Last week a group of us went to see Dirty Dancing in the movie theatre. I know it’s not 1987, duh, but our local cinema has launched a throw-back Tuesday pilot to see what the response might be. Judging from that one night, it’s an idea whose time has come — again. First of all, the place was packed and that’s not the usual situation in this small, small-town theatre. The audience knew most of the pivotal lines, all the songs, and had various reasons for being there. One large, heavily bearded guy was in line for tickets and wanted to explain himself as he wasn’t there on sufferance with his girlfriend. She was at home, he told us, watching her “favourite movie” on VHS, but insisted he go see it on the big screen. His motivation to accede to that wish was that he wants to see more retro films brought to the Twilight Theatre so feels we have to support what we want to receive. I’m drafting up a list of movies I’ll send along to the new owners, in hopes it inspires them to keep these Tuesdays going. Thinking Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, Rain Man, The Last Picture Show; there are so many!!! It’s not just an 80s movie about the early 60s that draws us; we could all watch Dirty Dancing online or VHS (yikes) but we choose to do it together, in a group, with our community. There’s a special kick to doing this in company with others and it’s one of the few times I’ve seen so many people in one place and no one scrolling for two hours. Not surprisingly, nostalgia is a refuge for us as individuals when times get tough; we harken back to memories which tend to crystallize around positive experiences, golden moments. Whether they were simpler or better doesn’t matter; it’s the memories which help sustain us in the present. Krystine Batcho writes: The desire to escape into the imagined, idealized world of a prior era – even one you weren’t alive for – represents a different, independent type of nostalgia called historical nostalgia. Historical nostalgia is often concurrent with a deep dissatisfaction with the present and a preference for the way things were long ago. Unlike personal nostalgia, someone who experiences historical nostalgia might have a more cynical perspective of the world, one colored by pain, trauma, regret or adverse childhood experiences. At a time of global anxiety, historical nostalgia has taken root in multiple places, a mass response which seeks to evoke the comfort of better days. The faith-based WiC Project blog wrote late last year that times like ours disrupt our own sense of stability and we compensate for that anxiety by looking for emotional anchors to reassure us. Nostalgia is a psychological response to the lives we’re living today. An article in Psychology Today revisits the unrest of the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, with high profile assassinations, student protests, race riots, inflation, a falling stock market, recession, unemployment, the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear attack. Taken together that cultural uncertainty gave birth to a massive nostalgia for the recalled golden days of the 1950s, along with a spate of 50s based movies and TV shows. Today we see a similar yearning showing up in where we put our money. You see it in retail stats which show Boomers and GenXers buying products which were popular “back in the day” but also millennial parents seeking out retro products for their kids. Consumer data cruncher Circana notes: A few cases in point: women’s low-rise denim was the fastest-growing denim type from January through May 2026, reflecting the continued Y2K revival. Also harkening back to other eras, wider silhouettes continue to lead, bootcut jeans are seeing a resurgence, and premium denim is hot again, echoing the early 2000s designer boom. The article also reports that lip liner, made popular in the 1920s and revived in the 1980s, is back again and that young consumers are driving a boom in consignment clothing. For those with money, the design world is bringing back Baroque and Rococo inspired jackets, boots and tricorn hats. It’s called “newstalgia” whether it’s reviving classic products or reimagining them in new ways. Of course, nostalgia is a reconstruction, not an accurate rendering and even the longed-for 50s and 60s weren’t golden for everyone. Leave it to Beaver showed us the sensitive and sensible male breadwinner dad and the cheerful, coiffed stay-at-home-mom, but that wasn’t representative. Many real families struggled with conflict, female repression, anxiety and poverty. Historian Stephanie Coontz, in her book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, wrote that rape and sexual assault rates were far higher in the 1970s than they are today and that child abuse and poverty were much more common than we remember. Many of us grew up under the shadow of the Cold War and practiced bomb drills by squeezing under our school desks. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns but it sure feels like it in hindsight, especially when it’s a movie version recreation. You probably wish you had been in the theatre with me last week, just to revisit an iconic moment in time. So here you go. Until next time, don’t even think about putting baby in the corner. Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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