The long-lasting life of the nostalgia film: The uses of Fredric Jameson’s category in film studies

Abstract

The article analyses the way in which Fredric Jameson’s notion of “nostalgia film” was developed in contemporary film studies. In the text I argue that although Jameson’s critique of post-modernism and its nostalgic orientation is provocative and inspiring, his category of “nostalgia film” turns out to be of little use for film studies, when it’s disconnected from the whole Jameson’s project of critique of late capitalism ideology. The definition of nostalgia film, which Jameson pro-posed and theoreticians of film developed after him, is too wide and sketchy, therefore its applicabil-ity remains problematic. This turns out to be evident in the uses of “nostalgia film” in film studies over the last thirty years. In my article I demonstrate some limitations not only in Jameson’s own movie examples, but also in film studies reflection on “nostalgia film”. Drawing mainly on fem-inistsʼ critiques of Jameson’s work, I argue that they suffer a lack of strict criteria, by which film theorists could convincingly differentiate “nostalgia film” as a separate film genre. That’s why in my opinion future research on cinematic nostalgia should re-double its efforts to re-think Jameson’s term or try to find a more promising conceptualisation, going beyond “nostalgia film”.