Jed Edgar

10-31-19
Comm-201
Dr. Liu
The Fantasy of Memory
I. Introduction
A. Hook: Do you guys remember the 2000s? Ahh *wistfully look towards the ceiling*
nothing ever went wrong. Life was perfect. I remember the countless night I’d get
back home I had just finished riding my bike around the neighborhood with my
neighbors Mikey, Elijah and Lance. Watching zack and Cody, lunchable in hand,
mom in the kitchen making cookies and Dad asking if I wanted to play catch.
There was there was no midterms, no sadness, no loneliness, no anxiety, no bad
times, just blissful childhood happiness. Or was there?
B. Thesis: Nostalgia alters reality by reinventing the past.
II. What is nostalgia?
A. a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period
or irrecoverable condition. (Merriam-Webster)
B. (Mad men quote)
“Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, ‘nostalgia’
literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart far more
powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship: It’s a time
machine…It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the
wheel: It’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels—around
and around and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”
III. Creates a fictitious past
A. “How 80s Hollywood and Ronald Reagan fueled each other--and paved the way for
trump.” (Vox article)
B. Personal story
IV. That Fictitious past causes us not to be able to live in the present, or hope for the future
because we’re stuck in the past.
A. “How 80s Hollywood and Ronald Reagan fueled each other--and paved the way for
trump.” (Vox article)
B. “Midnight in Paris.” (Woody Allen film)
V. Conclusion
A. Thesis: Nostalgia alters reality by reinventing the past
B. Amplification: This matters to us because it affects the very way in which we live our
lives.
 Work Cited
AMC. (2007, October 18). The Wheel. Mad Men. New York City , New York.
Sony Pictures Classics. (2011). Midnight in Paris.
Wilkinson, A. (2019, August 29). How '80s Hollywood and Ronald Reagan fueled each other -
and paved the way for Trump. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/29/20826545/hoberman-make-my-day-intervie
w-hollywood-reagan-trump.