Back when I was in high school I wrote a research paper on subliminal messaging. It was a topic that fascinated me, mainly because I believed that massive corporations and governments were constantly brainwashing us with wave after wave of subliminal messages, and that that was the only reason people bought Coke and popcorn at the movies, so I actually did a ton of research on it. I’ve long forgotten the name of the marketing book I was drawing from or who wrote it, but I do recall a passage about how modern-day ad men aren’t selling oranges, they’re selling the smell of citrus from the summer you ate oranges every day at your grandparents’ house; they’re not selling anti-aging cream, they’re selling a reminder of how things used to be. Nostalgia: it’s the best kind of subliminal messaging there is. No one has taken that fact to heart harder in recent years than Hollywood.
The place where dreams are made has turned into the place where old dreams are remade. This year alone we’ve already seen remakes of Edge of Darkness, The Wolfman, The Crazies, Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Death at a Funeral, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is an average pace of a little over one remake per month. That rate is about to get a statistical bump this Friday with the release of both The Karate Kid and The A-Team, but I’m not here to lament a lack of originality in Hollywood; I’m here to take a closer look at why nostalgia is such a powerful force. It doesn’t apply to everything (for example, I doubt many are nostalgic for the original BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness), but when it comes to historical pop culture staples like Elm Street, Karate Kid and The A-Team, nostalgia renders most people powerless against the homesick calls of the film.
The obvious reason these films do so well, which is precisely why there are so many of them, is because of brand recognition. But title awareness can only account for so much. People aren’t just turning up opening weekend out of muscle memory and then moving on; they’re actually enjoying these films. They’re making them blockbusters and #1 DVD sellers. Why? It’s science, of course.
Nostalgia prompts your brain to do three main things:
- Use less brain power.
- Associate the experience solely with positive memories.
- Misremember how much you actually liked something.
The “less brain power” aspect of nostalgia is an easy concept to understand. You spend less time analyzing what has evoked your nostalgia simply because you’re already intimately familiar with the material. And as we all know, the Hollywood movie mantra has long been one of “the less thought is involved, the better the film is.” However, studios in the remake business do have to bank on your thoughts in one very crucial way: nostalgic memories are almost always positive. Studies have shown that rarely does someone feel nostalgic for something with which they have a negative association. This means that not only are nostalgic films like A Nightmare on Elm Street expecting you to think less about the new film, they’re expecting you to direct that already lowered level of thought toward positive memories only.
Now, as all of us know, just because a remake inspires you to be nostalgic for the original film does not mean that you have to like the remake. Strong nostalgia is often the catalyst for backlash as cognizant people are actively offended at blatant attempts to exploit fond memories. But that’s actually not too big of a problem for a studio because of the third principle of nostalgia: thinking you liked something more than you did. You might show up for The A-Team and suddenly remember that you didn’t actually like the original series, you just liked smashing together action figures with your brother while it was on TV in the background. At that point it’s too late, though. It doesn’t matter, you’ve already shown up. You fell for the smell of the oranges.
