Nostalgia is a very peculiar animal. It’s apparently OK to be nostalgic about the very recent past, say the last twenty-five years, but even then there are things and people who are considered ‘off limits’. It goes without saying however, that it’s definitely ‘far-right’ to hanker after the more distant past, even if this is still comparatively recent (at least recent to those of us of more mature years).
Imagine a ninety-year-old former coal miner living out his last remaining days in a Tyneside care home; one day he decides he’d like to have a final fling for the remainder of his probably short life; perhaps a mail order bride? live in a five-star hotel? Have a car and chauffeur at his disposal? Private health care? A new wardrobe of natty made-to-measure clothes etc? So, wielding his zimmer frame he slowly toddles back to the pit-head in the hope that it’s still active and that management will give him his old job back. Ridiculous, I hear TNC readers say (and not only the bit about there being a coal mining industry anymore).
However, isn’t this analogy rather similar to showbusiness? It seems to be the season of the comeback or the reboot – even internationally, so we can’t really even blame Labour for this one.
Can the public, at least those desperate for bread and circuses and crucially also prepared to pay through the nose for them, not see that prequels and sequels to much loved films are inevitably doomed to be either third rate or, frequently and routinely, far worse than the first fresh outing, and furthermore only demonstrate the lack of originality among script writers and cinema film commissioning companies? The latest example seems to be a sequel to the 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, surely a faulty proposition if ever there was one, given that ghosts unlike Hollywood actors and actresses (N.b. do actresses even still exist), surely don’t age?
Next up, UK TV spin-off land and its followers are wetting themselves with excitement and anticipation at the mere suggestion (let’s pray it doesn’t get off the drawing board) of a third Inbetweeners film. With the, even then pretending to be teenagers, stars now all in their forties and the humour of both the three TV series and first and second films absolutely not remotely politically correct, and so naturally not to be repeated for the trigger warning sensibilities of today’s audiences, why even bother?
The big news though (and topic of multiple inane newspaper articles) is the reunion of Oasis, as hotly anticipated and awe inspiring as the Second Coming for those of a Christian bent – apparently. For some reason though I failed first time round to believe that these peculiar looking nasal Mancunians were the new Beatles, I must be in a small minority however, given the current unleashed MSM hysteria.
What links our fictional aged coal miner, Beetlejuice, The Inbetweeners and Oasis (and sadly many, many more too numerous to mention) is surely dosh (now run out of and desperate to recoup and/or a new opportunity to fleece the ‘modern nostalgia’ gullible?). These showbusiness stars are a bit like the little weather predicting figures on old cuckoo clocks, except these stars only seem to feel it necessary to come out and make an ill-judged attempt to shine again when they, or their agents, smell the heady aroma of mountains of cash.
Unlike current stars of whose mega stardom and oeuvre (Taylor Swift?) that I and probably many others are completely unaware of (and not inclined to make any effort to find out), at least with these dug up undead corpses we’re broadly aware of what necrophilic joys to expect. Sadly, though we’re old and wise enough to suspect that what’s about to be delivered will either be a pale and wrinkly reflection of earlier days, or more likely just an embarrassing fiasco.
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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Very true and some ‘acts’ are repeat offenders with multiple come backs (even if like the axe that executed Henry VIII’s wives it’s had two new blades and a replacement shaft since then).
I’ve signed up further Martin Rispin reunion tour
‘Further’ = ‘for the’ – damned iPhone
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