Mar 24, 2024
I was 9 when Happy Days, a wildly popular ‘50s nostalgia sitcom, came out on the coattails of the hit movie American Graffiti. I rewatched that movie recently and it has aged poorly. It’s always interesting seeing what nostalgic media gets wrong, like Freaks and Geeks (‘70s nostalgia made in the ‘90s) where the kids dress “‘90s grunge” for the most part. You’ve done a good job of highlighting the selective memory of nostalgia and its overwhelmingly white heteronormativity.