The obsession with the past: remakes everywhere

In recent years it has become almost a fashion to revive television and film products. Remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels have been a priority for the industry that, from nostalgia, seeks to sell products that were successful in the past: Cobra Kai, Saved by the Bell, Bel-Air, Gossip Girl, How I Met your Father, And Just Like That, Dexter, Scream, Dune, The Matrix Resurrections. The list is long.

Instead of thinking of new stories and/or designing a new present and future, this cultural phenomenon focuses its gaze on the past, seeking to bring it back to reinterpret it. The video presented by Vogue last December where Bad Bunny is seen singing the Macarena accompanied by models dressed in pieces of clothing inspired by Y2K, is part of this global phenomenon in which the recent premiere of the Rebelde series is also part of.

And although for the millennial public this phenomenon is exciting because of all the stories that come back, we have to ask ourselves: Where is so much nostalgia going to take us? Why so much of the past if what we need is to reinvent the future?

The series, which premiered on Netflix on January 5, is a sequel to an adaptation. How is this? Basically, it is the continuation of that Mexican series produced by Televisa in 2004, “Rebelde”; which in turn was a remake of the Argentine telenovela Rebelde Way (2002), created by Cris Morena. The story (which in our country had Felipe Colombo, Luisana Lopilato, Benjamín Rojas and Camila Bordonaba as protagonists) was an attempt to talk about adolescent rebellion from a group of young people, most of them privileged, who attend a school private and supposedly of great educational standard called Elite Way School.

Both Rebelde, both the Argentine and the Mexican, had impressive success in their countries. In both cases, in addition, a musical group came off outside the series (although with implications in history) that sold millions of records and toured as many countries as they can think of. What's more: today, Spotify has the songs of Erreway (Argentina) and RBD (Mexico), and between them they have almost 5 million monthly listeners, even years after their dissolution. It is not surprising then that with all that past and numbers behind it, the decision has been made to revive history. The past and nostalgia sell and viewers devour all kinds of content that comes out of it even when it rarely meets the expectations promised by the memory.

However, since its premiere on Netflix, the series has not been able to escape the imminent comparisons from which it has been negatively criticized in relation to the soap operas of yesteryear. This is one of the drawbacks of looking back nostalgically, because even though Rebelde is born as an evocation of the past, it is not really the past. It is easy for the now old generations to get confused and believe that all these remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels are made especially for them and from there criticize, forgetting that in reality these products are created to hook the new generations.

The problem with inhabiting the longing for the past, as the philosopher Mark Fisher said in his book The Ghosts of My Life, is the inability to get out of it. The present has become a place where the ghosts of the past continually emerge and, as in the film Groundhog Day, we are trapped in a loop that is harmful to creativity and art. The longing for the past is a self-delusion that leads us to see the same story remixed over and over again, under the false illusion that we will find something better -or at least similar- to what escaped from our hands.

A fact that adds to the analysis: this reality does not only apply to the series or movies that we see in streaming. If we move to the field of TV, Telefé and El Trece are two iconic cases if we are talking about bets on the past. On the ball channel, they seem to have found a formula since the beginning of the pandemic with the alternation of cycles such as Masterchef / Bake Off / La Voz Argentina, all programs from previous years that return every few months appealing to the fun that the public already knew how to have

In El Trece, on the other hand, there is the case of Showmatch, a cycle that in recent years has fallen in terms of rating and, every time it tries to recover, it bets on old formats such as those of the classic 90's Videomatch, with humor with politicians, for example. And some protagonists have clarified it well in recent months: the context is no longer the same, and you cannot trust that people will give the same reception to a product just because it has similarities with something that knew how to make it fun.

Just taught my mom how to squeeze a lemon

— It's Melissa Sun May 09 18:13:19 +0000 2021

Without going any further, during the pandemic both signals decided to repeat some of their most successful novels, achieving acceptable numbers at a time when television is not going through its best moment.

It's not that remakes are necessarily bad shows or movies, or that they're not as good as the originals (assuming that they are indeed as good as remembered and it's not just a nostalgic effect). It's just that you can't forget the past, or stop remembering it better than it was.

We need to create new stories about the present and the future even when the past is constantly telling us to save it from oblivion. Nostalgia sells but we run the risk of exhausting the past, of not being able to get out of it. We need to forget and innovate to get out of this temporary loop. Accept that no matter how many products we try to recreate from the past, none of them will fully meet our expectations.

The reasons for the return of Rebelde

Why did Rebel reappear? In principle, because in addition to the success of the Mexican adaptation, Netflix Latin America decided to add Rebelde Way to its catalog in recent months. And perhaps unexpectedly, it had a huge success: even today, some time later, it is one of the 10 most watched series in Argentina.

Regarding the sequel to "Rebelde" that premiered, the intention is not to recreate the original story or introduce us to the same characters from the past in a current version. Rather, it is a story that, while paying tribute to the 2004 soap opera and RBD, creates its own. The past matters, however, to generate context, nostalgia and a path to follow, since the new generation knows of the existence of the past.

Within the story, the characters recognize the impact that the members of RBD had as students of the Elite Way School and that is why they are there, to see if they can also succeed. A doubt shared with the nostalgic viewer who attends to judge and compare with the original product.

Unlike many other series and movies brought from the past, in Rebelde the special care given to elements that were important in the telenovela in relation to popular culture is notorious, in order to work on them now with greater precision. For example, music and costumes. There is a planning of musical genres and aesthetic positioning that in turn allow claiming that it is a new product that, unlike the original, speaks mainly to generation Z.

For now, Netflix is ​​already guaranteed a second season, which was announced just four days after the premiere. There is a path already marked...

By Fernando Bustos Gorozpe (The Washington Post) / Editorial Office.-

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