The Future is Cancelled

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash, Unsplash License

Yesterday, I was made painfully aware that the music I listen to is ‘old’. Not old enough to be cool – just awkwardly outdated. It got me thinking, what old things are now new and cool again? Kate Moss is back, skinny is back, Hedi is back… but Polo G, Supreme hoodies and BBLs are just old.

There is comfort in curation. Nostalgia isn’t just a mood, it’s an aesthetic technology. It works by editing the past, curating it until it feels desirable enough to bring back. We strip away the mess, the politics, the boredom, and keep what looks the best on Instagram.Kate Moss already lived the chaos; we just screenshot the highlights. In nostalgia, everything becomes desirable because it’s already done. The unknown gets replaced with the beautifully predictable.

A Continuous Present

Truthfully, perhaps everything has become a recession indicator, but nostalgia is perhaps the most symbolic. As the world tilts into economic freefall, social exhaustion and climate crisis, we start to reach backwards. Not because the past was better, but because the future feels like it’s been cancelled. Nostalgia only seems to be appealing when the present is not. Like always, we seek to fill the inauspicious void with something. Escapism comes in many forms: whether it be hedonistic, beguiling, now even nostalgic. The irony is that the more we rely on nostalgia to soothe the instability of now, the more that instability deepens.

In 1992, Jean Baudrillard described postmodern culture as a “dance of the fossils” in which linear history is ousted for continuous reality. Whilst history, as we understand it, is set in a specific chronological order, the chaos of nostalgic revival upheaves this order, and what was once linear now becomes cyclical. A culture looping endlessly through its own archive, constantly reviving, remixing and reframing itself. This dance between the present and the past generates a time lag: caught between the urgency of the present and the allure of the past. Every trend revival, every reissue, or Disney reboot– it is all  proof that time isn’t progressing, it is simply circling back.  

The art of homage and reference is critical to creation, but this is its main paradox We like to think of creation as invention; making something from nothing. However, nothing can be made from nothing, everything made is simply the transformation of some other pre-existing thing. The issue with our nostalgic worldview is that we have stopped transforming. We  are just imitating.

What Does Creativity Actually Mean?

The idea of ‘creativity’ in contemporary culture seems to have no distinctive meaning, points to nothing yet refers to all circumstances. The notion is often assumed to be a sort of inborn quality, you either have it or you don’t. There are creative people and then there are not. However, the idea of creativity as a muscle that can be exercised has been gaining traction in popular culture. This new definition leads everyone to believe that not only can they be creative, but they can now be a creative. 

There seems to be a stark difference between these terms, further than a verb and a noun. The latter is that of a lucrative nature... The ‘creative’ is now a job, a personal brand and is rooted in its monetized performance. So  if now there are so many more creatives and being ‘creative’ is a sustainable and lucrative way of making a living, why is the death of innovation approaching?

The advancements of technology, AI in particular, plays a huge role in this, but our biggest threat may be ourselves– or rather, our past selves. In his essay “Ghosts of My Life”, Mark Fisher essentially argues that the future is slowly being ‘cancelled’ as music, film, fashion, everything, innovates at a much slower pace. This occurs due to many reasons, but a major one is the general burnout that has developed from a technological overstimulation. Reference becomes replication and homage becomes habit. When every artist is referencing another reference, originality loses its meaning – and yet the demand for novelty remains.

We are living at a point in time in which we are paying homage to the homages. This is not inherently negative: innovation is often built on derivatives. However, the issue lies in the lack of change we are really making. Our references are lazy.  We see it everywhere, every day: Kim Kardashian BBLifies Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the met, Adrian Brody’s soulless Warhol-esque paintings, even Jay-Z biting off every MC he has ever been around.

Appropriation once carried intention, an artist speaking to another across the passage of time. Now, the ‘pastiche’ or ‘homage’ to a particular style, artist, sound or design is beginning to get lost in the feed. The expansiveness of the internet provides for infinite inspiration, but it also means that things can be so easily detached from their original sources. The internet makes everything available, but it also makes everything anonymous. The internet is a space in which simultaneously is built to create and consume.  

The Death of Subculture

Consequently, we slowly are experiencing the death of subcultures as we move towards an overly dominant monoculture. Subculture used to grow out of scarcity and necessity: punks, ravers and goths built words in the cracks of the mainstream. The loss of isolation caused by the internet is a huge reason for this cultural change. Isolated subcultures, that once would have to actively seek members, are now beginning to collapse because of the accessibility of the internet. Niche has become instantly accessible. The idea of the ‘scene’ is dead, or dying– and we miss it. Because we miss it, we are trying our best to re-curate whatever distorted ideas we have of it. 

This is where selective memory comes into play. Nostalgia romanticises its object, but the core idea of the ‘scene’ is its humanness. It is a living organism that needs to grow, be nourished, and be protected. Nostalgia will never be able to reproduce the complexities of any particular moment in time. Thus, the past is only reimagined, and it’s a feeble one at that.

An example of this is the slow resurgence of rock: a genre that dominated mainstream music from the 1960’s all the way to the 2000’s. Only in the last 15-20 years began the rule of the top charts by pop, hip-hop and EDM. But something is beginning to shift.Rock is slowly integrating itself into mainstream pop and hip hop. We have seen it through recent collabs with Young Thug and Travis Barker and even the come up of Mk.gee.

Rock is far from dead. Yet, it is now seen as a vintage genre which is where the novelty of the nostalgic can be found. Currently Gen Z is gravitating towards older rock bands like Arctic Monkeys, Nirvana and Radiohead. 

Fashion may also be an indicator of this nostalgia, as styles generally associated with the rock aesthetic begin to recycle into the current trends,like the ‘rock star girlfriend’ and even ‘hedi boys’. This is mirrored in visual media as well, with films and tv series such as: Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Daisy Jones and the Six. These revivals reveal how nostalgia has become the engine of contemporary culture, proof that our obsession with the past has quietly replaced our capacity to imagine the future. 

Why Do We Return to Nostalgia?

We return to nostalgia because it promises us safety. Its newness is already understood. The danger lies in how much we allow the past to comfort us, as we risk losing the ability to imagine what’s next. The future has become a mood board made from the past’s snippets.  

---

Edited by Hania Ahmed, Creative Editor