"In The Eighties, Nostalgia Gained Momentum With The First Of The 'Period-Mixing' Films, Blade Runner."

"Batman and, later, Edward Scissorhands, upped the retro ante. What was new about the period nostalgia in these films was that it encompassed the entire twentieth century; fashion for the thirties, forties, fifties, eighties, and the future co-existed simultaneously. When nostalgia erupts so massively into the present, the forward movement of the historical continuum is arrested. The eighties were the decade when fashion -- and, with it, 'history' -- ended. Period-mixing in films marked an acceleration of 'retro' velocity to the point of inversion."
Christopher Dewdney