhood comfort while also crying when I saw anything that reminded me of my childhood as it reminded me of how different everything was. People find comfort in what feels familiar and the change can cause them to feel bitter inside, which leads onto my next point.
People miss the way they felt in the past. People often don’t remember just what happened in the past but also the emotions tied with it. They can feel the joy, fury, sorrow and other complex emotions they felt with it. A medical article called, “Why Do I Miss My Childhood? Understanding Childhood Nostalgia Depression” goes into detail on how life isn’t as magically as childhood as we get older. Life seemed so much more simple in childhood. The article goes into detail on how adult life is much more complicated, “becoming an adult can be challenging. It can often be confusing and overwhelming, especially when relationships, job obligations, and even fear of death come into play. Adult relationships are complex and messy, whether friendship, family ties, work, or romantic relationships.” It then goes into detail to explain the community experienced as a child that changes as they grow and how they can miss it, “Childhood is a time when you can always fall back on your community, but we fail to comprehend this as adults. The failures hit harder, success is different for everyone, and there are always complications. It’s almost as if life’s components are strewn about, and we are trying to put them back together. It is only fair to miss childhood’s sense of belonging and simplicity.” Even a famous Irish YouTuber, Jacksepticeye even talked about how he felt as if people were projecting their feelings of the way they missed onto him about how he changed and not their life. Jacksepticeye responded to this in an interview with Anthony Padilla by saying, “You miss how you felt back when you were watching those videos at that time, cause you were probably in school. And you probably just came home from school and just watched videos all day and had a great time. But now you’re grown up and now you have responsibilities and now you’re in college and have a job and you are probably stressed out a lot, but you think it’s the change in the channel.” In childhood as all sources mentioned, everything felt so much simpler back then. There weren’t as many crushing standards and responsibilities set in childhood compared to adulthood. There was also a community in childhood where someone could feel or be supported compared to growing up. Because of the crushing responsibilities, pressure and longing to feel as happy as they felt back then people experiencing overwhelming nostalgia can cause people's perspective to shift and think everything around them isn’t as good as it used to be.
Now, I recognize how I have talked about things changing quite a lot and how things aren’t necessarily bad just because things changed and how the perspective affects how some people may feel about certain things. While researching this topic, I browsed the internet and saw a lot of people debating the points made about nostalgia by discussing how producers of brands, films, ect have changed their demographic audience. It’s not just perspective, which is actually true. Producers of the more modern present time have purposely shifted around what they’re creating for younger audiences and generations but a lot of older audiences and generations perspectives from nostalgia do still connect and tie with this. A prime example of this is the direction films seem to be going with as of late. There’s much more diversity and story compared to films targeted to older audiences, it is a noticeable shift and change. A lot of criticism seems to go to children's films, most noticeably Pixar’s “Turning Red” film that tells the story of a thirteen year old Chinese Canadian girl named Mei that takes place in the early 2000s. The film is lighthearted and goofy with Mei being able to turn into a Red Panda and at times a bit embarrassing due to how teenagehood can be but also talks about more serious topics such as intergenerational trauma. To some, this film may sound fun and enjoyable and to others not so much and that’s completely fine. What I’ve noticed though is how people who weren’t exactly the target audience were criticizing it which was mostly older people specifically, white men who did not grow up in the early 2000s. There have been multiple reviews talking about how the film isn’t relatable, one of the more well known ones being a review that is now redacted and archived from CinemaBlend written by Sean O’Connell talking about his opinion on the film. Luckily two articles called “Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground” written by Aja Romano and “Reminder: Movies Don’t Need to Have White Men in Them to Be “Relatable”” written by Bonnie Stiernberg were able to get quotes of the review and discuss how the new film wasn’t necessarily bad just because he didn’t find it relatable and enjoy it. According to the article written by both Bonnie Stiernberg and Aja Romano, O’connel was stated saying “Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences. Turning Red is not. The target audience for this one feels very specific and very narrow. If you are in it, this might work very well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting.” There were also multiple other statements but this one in particular gives the shortest and clearest mindset that O’connel and likely other people feel with nostalgia summed up. “I am not in it.” A lot of films have a target audience and while yes, Turning Red could be considered one of them as it seems to resonate with POC, puberty and generational trauma, just because someone doesn’t personally relate to it doesn’t make it bad. And of course a film with those topics may non always resonate with an older audience who doesn’t fit into the criteria mentioned. It can be relatable for adults or older audiences but it shouldn’t be expected that every film targeted towards younger generations should be relatable to adults. It wasn’t even necessarily targeted towards them, not that again older audiences can’t enjoy films for younger audiences (I could personally in certain criterias fit into someone older enjoying films for younger audiences depending on how it’s sorted). People seem to let what they grew up with guide how they feel about other films, music, brands, ect as things felt and were different back then. The change itself is not necessarily bad though, people as mentioned in my analysis have a fear of change and just miss the way they felt as a child, life has become more jaded and less magical. It’s sad but all child films shouldn’t be expected to make someone feel as if they’re a child again.
In conclusion, as someone gets older their perspective on the world can change and become jaded and or bitter. People experiencing negative nostalgia are afraid of how the world and their life has changed around them and how they aren’t able to go back to the simpler days of childhood. How they can’t go back to how they once felt. And how they keep having to watch everything around them change when they just want the experiences they once had again in the past, not the stressful life they’re being forced through. The overwhelming negative nostalgia can cause them to become bitter about the world and change along with it but it isn’t the world itself they’re upset about, it’s just how much things have changed and how they don’t feel as joyful as they once were.