Toxic Nostalgia in Contemporary Horror

Abstract

The horror genre is flexible enough that it can be used in the service of a wide range of ideologies. However, one of the most enduring strands of horror is a conservative strand which seeks to preserve the status quo. Whether it is a xenophobic movie from the 1930s, a pro-capitalist sci-fi/horror flick from the 1950s, or a patriarchal slasher film from the 1980s, conservative horror finds expression across many eras. As Stephen King famously remarked, “Horror is as Republican as a three-piece suit.”

One of the forms which this desire to preserve the status quo can take is toxic nostalgia. In a toxically nostalgic mindset, the individual retreats from the changes that dominate the present into an imagined past, where life was supposedly simpler and more joyful for all. While a healthy sense of nostalgia finds warmth and positive memories from the past, toxic nostalgia valorizes bygone eras and erases their negative aspects. Frequently, toxic nostalgia manifests as a desire to return to the values and customs of a prior era, without recognizing the racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of repression on which those values and customs were built.

This essay will explore horror’s use of toxic nostalgia. In some films, such as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, toxic nostalgia is critiqued and unmasked as an unhealthy approach to the present. But other recent horror narratives, such as the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things and Andy Muschietti’s It, have a more troubling relationship with nostalgia. Nostalgia is presented to viewers as a comforting reminder of days gone by, but the narratives themselves unwittingly valorize the negative elements of those periods as well, leading to a film or television show which demonstrates confusion about its own value system.