“We don’t want life to look difficult, do we?”: Representations of the Fifties and Self-Reflexive Nostalgia in Mad Men

Authors

  • Eleonora Ravizza American Studies Leipzig University of Leipzig

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.161

Keywords:

Mad Men, nostalgia, Fifties, television, image, advertising

Abstract

This article investigates how the TV series Mad Men“ portrays the Fifties through the lens of self-reflexive nostalgia. Focusing on a close reading of its first season, I look at how Mad Men“’s self-awareness towards the function of images and advertising in the creation of the Fifties as a cultural construct is often complicated by its nostalgic and conservative politics.

Author Biography

Eleonora Ravizza, American Studies Leipzig University of Leipzig

After a BA in communication studies at the University of Bergamo (Italy), Eleonora Ravizza completed the MA program in American studies at the University of Leipzig in 2011. She is currently a PhD candidate in Leipzig, where she teaches American literature and culture to undergraduate students, as well as a seminar on masculinity in films. Still in the early stages of her PhD project, she is currently focusing on the cultural work performed by nostalgia and how it complicates representations of the Fifties in recent films and TV series. Her research interests include gender in popular culture, intertextuality, masculinity, and queer studies.

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Published

2013-05-25

How to Cite

Ravizza, Eleonora. “‘We don’t Want Life to Look Difficult, Do we?’: Representations of the Fifties and Self-Reflexive Nostalgia in Mad Men”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, May 2013, doi:10.5283/copas.161.

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.