In every history, there are several sides to the story, yet those who capture the memories are flawed to forget the other sides. In the HWE #1 workshop, my group discussed how, in the context of individuals being their own personal historians, we decide what matters and what we want to remember. No one ever saves the things that feel like everyday products of life, nor do we journal and photograph the things that we would rather forget. Instead, we save the artifacts that will remind us of what we believe to be good and monumental, coloring the rose glasses that we will later dawn when we wish to remember. In the same sense, people who romanticize the past look on it through the memories they positively curated themselves, paying no mind to the imperfections of the time.

When I had a publishing internship last semester, we talked about the pros and cons of fashioning new, contemporary releases to reflect the current pandemic, yet the consensus was that while the books should highlight the positive advancements in society, no one wants to read a book designed for escapism that reflects the troubles they wish to escape from. In all forms of media, we often portray the good we wish to see in the world because we are in full control over the narrative. Therefore, both in the classics films and TV shows from decades prior to current ones that romanticize the past, they are never truthful portrayals of what society ever was or will be, as proven through movies such as Pleasantville.

In remembering and romanticizing the 1950s, as David did in Pleasantville, it is easy to get caught up in the cookie cutter image that circulates media. He invests in the Pleasantville television show because he is drawn to the idea of a stable family and a united community. However, once he is pulled into the narrative to live it himself, he notices the dysfunctionalities that were true of the era that had been written out for the sake of portraying it with rose colored glasses. Stephanie Coontz argues this same point in her article “What We Really Miss about the Fifties,” by stating how the medias portrayal of the traditional, homogeneous family unit and the harmonious, nonthreatening communities is false in many ways.

My mother always tells me that history repeats itself in one way or another, which is why it is imperative to be aware of the past and observant of the future. In watching Pleasantville and reading Coontz’s article, I began to think about how truly complicated it is to know and understand history from all perspectives, preferably unbiased ones at that. This is not a new thought, but I think this class has shown a brighter light onto how nostalgia, in particular, can threaten our understanding of history, starting with the simplest things such as the multi-family households that Coontz discussed were common in the 50s, yet rarely portrayed in modern media. Especially to those whose main source of knowledge is pop culture, the ways in which nostalgia can reconstruct biased memories of history introduce the risk of an individual only seeing one, heavily biased perspective.

We all do it, but at what point does it become dangerous?