Destructive, seductive nostalgia

We want to know: do your stories enter the past to prove themselves right or to learn something new?

Babes, it’s been ages. But whatever. We’re here now, and we’re onto something.When times are hard, we look for escape. Maybe we’ve been rewatching My So-Called Life for the nostalgia feels. Maybe we’ve also been getting a little uncomfortable that we’re now older than the parents.Oh, nostalgia. Let’s talk about fiction set in the past. We’re thinking about, say, Stranger Things. My Girl. Or The Help. Fiction set in the living past, where writers are often digging into their personal memories (or the collective memory—but whose memory is that? Who is left out?) of a bygone time. American Dreams. Ladybird. M.A.S.H. China Beach. And now: Lovecraft Country. Perry Mason. GLOW. Haunting of Bly Manor. Fresh Off the Boat. Hidden Figures. PEN15.Look, entering even the recent past can be pretty enticing. Jeff Bezos was only a thousandaire. Donald Trump was that hoohah with the cameo in the Home Alone sequel. Internet culture didn’t complicate our lives—or our plots. Maybe we just want to write romantically about a time pre-Covid, when people actually ate at buffets and passed joints to strangers and stood close to each other. But if we only want to glorify the past (and, you know, vilify the present), is it possible to be intellectually honest? Because, as so many have pointed out, the acute crises of our moment existed long before Covid did: depressed wages, lack of worker and renter protections, white supremacy, gender inequity, health care inequity, the allure of authoritarianism. And of course, the past is often markedly worse for many of us...pre-Civil Rights movement, pre-Stonewall, pre-Compton’s Cafeteria, pre-Roe, pre-Sonia Sotomayor, pre-lifesaving & life preserving medical advancements...So if we wrote a story set in 1994, would we use the same angst that kids knew then? Would we exploit the lack of technology for fun plot points? Or could we use our knowledge of the present to shed new light on what else must have been happening at Liberty High School—that was, like, beyond Angela Chase’s notice?  Maybe you just want to write a contemporary-ish story where people meet at bars and kiss drunk strangers without the threat of contracting and spreading a contagious virus. But why? What do you lose if you enter the past without a sense of the present? Nostalgia implicitly relies on a sense of loss, a yearning. And while that can strike a chord—Wonder Years ran for five seasons, after all—it’s a single chord. The writer/reader enters the space to reaffirm the joy she felt and the importance of what she’s lost. With that intention, is anything new to be found there?Let’s try this. Let’s dig into two recent/ongoing nostalgic darlings: Pose and Mad Men.In Pose, we’re looking at the true origins of some of our most popular contemporary cultural elements, like drag and shade and dance and gym bods and queens and princesses and Kardashian-style femininity. In the ballrooms of the 1980s, queer and trans communities of color saw gender as a playground and invented together. In Pose, we’re also looking at the AIDS crisis from the inside, with narratives shaped by the people who lived and died, and the lesbian nurses who were holding patients’ hands through the worst of the nights. We’re seeing ACT-UP not as an institution but as the emergent gesture from humans desperate in their collective mourning and rage to be seen and respected. We’re seeing found family become anchors for growth and struggle and survival. And we’re seeing the incredible collective of Black and brown trans sisters and mothers who took care of each other when no one else dared to see them. In short, Pose presents a roadmap for how to make it through, as a community, a time when everything is unsafe, cruel, and exploitative. A testament to those who didn’t survive the decade, but whose communities blossom still....Madonna’s “Vogue” video seems a little less iconic, a little flimsy.Mad Men picked a different decade to needle at, different ideas to upend. The Golden Age of Advertising, the Impressionistic ideas of constant cocktails and slick suits. The stories were of wretched existences: addiction, systemic racism and misogyny and anti-Semitism. Taking place in the past didn’t simplify these stories; it added dimension. The Big Events of the decade were sidelined, often pushed onto the flickering black & white television screens in the corner of a scene, while the characters’ lives marched forward, only partially affected. And, that ending... well, we are reminded that even our feel-good nostalgia is carefully crafted capitalist propaganda.We think stories like Mad Men and Pose excite the imagination because they fight against the solidified, dominant narrative. They crack it open. Prompt: Let’s start with lovely nostalgia. Write a scene about a different time—one that is usually rendered innocent and rosy. Escape for a few minutes into the romanticism of it all: write it dripping with sugar. Then look again to see what is hiding. Rewrite the scene in a way that lets the malignant undercurrents show. Poke at it until you know what else is happening.Reflection: Yeah, okay, you’ve got us. We’re going to talk again about who is missing from the story. Why? Because it’s THE question. Who shapes our understanding of Past? The people with power. Who draws the boundaries of a narrative? The people with power. A lot of really solid criticism of Mad Men has addressed its treatment of the very few Black characters, who were rarely given screen time or interiority. And some people have wondered where the trans masculine ballroom members are on Pose — part of the scene but not yet part of the story. Finding these underground power lines, the stories that have been pushed to the corners by the people with power gets to be your job! When you create, you have power: Whose stories will you lift up? Whose lives, histories, interiorities will you find? How can these perspectives twist your nostalgic stories, reframe your ideas of the past, and revolutionize your understanding of this very moment you're living?Recommended Viewing/Reading: We started to make you a list, but it’s almost too easy to do these days. (Anyway, you can look at the gazillion shows we just mentioned.) So instead of pointing you toward nostalgic fiction, we encourage you to seek out some corrective history sources that can inform your fiction. Documentaries (Disclosure; Before Stonewall; The Celluloid Closet; Happy Birthday, Marsha!; 13th), podcasts (You’re Wrong About; Criminal), books (Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman; Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi; White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad; Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman...). Dig around in history, including your own community’s history. At a time when truth is being treated as negotiable, we must understand our past.

And about that election...

Hey, the world sucks, we get it. If you're looking for a reason to vote—or information on the candidates or volunteering—Allie can help. For guidance on community organizations to donate to, Erin Kate is a good resource. So get in touch. And in the case that you're concerned about your government ID not matching your gender presentation, our friends at GLAD Law have some great advice. You have the right to vote!

Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop is a joint project from writers Allison Wyss and Erin Kate Ryan. MSW celebrates the tiny weirdo inside you, and elevates your love of television and film into a literary endeavor.

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