The Era of the Reboot

Mishka Ramaloo
4 minutes ago
7 min read

pile of old televisions stacked on top of each other — *Image by* *Diego Costa* *via* *Unsplash* *(the Unsplash License)*

Life in 2025 feels like a series of reboots. Our fashion is shaped by the resurrection of old trends, musicians continually recycle and appropriate the aesthetics of their predecessors, political discourse is rooted in an avowal of a desire to return to traditionalism (the MAGA crowd are a frightening example of this sentiment), and Hollywood seems more invested in churning out live-actions, remakes and sequels than anything original.

This cycle of stagnation is our response to a collective disillusionment with the present— what cultural critic Mark Fisher in his work Ghosts of My Life dubbed “the slow cancellation of future”. The shiny future we were all promised – one of flying cars which ‘Back to the Future 2’ predicted would arrive in 2015 – never did arrive. Thus, nostalgia has become the vehicle for our escapism – the means by which we may live out a fantasy of some cultural and political present that never came into being. We now find ourselves trapped in the ‘era of the reboot’; instead of looking for ways to move culture forward we can’t help but romanticise the past. Not necessarily because the past was all that great, but because, above all, we want to be relieved of the present. This is a notion that is reflected in the majority of media we consume today.

Nostalgia in the Music Industry

Whilst music is inherently derivative, music in 2025 seems more focused on appeasing our appetite for nostalgia than ever before, even if doing so comes at the expense of the quality of the music itself – what some people online have dubbed ‘nostalgia baiting’. Generally speaking, the popular music of every decade that preceded the 2020s had a distinct ‘sound’. The 60s were characterised by psychedelic, folk-inspired rock, soul and funk, whilst the 70s saw the emergence of hard-rock, punk-rock and disco. The 80s saw an explosion in the use of synthesisers and drum machines and the 90s saw the rise of grunge, R&B and hip-hop. The 00s were dominated by hip-hop infused y2k pop beats and the 10s (albeit a lot fuzzier than the decades that came before) still had a definable sound – we saw trap, Latin pop and EDM surge in popularity with artists like Billie Eilish and Travis Scott catapulting to fame.

However, pop music of the 2020s thus far arguably has no recognisable‘sound’; the music consumption habits of 2024 alone are a testament to this abrupt fragmentation of the music industry. Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter dominated pop music last year; while Sabrina adopted the vintage aesthetics of the 60s during her album cycle, Chappell pulled more from the 80s, with punchy synth-pop and new wave elements foregrounding her music, while Charli clearly channeled the sleazy rave culture of the 90s and 00s throughout the BRAT rollout. It’s clear then that we can partially attribute the commercial success of these stars to their strategic exploitation of the visual and sonic aesthetics of previous eras of music – their recognition that nostalgia sells.

So, the days of radio stations and record labels being able to dictate which records go on to shape the musical landscape of the decade are no longer, thanks to apps like TikTok which have accelerated the death of the musical monoculture. Instead, we now all live in our own niche echo chambers online, unable to define the cultural moment of the present anymore.

The Return of ‘Indie Sleaze’

In order to cope with the demise of originality, we see Gen Z’s various attempts to resuscitate specific cultural moments that were once pivotal in the past. If you open up TikTok you’ll find that Gen Z is stuck in 2016 (a filter named after the year having over 200 million posts under it) – the golden age of Coachella, Snapchat filters, and ‘casual’ Instagram posting. Another notable example of this effort to be united in some sort of significant cultural moment was last year’s ‘Indie Sleaze’ revival. The attempt of young people who never actually got to experience this messy era of anti-glamour, smudged eyeliner and ‘Skins’-esque hedonism the first-time round to bring the ‘era’ back saw a sudden influx in lo-fi, flash-heavy photography on social media, and Hedi-Slimane-wearing, Julian-Casablancas-worshipping partygoers, with musicians like The Dare (the internet’s poster-boy for 00s debauchery) supposedly spearheading the ‘movement’.

In some ways it seems ‘Indie Sleaze’ was poised to make a return, especially in light of the current political climate. Our collective yearning for a means of escapism is largely a consequence of living in a post-pandemic society wherein socialisation for young people has become more difficult than ever. In this oppressive age of dating apps, anxiety-inducing image curation, surveillance and public scrutiny, it makes sense that the community-driven, unabashedly chaotic era of ‘Indie Sleaze’ would have its moment in the sun again. However, as many have pointed out, the charm of the OG ‘Indie Sleaze’ era was rooted precisely in its authenticity as a raw and real reaction against the constraints of life under capitalism at that point in time.

Although Gen Z grapples with similar feelings of constraint living under the arguably even more aggressive capitalistic framework of the ‘internet age’, our attempts to resurrect past sub-cultures as a means of escapism have left us underwhelmed with the realisation that we will never be able to revive the past through romanticising and appropriating what has already been lost. So, to cope with the underwhelm of these short-lived, curated attempts at participating in some kind of unifying cultural practice, society moves on to the next nostalgic trend we can obsess over before we inevitably get bored again, and are doomed to repeat the cycle all over.

Nostalgia in Film and TV

It’s not just music that feels particularly uninspired nowadays. Conglomerates like Disney have been churning out live-action remakes at record numbers for the past few years, without any real regard for the quality of the final product. They rely primarily on nostalgia to carry them past the break-even point at box office. Looking at the number of ‘reboots’ from last year alone, the clear spike in unoriginal output corroborates this notion of “the slow cancellation of the future” – our inability to push culture forward due to our disillusionment with the present. The biggest film at the 2024 box office was Inside Out 2, a sequel to Disney’s original 2015 film, and other high-grossing films included Deadpool and Wolverine, Moana 2, Dune: Part 2, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Wicked, to name a few. Although there were a few original screenplays which did well at the box office (like Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers), the vast majority of films that saw considerable commercial success this past year have been either remakes, sequels to already established franchises, or projects (like Wicked) which are attached to already well-known and beloved subject matter.

So, it’s clear that Hollywood recognises our collective disillusionment with the current cultural moment, and aims to capitalise off of our desires for pre-pandemic freedom by force-feeding us material laced with lethal doses of nostalgia – i.e. ‘nostalgia baiting’. Gareth Edwards, director of the latest ‘Jurassic Park’ movie, admitted this strategy himself when he told the BBC’s Front Row that his aim was simply “to make it [the latest installment in the franchise] feel nostalgic. The goal was that it should feel like Universal Studios went into their vaults and found a reel of film, brushed the dust off and it said: Jurassic World: Rebirth.”

TV finds itself in a similar predicament. Although there has been more of an attempt here in producing new cultural forms in the 21st century, the risk-averse networks that dictate which screenplays ever see the light of day are also evidently using nostalgia as a crutch, investing more time and money into reboots than ever before, perhaps in an attempt to regain their footing after the pandemic. Examples of this phenomenon are that of iCarly, Wizards of Waverly Place, Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and the upcoming HBO ‘Harry Potter’ series that has yet to hit streaming, to name a few.

Often, viewers who had high hopes find that these reboots leave a lot to be desired, coming across more like a cash-grab than a well-thought out tribute. While nostalgia isn’t inherently a bad thing, it’s clear that the result of completely giving into our nostalgic desires has stunted culture. The 90s had Friends and Twin Peaks (hailed as iconic or ground-breaking at the time, and beloved by generations thereafter), and the 2020s have a string of lacklustre reboots that reflect our collective fatigue with the present and refusal to let go of cultural moments that have long passed their expiry date.

Nostalgia in the Future?

The cycle carries on, with nostalgia continuing to be leveraged within the media and political spheres by those in positions of power. The solution isn’t clear, but all hope is not lost for the future and the state of culture moving forward. As Mark Fisher believes, despondency is a “sign of a craving or hunger to actually belong to something and capitalism not only can’t meet that, it doesn’t want to meet it.” Therefore, it’s crucial for us to bring these underlying emotions of sadness and disillusionment (that are often inherently linked to the current political climate) to the surface instead of continuing to temporarily self-soothe by using nostalgia as a coping mechanism. And then, Fisher proposes: “it’s about converting depression into anger.”