REBOOTING THE PAST: NOSTALGIA IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

Abstract

Drawing from Svetlana Boym’s distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia, as well as frameworks by Pickering and Keightley, Wilson, Grainge, Bonnett, and Davis, this thesis explores how nostalgia is mobilized both aesthetically and ideologically in contemporary media. Through the examples of Disney’s live-action remakes, the HBO Max revival And Just Like That…, and actor-hosted recap podcasts, the thesis reveals how legacy content is reactivated to manage emotional investment, mitigate market risk, and reinforce platform loyalty. It further interrogates how algorithmic culture, transmedia storytelling, and affective labor turn memory into a monetizable infrastructure under platform capitalism. While reboots often rely on restorative strategies that reinforce dominant ideologies, this study also identifies spaces of resistance, where memory is reimagined through subversive, decolonial, or generationally ironic practices. By analyzing nostalgia as both a cultural affect and a neoliberal tool, the thesis argues that memory has become a central axis through which emotion, labor, and capital converge in the age of the reboot.

Keywords: nostalgia, neoliberalism, reboot culture

Year Manuscript Completed

Summer 2025

Senior Project Advisor

Tricia Jordan, Ph.D

Degree Awarded

Bachelor of Integrated Studies Degree

Field of Study

Arts & Humanities

Document Type

Thesis

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