Introduction: Remake | Remodel

Abstract

Given that this collection of essays—“Remake | Remodel”—takes its title from the opening track of a retro-album, Roxy Music (1972) by Roxy Music, it seems appropriate to begin with music writer Simon Reynolds’ recent book, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. “Instead of being the threshold of the future,” writes Reynolds, “the first ten years of the twenty-first century turned out to be the ‘Re’ Decade. The 2000s were dominated by the ‘re-’ prefix: revivals, reissues, remakes, re-enactments” (xi). Across the book, Reynolds mainly takes an interest in a “retro-consciousness” prevalent in contemporary popular music— band reformations and reunion tours, album reissues and revivals, coverversions and mash-ups—but he notes that the current “malaise is not restricted to pop music. … Look at the Hollywood mania for remaking blockbuster movies from a couple of decades earlier. … When they’re not revamping proven box-office successes of the past, the movie industry is adapting much-loved ‘iconic’ TV series for the big screen” (xv). And Reynolds does not stop there. In addition to these “visibly fevered zones of retro-mania,” he discerns other areas of cultural re-production: retro fashion, retro toys, retro games, retro food, retro candy … even retro porn (xvii–xviii). Although the evidence suggests that “the 2000s’ most commercially prominent trends involved recycling” (xix), Reynolds is quick to point out that “Retromania is not a straightforward denunciation of retro as a manifestation of cultural regression or decadence” and that research into the book revealed “the extent to which retro-related issues have been a long-running preoccupation” (xxi–xxii, emphasis added).