Past Perfect(ed): Future Nostalgia and the Fight Against Trump’s America in Netflix’s Hollywood

Abstract

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 precipitated a crisis in national identity amongst liberal Americans leading to the political mobilization of grassroots activists, liberal media, and minority groups as a bulwark against the perception of a reassertion of intolerant conservatism. This article will examine the shared trauma of this historical moment through utilizing the Meaning Maintenance Model as a means to frame why this trauma was felt so deeply and collectively, but also to understand the conjunctions of resistance through direct action, media representations and nostalgia. Through the series Hollywood (2020) future nostalgia will be viewed as a tool by which present day resistance can be galvanized by presenting a fictional portrayal of post-war Hollywood as an era in which progressives fought for equality, exhibited intersectional allyship and potentially changed the social fabric of contemporary America, leading to a country in which Trump would have been unelectable and many ongoing battles for equality would have been won generations ago.