Lana Del Ray - Retromania Squared 

I have been enjoying Simon Reynolds’ new book Retromania a great deal.  His basic premise is that in the last 10 years or so we as a culture have gotten to the point where we have become so obsessed with our love of retro that it has overtaken the ability to create anything new.  So many examples… LCD’s post-punk rant ‘Losing My Edge’, Strokes garage rock, Amy Winehouse 60s soul/hip hop fusion, the whole 80’s throwback thing, how 90’s rave culture has been celebrated in the new “glo-fi” sound of the last couple of years with artists like washed out, skrillex, james blake.

While I am not sure about the “anything new” part, we are clearly living in a period of retromania, a term reynolds has so eloquently coined.  But what struck me upon seeing this video by new artist lana del ray is how many different retro references there are, all in one piece.  With these other examples above, they generally are about tapping into one specific retro reference or time period, and not just one song at a time, but the whole sound and artist concept.  But if you look at this video, nearly every possible reference to anything retro is made… 50’s hollywood, cartoons, 70s lords of dogtown, americana, 90’s TMZ and paparazzi, etc.

And perhaps what makes this even sharper is the camera/video effect.  the 70s footage has that old instagram, polaroid film quality, whereas the 90s paparrazi footage has that conversely very digital quality to it, which makes a powerful point about the unconscious way that different kinds of cameras affect your perception of the world you see through them.  (Hence the power of instagram and hipstamatic).

It’s also so fragmented, like a scrap book of imagery.  We are truly living in a visual, photo driven world more than we ever have before.