Nostalgia and pragmatism

Todd Buell | Issue 6 | Comment, Magazine

From the Archive

Screenshot 2022-08-10 at 16.22.00

We have to balance a nostalgic desire to hold on to the past with the realities of the future

The documentary Moundsville (released 2020) concerns the loss of industrial jobs in a small town in the American state of West Virginia. The documentary opens with individuals speaking about how life was in the town’s better years. A handful of residents identify these “better years” as the 1950s.  The responses are as predictable as they are tragic. In those days, it was easy to find good work at a factory, and children routinely ate dinner at each other’s homes. There was a sense of community and belonging that doesn’t exist in the same way today.  In a follow-up interview on the AMDG Jesuit podcast, the film’s co-director, John W. Miller, spoke about this overriding sense of nostalgia shared by many of the town’s citizens. He recalls the inhabitants’ memories of an era when residents could erect a Christmas tree atop the native American burial mound that gives the town its name, a practice that ended about forty years ago to show respect to Native American heritage.   Miller perceiv...

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