Toxic Nostalgia on Screen - (Research in Horror Studies) by Simon Bacon & Lorna Piatti-Farnell (Hardcover)

About the Book

Toxic Nostalgia on Screen examines our understanding of nostalgia and its misuses in the present cultural environment. Twenty original essays show how undead memory has become an embodiment of monstrous imagined histories and ideologies that dictate the way we live today so that tomorrow is not the future, but a never-ending return to the past.

Book Synopsis

Choice 2025 Outstanding Academic Title

Toxic nostalgia is not a new phenomenon, and instances of an undying past refusing to perish and plaguing the present, can be found throughout history. However, examined in Toxic Nostalgia on Screen, in the early years of the new millennium, it has acquired further meaning and not just applies to a dangerous longing for the past, but a way of being in the present world. Here in our modern time, undead memory is not just a remembrance of the past that is visited upon the present with negative implications, but the embodiment of monstrous imagined histories and ideologies that dictate the way we live today so that tomorrow is not the future, but a never-ending return to the past.

About the Author

Simon Bacon is an independent scholar, author, and film critic based in Poznan, Poland.