1 - The Returned Image

Summary

Nostalgia film is historicist rather than historical, which explains why it must necessarily displace its center of interest onto the visual as such and substitute breathtaking images for anything like the older filmic story telling …

Fredric Jameson, “Transformations of the Image,” The Cultural Turn

In an initial moment, the aim was the destruction of the (ideological) signified; in a second, it is the destruction of the sign.

Roland Barthes, “Change the Object Itself,” Image, Music, Text

Christina Ricci is dressed up to look like Bette Davis (Figure 1) in a Fashion of the Times (Spring 2000) photo spread entitled “The Big Remake.” What an image this is. Wasn't it just recently (in 1991 as a matter of fact) that Ricci appeared as that adorable evil child Wednesday in the film The Addams Family, itself a remake of the 1970s TV show of the same name and adapted from the 1950s New Yorker cartoon by Edward Gorey? And isn't Ricci just barely a child now? Or does it just seem that way, not only because this neophyte is presented to look like an actress from a half century ago, but also because the impulse to copy old images and old films is itself moving into its second generation? The practice continues from its first sightings in such films as Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), remakes of the 1950s science fiction films and 1940s Saturday afternoon serials, respectively, to more recent copies such as Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998).