As I entered the arena, I was in for a surprise.
I knew that I was there for a pro hockey game. And I knew that my favorite team would be wearing modified throwback jerseys.
But what I didn’t know was that nearly the entire game experience would be retrofitted.
The sound system blared 1990s music. The scoreboard showed TV commercials for such bygone brands as Kay Bee Toys and Circuit City. The Zamboni drivers wore Zumba pants.
For a moment, I was transfixed. My mind had traveled back to the days when Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were on the ice. My body seemed to follow suit.
But then, reality snapped me back.
That star player who scored a hat trick (three goals) that night, leading to a cascade of hats from the stands? He was a baby in the late 1990s.
Those high-powered smartphones we were using to check the game stats? They were years from being invented back in that decade.
And the arena I was sitting in? Well, the team didn’t even start playing there until the early 2000s.
Yes, I was in an alternate reality. One that capitalized on nostalgia without sacrificing the comforts of modernity.
For a night, it worked. But when the clock struck 12, the experience turned into a pumpkin.
And an uncomfortable reality lingered.
Retro night at the hockey game isn’t the only time we’ve thrown it back.
Indeed, remnants of the past are all over our present.
Fashion from the 1990s has been back in style recently. And several cultural figures from that era have had a renaissance.
This should come as no surprise. Generational revitalizations are like clockwork in our society.
Styles from the 1980s re-emerged in the 2010s. And figures from the 1970s found new life in the 2000s.
Still, this is the first time I’ve experienced both the original and the remix. And the nostalgia has brought both glee and alarm.
At first glance, there’s not much to airbrush from the 1990s. The Cold War had ended. The American economy was humming. Aside from the O.J. Simpson trial and the Monica Lewinsky affair, there was not much to wring our hands about.
But dig a bit deeper, and the story is less tidy.
You see, the 1990s introduced the world to a film called Forrest Gump. The movie follows the title character on an accidental journey through many key moments in 20th century America.
In one such scene, Gump is trying to go to class at the University of Alabama when he finds a crowd gathered outside a building on campus. It turns out the commotion is over the racial integration of the university. Several Black students are heading to class, protected by the National Guard. And the crowd, while calm, is hostile to their cause.
During the commotion — including grandstanding by the segregationist governor George Wallace — Gump can be seen on his tiptoes, staring in on what’s going on. He later picks up a book that one of the students inadvertently dropped and hands it back to her.
In the moment, the scene seemed quaint. A relic from a moment in American history.
But recently, real-life imagery of another pivotal moment has seen some new light. The moment was the integration of North Little Rock High School in Arkansas. The era was the 1950s. And the peering onlooker was Jerry Jones.
Jones was an awkward teenager back then. But today, he’s the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys — one of the world’s most famous sports teams. That makes him plenty visible.
As such, the response has not been kind. Instead of viewing the image as quaint, many have directed ire at Jones. Why was he there? And why didn’t he do more to help the bullied Black students?
The answers matter. But the questions are even more significant.
History is written by the victors.
So goes an adage that’s attributed – often controversially – to Winston Churchill.
For decades, we took such commentary at face value. But these days, we’re adding a new twist.
You see, there are now two dominant positions when it comes to historical artifacts. There are those who seek to amplify the flaws of those who came before us. And there are those who seek to wipe those blemishes away.
Thanks to this, turning points in our history — such as desegregation — are no longer taken at face value. They’ve become flashpoints.
Never mind the foolishness of viewing 20th century actions with a 21st century lens. The outcome is set in stone.
Those in the photos, recordings, and writings of yesteryear are sure to be canceled one way or another. They are certain to be construed as villains or heroes, even if they went through those eras as bystanders.
This principle is evident when it comes to Jerry Jones and that photo from Little Rock. But what about that scene from Forrest Gump?
If the movie was being made today, would that plot point have been altered? Might it have been cut?
The answer would most likely Yes.
Indeed, plenty of comedy routines from the 1990s are now considered “over the line.” A prominent 1980s song spoke of asking a doctor for a woman’s gynecological photos. A classic 1970s movie featured an Italian American saying the N-word.
None of that would fly today.
This is the reason the cultural staples of the present are so carefully varnished. And it’s the reason why we curate our trips down memory lane, through such experiences as retro night at a hockey game.
It seems sensible. It seems safe.
But it’s not working.
Back at the arena, I took in the sights and sounds of retro night with wonder.
But down the row from me, a young girl was perplexed.
The girl didn’t understand all the 1990s references. And her mother was struggling to describe them to her.
I couldn’t blame either of them.
The girl was born years after 90s mania had subsided. Like a Soviet defector encountering McDonalds for the first time, she had no ability to generate the warm fuzzies others did.
And her mother experienced that mania in real time. She was processing the Disney World version of the 1990s at the same time she was trying to explain it. That proved too tall a task to master.
This one example explains the time shift fallacy.
All our varnishing, cleansing, and massaging of the past can’t substitute for the real thing. Those of us who lived through it know better than to be bamboozled. And those who didn’t are in no position to understand, appreciate, or judge.
It’s fair to question the faults of the past using the glare of a modern lens. Such enlightenment is necessary. And efforts to avoid such inquiries are corrosively reckless.
Yet, it’s not fair to categorically dismiss all those who committed such faults. Dictators and madmen deserve our scorn for their atrocities, to be sure. But teenage onlookers captured in photos from yesteryear might not.
We might find movies reprehensible for racist dialogue. We might find songs offensive for sexist content. And indeed, we might think twice before sharing these bygone staples in contemporary settings.
But it must end there.
We mustn’t have the gall to think we can time shift, even for a moment. We mustn’t have the hubris to think we can sanitize the past. And we mustn’t categorically mistake the sins of ignorance for malice.
Yesterday is gone. The window for changing it has closed.
Let’s make today great instead.