Revisiting Nostalgia
Sly Cooper, Total Drama Island, and the SpongeBob Movie.
Nostalgia is one of the greatest forces in today’s popular entertainment industry. Time and time again, we see the franchises we loved when we were younger taken and remade, adapted, or rebooted… and usually, it does not bode too well. However, this did get me down a long path of nostalgic entertainment that I enjoyed when I was a kid, and I wanted to share some of the best ones. Sometimes, nostalgic entertainment doesn’t hold up - but these three definitely still do.
Sly Cooper
I was born right in 2000, so I was the perfect age to enjoy all the Playstation classics - Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted, the LEGO games, etc. However, none of those sank their teeth into hours of my childhood quite like the Sly games. For those who don’t know, they were a series of three games that mainly came out in the PS2 era (but they did make a fourth one for the PS3 after — not quite as good as the others, though).
The basic premise is that the main three characters are Sly (the raccoon thief), Bentley (the turtle genius), and Murray (the hippo strongman) who have been friends since childhood. Sly is a member of the Cooper family, a long line of thieves who were notorious for pulling off insane heists. Now, as the three have grown up into adulthood, we get to play mainly as Sly in their heist adventures. Each of the three core games had a main heist that they were trying to build to.
All of these games were fun action platformers with the perfect amount of content. When it comes to video games these days, I feel like there is an odd fascination with having a game that contains as much content as possible, even if it isn’t warranted. Games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto are constantly praised for having tons of content to get through, but games like the Sly series always show me that there does not have to be a lot of stuff in order for the game to be an enjoyable experience. I plugged about a week and a half into Sly 2, and it was one of the most enjoyable game experiences of my life.
Total Drama Island
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Oh yeah, you know I had to talk about this. This series has had multiple different seasons with different concepts, but none of them will beat the original Total Drama Island. This was a Canadian animated Survivor parody that came out in 2007. The characters are all put on a deserted island and must participate in weekly challenges until one contestant is left as the grand winner.
This show relied HEAVILY on stereotype humour. All of the characters are complete archetypes; none of them get too much development (with some extremely minor exceptions). I mean, just take a look at the image above - yeah, those are all of the characters. You can probably guess what every single one of them are like and you would be completely right. In that, I will say that there are parts of this show that do not hold up at all… for instance, some of the straight up racist, sexist, and fatphobic jokes in the show. Like, that black woman in the middle? Yeah, her name is LeShauna, and she is the complete “angry black woman” stereotype that has been overplayed in media. I could spend a whole article discussing the show’s portrayal of marginalized groups, but that isn’t the purpose of this specific article.
Beyond that, there are some genuinely funny moments, and I think it pokes a lot of fun at the absurdity of shows like Survivor. It tells a lot about the corporate nature of these shows, and how the producers and creatives behind the scenes artificially force people to have conflict in order to boost ratings. This isn’t just a parody of Survivor, this show points and laughs at the stupidity of all reality TV. The fakeness, the over-the-top nature of the drama, and all of the ways that these shows breed hostility. Besides its terrible portrayal of marginalized groups, I still think this has some funny and interesting commentary to think about.
The SpongeBob Movie (2004)
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I know that SpongeBob wasn’t a huge part of everyone’s lives, but it was definitely a big part of mine. So when I was first introduced to this movie when I was 8, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I’ll be honest - it has been a considerable amount of time since I have revisited this - however, it was still recent enough for me to feel like I have a leg to stand on.
To be honest, I don’t feel like I need to go through the premise and idea of SpongeBob - he is such a pop culture icon at this point that if you don’t know him, you’re probably living with Patrick Star under that rock.
So the movie has a fun story, and some pretty heart wrenching moments… I mean, even as an adult I am still tearing up near the end. The only thing that doesn’t fully hold up is some of the gender stereotypes, specifically in the “Now that We’re Men” musical number. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a funny and catchy song - but it does uphold some of the stereotypical “men must be tough to be men” vibes that just give me an ick.
However, this movie has a lot of fun. It is silly, over the top, and I honestly think it is something that the whole family can enjoy. The movie has a lot of great themes and I highly recommend.
After going through all of these pieces of entertainment, I started to reflect on why we are drawn to these nostalgic pieces. Why are we drawn to the entertainment of the past, even if it is flawed? The best explanation I can come up with goes like this - you know when you are going through a breakup, and when you look back on it, you start to see only the good things about the relationship, and you forget about the bad stuff that caused the breakup? But then, when you think deeper, that perception somewhat dissipates? That’s what nostalgic entertainment is like - it brings you back to a time where things were easier, and your mind has associated this piece of entertainment with the happy feelings you felt as a child. It is a great feeling, it really is; but it’s important to be aware of that, so we don’t get stuck in the past. There is a lot of good coming.
Acknowledge the past, but embrace the future.