The plethora of TV shows trying to convince viewers (and, occasionally, presenters) that Space Hoppers, Huggy Bear car-seats and Duran Duran ruled the world is getting out of hand, writes Brian Boyd
We're only a few weeks away from "I Love 2001", wherein "TV personalities" will warmly recall those hazy, halcyon days of the Lord Of The Rings film and The Strokes's début album. It's a condition called "extreme short-term nostalgia" and it's been provoked by a cabal of unimaginative BBC2 producers: assemble a bunch of journeymen comics and some pretty blonde girls to pretend they remember Spangles, Chopper Bikes and "The Tomorrow People". The nostalgia-monger par excellence on these shows, Stuart Maconie, during his show at the Edinburgh Festival this year (all about the good ol' days of being a rock journalist - huh) was uncharacteristically stumped when a heckler shouted out: "Stuart, if you got Alzheimer's, would your career be over?"
Ignoring the rather significant fact that these pop-culture remembrance-fests blithely ignore anything of real significance - Duran Duran videos are talked about, the miners' strike isn't - there's also a sinister false-memory syndrome here. Were Space Hoppers really that ubiquitous during the 1970s? I think not.
The fashion, music, film, TV and trends of time's foreign country are now as familiar and urgent as today's headlines. The resident dial-a-mouths work as Big Brothers (as in Orwell, not Ryanair stewards) as they filter out any meaning from their contrived set pieces about Rubik's cube or Starsky's (or was it Hutch's? - you can see how much I care) cardigan. And how many of those memories have been implanted? I happen to know one of the people who appears on these programmes, and as I watched him talk about how he bought all T Rex's records the day they came out, I realised that he was five when Marc Bolan died.
There was a time when the only people who banged on about the good old days were those who were either in the GPO or in the trenches at the Somme, and as the situation stands now, at least they had something interesting to remember, not a dreadfully uninteresting tale about Adam Ant. Cultural historians, bless 'em, believe that the rash of memory-board programming makes the past seem bland and homogeneous at the expense of individual recollections. And just why does everything from the era being "anecdoted" about seem so good and funny in retrospect, when it certainly wasn't at the time - New Romantics, Noel Edmonds . . . ?
Nostalgia is the future. Flick through any publishing catalogue for next year and gasp at all the titles due out all about some dimwit character tracking down their old school mates for "closure" of some form or another. Novels are being set in 1987, 1978, 1991 - even if the author wasn't alive in the given year, they can do the research by looking at an "I Love 19**" tape.
In film, too, we've already had East is East, Billy Elliot and Whatever Happened To Harold Smith?, with plenty more planned to satisfy the time-warped demand. Music succumbed years ago, and the really bizarre thing here is that an act like Paul Young (who hasn't had a hit in a good 15 years) is now able to play Wembley Arena, somewhere he wouldn't have even nearly filled when he was at his Wherever I Lay My Hat peak. But then this is a musical world where a tribute band can draw bigger crowds than the actual band they're modelled on. Just like the TV shows, people prefer the cosy approximation to the real thing itself.
In his book, Rock 'Til You Drop: the Decline From Rebellion to Nostalgia, author John Strausbaugh dissects music's continuous re-packaging. He spells out why one-time "counter-cultural" music magazines now put pop artists on their cover to sell magazines while at the same time milking faded memories of the 1960s and 1970s. And if you ever needed a reason as to why you should never go to a "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" - there's plenty here.
The Internet, as always, was quick on the nostalgia case (about two years after Channel 4 and BBC2). One of the most visited sites this year in Britain and Ireland is www.friendsreunited.co.uk. Visit the page, register your details, click on the school you went to, leave a message and reconnect with all your old schoolfriends. With three million registered users, and worth an estimated £20 million, Friends Reunited is a Net phenomenon. With no advertising or promotional activity, it's spread through word of mouth and the power of nostalgia. The site has sparked renewed controversy over Net libel laws, with some teachers complaining of malicious messages being posted about them.
A television version of the website, which will feature classmates meeting for the first time in years, is due to hit the screens in a few months. Bought up by Ginger Television, it will be shown in both the US and Britain. The head of Ginger TV, Rob Clark, says "our format taps into today's phenomenal interest in nostalgia and school reunions". Blind Date for saddos, say the cynics.
Schooldays are now the new rock 'n' roll. One of the biggest events taking place in Dublin this New Year's Eve was the "School Disco" night. Part of a franchise which is sweeping through every town and city in Britain, "School Disco" does just what it says on the ticket: you arrive dressed in school uniform (or approximation of same) and they play "classic" 1970s and 1980s pop while actively encouraging furtive snogging and smoking in the toilets (sounds just like where I work).
All fabulous fun, I'm sure, and for those people who'd prefer to keep quite a bit of distance between the present and their school-days, there'll still be a chance to share in the "School Disco" experience when the TV reminiscences kick in, probably sometime in early February. No longer wasted on the young, youth is out there, waiting for you to remember it.