Bruno Latour argues that we have never been modern – “modernity” is nothing more than a story that we tell ourselves. As the story goes, modernity presents: a discontinuity with the past, a neat and tidy separation between science and nature, faith in technology and progress. As Latour goes on to explain, modernity is characterized by contradictions, for example denying its own hybridity. I would like to expand on another of modernity’s inconsistencies, that being how moderns seemingly negotiate the passage of time.
For moderns, the past represents a time when technology wasn’t as strong, and therefore when things weren’t as great as they are today. Improvements in technology bring moderns closer and closer to greatness, which lies in the future. Moderns are different, are better, than the past thanks to progress. Just as moderns deny the hybridity that surrounds them, so too do they conceal their true obsession with the past.
In our society there is, and always has been, a strong desire to return to the past, to “the good ol’ days”, as they say. Nostalgia permeates our lives. It’s the reason why our parents took photos and diligently filled up family albums, it’s the reason why television networks like Deja View feature the shows from years past, it’s the reason why Disney World has perfect Main Street USA streets. If moderns are too good for the past, then why do they continually evoke it, romanticize it and long for it?
On the same note, moderns have an obsession with the future and the promise it holds, as evident through the popularity of sci-fi films, for example. And while moderns do long for the simpler times of the past, they obsessively continue to move forward in attempts to reach what I can only assume is some sort of "ultimate modernity", but what is really an endless journey.
The films that best characterize the point that I am trying to make is my own personal childhood favourite (nostalgic moment!) – The "Back to the Future" Series. In Back to the Future Part 1, teenager Marty and his kooky scientist friend Dr. Brown are of the “modern 80s”, so modern in fact that the Doc has invented a time machine - a pimped out Delorean . Dr. Brown’s mission, like all moderns, is to travel into the future, but when things don’t go as planned, he and Marty end up in 1955. While the viewers – and Marty – are certainly presented a picture perfect view of the squeaky clean 50s, most of the film is spent trying to get back to the future, therefore there is a strong rejection of the past. In Back to the Future Part 2, Marty and Doc make it to the future – 2015, a world of flying cars, holograms and hover boards (4 more years you guys, it’s gonna be awesome!!). Unfortunately, the future – while technologically advanced - is equally as alienating to Marty as the past (1955). Back to the Future Part 3 is most interesting as Marty and Doc travel even further into the past, the 1800s aka – the Wild West (or Wild Wild West, if you’re a Will Smith fan…). The Wild West of course, is perhaps the ultimate romanticization of the American past. Doc Brown becomes so caught up in this simple life that he opts to stay there, sending Marty back to the future alone.
What Marty and more specifically Doc prove is that modernity is characterized by a simultaneous obsession with and estrangement from the past and the future. Until Doc decides to settle down in the Old West (interesting, how it is his technological achievements and his own belief in progress that allow for him to live in the past, where these things do not “exist”), Marty and the Doc prove that as “moderns”, they are extremely uncomfortable with the present. Even when the past and the future become their new present, they long to return to the future (or the past) only to depart once again into a different decade.
In response to Latour’s question “What does it mean to be modern?” – it means to be unhappy and uncomfortable with the present, and to depend on the past or the future to feel at home.
For being a society so obsessed with being modern it is interesting that we heavily romanticize the past. I like the way you brought this up in your post and used the Movie "Back to the Future" to demonstrate our discontents. It seems true, we are not happy with the present. We always look to the future or the past and say, it was better then, or it will be better then. We can never seem to be happy living in the here and now. Kind of depressing.... but interesting points.
ReplyDelete