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Reflexive Nostalgia On The Net: Vaporwave and how it Transformed the Denigrated and Dilapidated to the Celebrated and Venerated
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Plourde, Lorraine
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Spring 2023
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2023
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6466_Otis_Pinnell.pdf
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When muzak died and then got adopted by Vaporwave, it didn’t necessarily lose its
quality of functionality, it is just that the function changed. What was once an objective,
architectural push to take the feeling out of music by design became an entire subjective
infrastructure of emotion and mood. Muzak’s repurposing invited a cultural reinterpretation of its
history, divorcing it from its weaponization and replacing that with an appreciation for its
musical quality. After all, there was still an artist somewhere in the process, just obfuscated
behind a thick corporate fog. The way Vaporwave reinterpreted muzak also serves as a
fascinating microcosm of its artistic ethos too, with Vaporwave constantly sweetening the past
and repackaging it into a dreamlike– if still sort of ghoulish– feeling. Nostalgia, even if
misplaced, is a mood that contains multitudes. The state of remembering brings forth a swathe of
different emotions, something that Vaporwave harnesses to great effect. It is endlessly heartening
to see a continued passion for a style of music that so earnestly intends to make the listener
believe in magic, even if just for a fleeting moment. Whatever the purpose for its creation,
Vaporwave will continue to ascend forth and splay out, exploring new avenues of emotion and
new fantasies to immerse in. It will also undoubtedly continue to capture new fans, something
proven by its ever-growing community of folks from an impossibly large variety of places, for an
impossibly large variety of reasons. However, at the core of it, is a shared desire to be touched by
the music. In that, Vaporwave truly earns its quality of timelessness. It may have taken a while,
but Vaporwave has proven itself as a genre oozing with sincerity, deserving of the regard it is
held with now.
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