Both the movie and the image are successful for one reason;
they create a sense of empathy and recognition (someone who “got the reference”
would feel positive about themselves). This empathy and recognition in both the
movie and the shirt rely on contextual knowledge, which we today have as
externalities of living in a globalized world. The irony of this however is
that in the time alluded by both types of media, this knowledge would not be as
prevalent. This empathic effect is added to the suspension of belief necessary
to make the products effective. In both cases the viewer is required to temporarily
accept facts that are clearly not true; the characters in the movie are not
really in 1975 and the shirt is obviously not handmade nor limited edition. This
two acceptances lead us to conclude that the makers of the shirt and the movie
know that as consumers we want to romanticize the past, to go back to this
“ideal” world where things were in fact handmade, where pictures did not have full
colour and when Polaroids were used, not instagram. This idealistic past
becomes ironic once one realized that the target demographic for this shirt,
for this image of a “vintage” camera did not live at the time alluded and
therefore does not see this past with nostalgia but instead see it as an
intangible paradise lost through our consumerism that they themselves are part
of.