Can there be a Progressive Nostalgia? Layering Time in Pride’s Retro-Heritage

Bibliographic Data

ID18998352
AuthorsLouis Bayman (0000-0002-4780-2057, University of Southampton, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume5
Issue1
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOpen Library of Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2056-6700 • E-ISSN: 2056-6700
PublisherOpen Library of Humanities (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.16995/olh.324
OpenAlexW2921390646
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited5

Pride is notable for its dynamic treatment of time, which is key both to its appeal as a film and to its presentation of the processes of political change. By combining nostalgia, retro, and heritage, Pride manifests an artistic practice I refer to as temporal layering, which draws attention to how any single moment implies potential relationships with numerous interacting others. I use this notion to understand both the role that the 1984–5 miners’ strike assumes in cultural revisions of the 1980s, and the kind of cinematic past that Pride presents. This past can be understood as a development in the heritage genre appropriate to reimagining modern British history, especially that of the 1980s, that could be called retro-heritage . By paying attention to the varied temporal layers thus present in Pride , a new perspective is offered on how nostalgia’s presumed conservatism sits alongside the ‘left-wing melancholy’ (Traverso, 2017) that has dominated in the era of defeats since the 1980s. My ultimate aim is to ask what potential nostalgia may have when envisaging a different future. 1

Aesthetics · Appeal · Archaeology · Art · Conservatism · Cultural heritage · Political science · Politics · Pride · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior

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