In the nostalgia mode, the history of aesthetic styles displaces real history.

Evidence

The insensible colonization of the present by the nostalgia mode can be observed in Lawrence Kasdan elegant film Body Heat, a distant “affluent society” remake of James M. Cain Double Indemnity, set in a contemporary Florida small town a few hours’ drive from Miami. The word remake is, however, anachronistic to the degree to which our awareness of the preexistence of other versions (previous films of the novel as well as the novel itself) is now a constitutive and essential part of the film’s structure: we are now, in other words, in “intertextuality” as a deliberate, built-in feature of the aesthetic effect and as the operator of a new connotation of “pastness” and pseudohistorical depth, in which the history of aesthetic styles displaces “real” history. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 84

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition: in nostalgia mode, allusion to prior aesthetic styles replaces actual historical reference; the remake is recast as ‘intertextuality’ built into the aesthetic effect.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core task of distinguishing parody vs pastiche — this is pastiche’s mechanism: intertextuality as deliberate effect rather than satire. — connects to: Postmodern nostalgia mode is an inability to imagine beyond the past. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 515; Post-2008 culture remains dominated by pre-crash aesthetic forms — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1595; Revival versions can displace the original in cultural memory — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 679