On aging, nostalgia, and Netflix revivals
Growing up, I was obsessed with the Archie Comics. I was obsessed with Betty and Veronica’s feud, all the minor characters like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the art style. As I got older, however, I began to phase the Archie universe out of my life. It was partly because my parents insisted that I stop being an obnoxious kid who read 1000-page Archie anthologies at the dinner table, and partly because I realized that maybe, for some intangible reason, I was getting too old for Archie and the gang. This happened, slowly but surely, to many of my literary and artistic childhood companions.
It’s odd to think about exactly when it stopped being okay for me to like certain types of art—is there ever an appropriate time to age out of, or age into, art? Rather than express my love for characters and stories that shaped my childhood imagination in an earnest and sincere way, I talk about art that I loved as a child in nostalgic terms. It exists only in the past tense.
Recently, however, there’s been a huge shift towards nostalgia in art and media, especially on TV. Many TV shows revive stories and characters that were popular years ago and try to capture the same magic. Though this isn’t a new phenomenon—people have been reviving old stories since there were old stories to tell—it feels as if there is an oversaturation of revivals. From my beloved Archie being revived in Riverdale, to Gilmore Girls getting a final season with A Year in the Life, to The Magic School Bus revival starring Kate McKinnon: it’s as though all TV writers have had the same nostalgia trip.
While revisiting old stories and characters is a lot of fun, the easy commodification of childhood nostalgia makes it hard for new stories to be told. By leaning heavily on reimagination rather than imagining new stories themselves, showrunners and writers tell stories that they know will be easily consumed and enjoyed—and that will help them to profit. These reimagined characters that were so beloved in their original forms are reproduced en masse because they aren’t risky. These characters and plotlines have been tried and tested by others before.
When showrunners and TV writers do choose to take liberties with their revived characters and make them their own, however, their insistence on making them more “adult” and “modern” tends to mean making them sexy and dark. Take the Netflix/CW show Riverdale, which reimagines the characters from the Archie comics as contemporary teens solving crimes. Despite the fun elements of Riverdale—the bingeability, the amazing outfits, and gory murder—the show relies heavily on the sexualization of teenagers and intense violence and crime. Gone are the campy antics of the Riverdale gang I grew up with. Instead, the new Riverdale showcases an Archie that “got hot” over the summer, a Betty who “goes dark” and pole dances, and a town that I do not, for one second, believe was ever non-violent. Yes, teenagers have sex and explore their sexualities, and yes, all towns experience some sort of violence, but Riverdale’s insistence on these elements in order to update and modernize the story ultimately implies that the characters and storylines from the past cannot exist in 2018 without some degree of sex and violence.
The grittiness of Riverdale and other contemporary movies and TV shows is often used to signal to the audience the relevance of the media they are consuming. To me, it seems a little weird. The overwhelming dark aesthetic and explicit objectification of teenagers, especially when coupled with characters that were so precious to me as a child, doesn’t signal, to me, adulthood or modernity. Instead, it makes me question why this version of Archie is the version I’m meant to enjoy as an adult. The equation of darkness and negativity with adulthood is something that I can’t quite buy into. Updating characters to make them fit into 2018 shouldn’t simply be about giving them a libido and a gun.
There are moments, however, where Riverdale uses the characters and setting in interesting and new ways to explore themes and tell important stories that weren’t in the original comics—and those are the most compelling and valuable parts of the show. For example, the subplot about Cheryl and Veronica being sexually assaulted by Nick St. Clair in the #MeToo era makes the Archie gang relevant and uses the characters’ positions, as socially aware and active teenagers, in a way that respects them as real people, not just as eye candy. That is the Archie gang I loved as a kid.
Though I appreciate shows like Riverdale for bringing characters and stories into my present tense when they had existed only in the past, I can’t help but feel unsettled about everything that updating them may mean. If reviving stories that I loved as a child means making them dark and sexy, I’m not sure I want them. But if updating them was an act of radical reimagination that allowed old characters to explore current issues and topics while retaining their individuality and personhood instead of condensing them into a singular sexual or violent being, then maybe I would feel a little better about growing up and still loving Archie.
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