History by the Decades: America’s Pop Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a universal experience that, like taking a bath, has acquired Early American overtones. We are awash in decade-itis.

The time chunk has replaced the time frame. We stereotype people according to the key decade of their lives, known as where they are “coming from.” The sexually up-tight are called “very ‘50s,” the politically outre are “coming from the ‘60s,” narcissists and swingers are “very ‘70s” and a whole genre of women’s novels is currently being blurbed “A Love Story for the ‘80s.” They are about women born in the ‘40s, who grew up in the ‘50s, lost their virginity in the ‘60s, got sexually disillusioned in the ‘70s and found true commitment in the ‘80s.

What is known in England as the Late Victorian Age is known in America as the Gay ‘90s. If we can’t give a decade a name, we ignore it. The Edwardian Age of 1901-1910 is seldom mentioned here because no one can wax nostalgic about naughts; we also leave 1910-1919 alone because “teen” has even eerier American overtones than taking a bath.

Our decade-itis began in earnest with the Roaring ‘20s. Despite the long grim Depression that began in 1929, a few social historians and fashion writers have called the following decade the Flirty ‘30s, probably because it encompassed one of those “returns to femininity” that crops up from time to time in our sexually confused land. My own memories of the ‘30s consist chiefly of a rash of Mae West, Alice Faye and Jack Oakie movies about the Gay ‘90s.

World War II spoiled the baptism of the ‘40s but Jeanne Crain did her bit with movies like “Cheaper By the Dozen” and “Margie” about the Roaring ‘20s.

In the ‘50s, we were so busy naming babies that we forgot to name the decade, but pundits kept the pot bubbling in worried articles and editorials that compared the affluent ‘50s with the affluent ‘20s and raised a grim question: Would the ‘60s be another ‘30s?

The economy did not collapse but everything else did. The ‘60s were so upsetting that any past decade was welcome, so Mary McCarthy gave us “The Group” and Sidney Lumet gave us “The Group” and we all waxed nostalgic about the ‘30s.

In 1970 we really got our nostalgia act together. Henceforth we would yearn for the past according to a strict 20-year pattern resembling a statute of limitations. “Happy Days” hit the tube and we obsessed over the ‘50s until we got to the ‘80s, whereupon we watched “Call To Glory,” whose whole point was a slavish, compulsive obeisance to the ‘60s.

Our practice of zeroing in on the past so that we can hurry up and reflect on it makes me feel as if I were trapped in some sort of batty time capsule, surrounded by ancient Romans who keep saying, “Boy, that decline and fall was really something, wasn’t it?” True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories--a tremulous love affair here, a perfect Christmas there, the smell of October in a forgotten year. But in America, nostalgia is an even-steven decade pounce that is about as ephemeral as bottled deja vu .

Fiddling with the past is a sign of deep national stress--for example, the Brumaire and Thermidor nonsense that grew out of the French Revolution when the Jacobins renamed the months. Confident people, on the other hand, are relaxed about the past. Consider that intriguing dodge favored by Victorian novelists:

“In the spring of 18--, Lord Devon called on the vicar.”

Or the Sir Walter Scott sentence:

“When the reign of the Plantagenet Lion still shimmered in the noonday sun . . . .”

Richard the Lionheart reigned from 1189-1199, a nice neat decade, but neither Scott nor his readers felt obligated to arrange themselves for the convenience of people who make documentaries and miniseries. They could afford to be vague about dates because they enjoyed a healthy sense of participation in the national continuity celebrated by such novels.

By contrast, Americans fall victim to the disease of decade loyalty. A foremost casualty was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was compelled to live out the Flaming Youth he coined for the ‘20s until it killed him at the age of 44. Another casualty was that stormy petrel of radicalism known as “the little old lady in tennis shoes,” who never lived beyond the ‘60s. Last but not least are today’s Yuppies, whose materialism would go unnoticed had they not been hippies first; their penchant for going to extremes was learned in the ‘60s, the decade they cannot shake off.

And what sort of decade-itis will the ‘90s bring? I predict that we will look back longingly to the ‘70s when we made reincarnation, that very symbol of eternalness, the latest thing.

DR, RICHARD MILHOLLAND / for The Times