Retro
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Usage
“Retro” can be used to simply mean “old fashioned” or old, functioning much like “timeless” or “classic”. It has also been associated with modernism in the immediate post-war years, encompassing an aesthetic that ranges from tail fins on Cadillacs to ranch houses. Sometimes, it can also suggest an entire outlook on life, for example, social conservatism, home schooling or the embrace of traditional gender roles. “Retro” can also be applied to forms of technological obsolescence, for example, manual typewriters, cash registers, bulky hand-held cell phones, or the resurrection of old computer games. But most commonly, “retro” is used to describe objects and attitudes from the recent past that no longer seem “modern.” It suggests a fundamental shift in the way we relate to the past. Different from more traditional forms of revivalism, “retro” suggests a half ironic, half longing consideration of the recent past. It has been called an “unsentimental nostalgia,” recalling “modern” forms that are no longer current.
Today it is often used in a positive sense, referring to quirky or attractive products that are no longer available. For example, "Retro fashion" or "Retro Chic" may consist of outdated styles, such as tie-dyed shirts from the 1960s, or poodle skirts from the 1950s. A love of retro objects (things from the past) is called retrophilia.
Retro often reflects a sensibility aligned with camp. Camp is an ironic attitude, an explicit re-introduction of non-dominant forms.
Retro also can mean a type of music like Hip Hop.
Origin
“Retro” has long been used as a prefix, intended to suggest that which is past or derivative. In the postwar period, it increased in usage with the advent of retrorockets used by the US space program in the 1950s and 1960s. It gained cultural currency with French reevaluations of Charles de Gaulle and that country’s role in World War II. The French mode retro of the 1970s reappraised in film and novels the conduct of French civilians during the Nazi occupation. The term “retro” was soon applied to nostalgic French fashions that recalled the same period.
Shortly it was coined into English by the fashion and culture press, where it suggests a rather cynical revival of older but relatively recent fashions. (Elizabeth E. Guffey, Retro: The Culture of Revival, pp. 9-22). In Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard describes retro as a demythologization of the past, distancing the present from the big ideas that drove the “modern” age (Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 43).
Specific types of retro
Retrogaming
Retrogaming is a pastime which is becoming increasingly popular where individuals play video games on vintage computers and games consoles; although the idea of what constitutes a vintage or retro machine is one open to debate.
Retro cars
Retro cars are newly designed cars such as the Toyota FJ Cruiser, PT Cruiser, Plymouth Prowler, MINI, Chevrolet HHR, New Beetle, or 2005-present Ford Mustang that take many of their style cues from (respectively) the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, Chrysler Airflow, the 1932 Ford, the Austin Mini, Chevrolet Suburban, the VW Bug, and 1965-70 Ford Mustang without using any of the original technologies.
Retro Music
Retro also refers to a genre of music, particularly dance music, popular in the U.S. during the 1980s and originally termed New Wave music which was in part an outgrowth of the Punk rock genre of the 1970s and early '80s. Many of the songs and albums now termed Retro came about during great advancement in the development of generating music electronically (that is, with computers and electronic equipment - or Electronic music - rather than with either traditional or electromechanical instruments) and the popularization of this type of music in the mainstream. Ideas as to how broad and inclusive the Retro category of music is vary; nonetheless, not all music - not even all dance music - from the decade of the 1980s can be considered Retro.
See also
- Kitsch
- MAME
- Neo-retro
- Old School
- Popular culture studies
- Ralf Metzenmacher
- Retcon
- Retrocorner
- Retro-engineering
- Retrofit
- Retrojet
- Retro-Renault
- Retro Thinking
- Vintage
References
- Elizabeth E. Guffey, 2006: Retro: The Culture of Revival, London: Reaktion.
- Jean Baudrillard, 1995: Simulacra and Simulation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Raphael Samuel, 1994: Theatres of Memory, London: Verso.
- James C. Collins, 1989: Uncommon Cultures. Popular Culture and Post-Modernism, New York/London: Routledge.
- Umberto Eco, 1986: Travels in Hyperreality, New York: Harcourt.
- Umberto Eco, 1988 (1964, 1978): The Structure of Bad Taste, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
- Clem Robyns, 1991: "Beyond the first dimension: recent tendencies in popular culture studies", in Joris Vlasselaers (Ed.) The Prince and the Frog, Leuven: ALW, 14-32.
- Andrew Ross, 1989: No Respect. Intellectuals and Popular Culture, New York/London: Routledge.
- Retro-Trader, 2002: Web site listing and displaying many retro related items
