On Killing Nostalgia

So this question has been rolling around in the back of my head lately (and was prompted by your comment yutzyjbear* -I see you): Why do Americans believe our lives would be better if we had lived in the 1950s?  Why am I nostalgic for a time I didn't even experience?  I remember having that feeling when I was a kid and watched Happy Days.  I wanted to be them, I wanted their lives.  I, and any other person my age with parents who grew up in the 50s, have heard how when they were kids they could get lunch, a soda, a movie ticket and popcorn for $1.25.  Those were the days, and it actually sounds a whole lot like an episode of Happy Days.  Well I'll tell you, we now live in a place where we can get lunch, a six pack, and buy a movie to take home and watch on the couch (and then keep forever) for about $5.  It's a pretty similar situation. And when you start to look around, you realize that there are many striking similarities beyond the cost of things.  Things like men are almost always well dressed, and women are expected to cook and be subservient to men.  We are living in the glorious 1950s right now, and it's not really all that glorious.  We like it, yes, but it's not Happy Days.  We work our asses off.

*That must be a real bitch to spell to people over the phone.

I spoke with my Dad last night and he was talking about how Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney keep calling the house to get them to vote in their upcoming primary.  It seems to me that American politics (which I swore I would not discuss in this particular forum, but here we go) spends a lot of time looking backward to the "Golden Era."  The age of prosperity, the time when everyone was happy with a home and a white picket fence and an American Dream with 2.2 kids and a Chrysler in the garage.  They want us to believe they can manufacture the 1950s for us.  The Republican Party sells almost nothing other than the idea that we can all have a house, a car and marry Donna Reed.

Those politicians calling my Dad pontificate about protecting small businesses and watching out for the "little guy."  Problem is that the "little guy" in the US was slaughtered long ago in the name of convenience.  Our lives in Vietnam are not convenient.  Even though we know where to find most things at the store now, we still don't have an oven or a microwave or a clothes dryer.  Heating leftovers is a total pain in the ass, and we have clothes constantly drying on our bannisters.  Every place we shop is run by a "little guy" and most of the time it sucks.  The little guy doesn't have an unlimited supply of Old Spice in the warehouse up the street*.  I realize now that the thing I missed most about the US after we moved was the ease; the convenience of everything.  I think I've said that before, but what it meant is all new.

*I'm dealing with this problem right now.  The Old Spice supply at our supermarket is gone, and I only have about a quarter inch of deordorant left.  The only kinds the supermarket is currently carrying are roll on and spray, both of which I hate.  Roll on pulls out the underarm hairs and the sprays all make you smell like the old guy in the club wearing a shiny shirt. Reyna has already made the roll-on switch, but I'm a holdout.  Do I go on an afternoon-long weekend adventure to find deodorant?  I haven't decided.

You see, Americans tend to desire convenience more than we desire to do the right thing.  It's easier to walk into one store, buy everything and then face a 30 second struggle to carry 125 plastic bags from the car to the house.  When we lived in the US, we shopped at Target rather than Wal-mart because Target was good and Wal-Mart was bad.  At the end of the day they're the same thing: gigantic box stores that make it impossible for small businesses that offer a similar service to exist.  Small businesses do still exist here and there, but it's a rarity and generally a specialty shop that people go out of their way to frequent. Even then it's only a miniscule percentage of people.  I'm certain we would go to Metro, the big box store in our neighborhood, for everything if we didn't have to take our passports, have a copy made at the customer service counter, present it at the store entrance and fill out a form before we can enter the store.  We won't do it because, you guessed it, it's not convenient.  We can just walk into the other grocery stores and pay more for less.  Are we making the right choice?  Are our shopping habits preying on child labor and unfair business practices?  I have no idea, because in Vietnam, you don't talk about that sort of thing. 
Not talking about things is at the root of nostalgia. Take a look at Penn State and Happy Valley, Pennsylvania.  Happy Valley is the boutique butcher shop of that region.  It's not a big box store city like Philly or Pittsburgh.  It's a tiny enclave of what Americans perceive as authentic and "the way it's supposed to be."  People don't go to Happy Valley because they need socks or laundry detergent. They go because it represents something that we've been indoctrinated since birth to believe we want. They go because to be there makes you feel like you're a part of something rare and special.  Even the football team isn't just a sports team used as a tool to structure men's lives, build character and aid focus.  It's an iconic representation of "football team" complete with throwback uniforms and, until this year, a coach that had been at the school since the Golden Era.  The reality is that it's nothing more than guys playing football, just like every other football team in the nation. 

I've never been to Happy Valley, but I did go to college in a 1950s-ish small town in Kentucky.   You see in the 1950s, Happy Valley, my old college town and in Vietnam there are things that people just don't talk about.  To discuss the rampant homophobia in my college town is to soil the image of the town.  It would be impolite for me to tell you you're a monster to your face.  No one wins.  You think I'm a jerk, and I still think you're a monster.  In the end, what we've built suffers from our open hostility, and pretty soon we're just another redneck town.  Best to keep that stuff inside and tucked away. 

You don't hear a lot of news coming out of Vietnam about child predators or serial killers.  This doesn't mean they don't exist.  And it definitely doesn't mean they didn't exist in the "Golden Age" Americans appear to long for and politicians love to promise.  People at Penn State, my college town and many other places across the US get so caught up in protecting that image; that "we represent the thing everyone else wishes they had" feeling, they miss the darkness lurking under the surface.  Enter Jerry Sandusky. I contend that the reason Jerry Sandusky was able to commit and get away with his alleged crimes for so long because he lived in Happy Valley.  To call him out publicly would be to destroy Happy Valley's image.

Politicians in the US, and especially the Republicans, depend on this nostalgia because if we don't have it we might notice what they're doing.  They want us to believe that they have our best intentions in mind and while we're sleeping, they're busy "taking care of things."  It's a slight of hand.  I'll sell you an idea that not only doesn't exist, but never existed if you don't ask about what I'm doing while you're busy buying my idea.  The politicians are getting rich.  How did Republicans convince people that don't have any money that they want to pay for health care?  CONVENIENCE.  Threaten me with standing in line, and I'll pay extra to avoid it.  If I have to pay for it, then I must be getting something that's better or more exclusive.  If it was free I wouldn't be special.  I won't be the "little guy" anymore, deserving of extra protection and rights.  It's really kind of genius when you think about it.  Illegals in America get free health care, because it exists as Medicaid.  American citizens do not use it because to do so would mean associating with illegals.  The notion being that if someone can't be bothered with staying in the country legally, then they must be bad.  If everyone had free health care, then I would be lumped in with those "unsavory" characters who don't currently have health insurance.  We can't have that can we?

The reason I didn't feel nostalgic at the Super Bowl is because the feeling I thought I would tap into by going never actually existed.  When I watched the Super Bowl I wanted to connect with that feeling of being an American.  I believed sports could do that, and I would cite Landon Donovan's goal against Algeria in the World Cup as evidence.  I was disappointed for ten days because I didn't get that connection, that surge of energy.  The fact that only became clear to me recently is that there is no inherent connection between sports and patriotism unless I choose make that assignation.  The US does not have a monopoly on patriotism through athletic achievement, although at times it seems like we think we do.  Donovan's goal was not the embodiment of the "never say die," "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," "make lemons out of lemonade" construct.  And nothing about it was especially American.  All nations possess this sense.  It was just crazy exciting, unexpected and dramatic, and he did it while representing my country. Those things are not exclusively American.  Neither are any of those other cliches Americans, including me apparently, like to drag out to illustrate how iconically "American" an event was.

I then realized that despite what we've been sold for the last XLVI years, the Super Bowl is not a cultural event, as much as companies would like you to believe it is.  The Super Bowl can't generate a connection because it's just a game. The event itself cannot assign meaning to you.  A cultural event is something that springs forth organically and is so intriguing and magnetic that people gravitate towards it naturally.  The Sixties in America was a cultural event.  The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall were cultural events.  The concussion issue in football and other contact sports stands to become a cultural event. The Super Bowl is the opposite of that.  It's a big, fat profit engine that mega-corporations and billionaires use as a vehicle to launch new products and prey on our need to feel like we're part of something special.  You can't schedule a cultural event, and you can't force me to have a connection regardless of who sings the National Anthem.  The Super Bowl can only set the stage for me to connect.  Everything else is just smoke for profit.

So I guess the crushing depression I felt from the "non-stalgia" was actually a gift.  They say the biggest growth comes from the most difficult times.  Allowing myself to feel really bad and empty for not having the appropriate response to a particularly American event was an important step.  I foolishly thought the depression meant there was something wrong with me.  "A real American would have felt that happiness..." In actuality I was releasing myself from the bonds of my own indoctrination.