The elaborate seduction of nostalgia: revisiting the “golden past” in Mad Men
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-677X.rum.2024.226026Keywords:
Mad Men, Cultural memory, NostalgiaAbstract
This study focuses on the relation between history and story in Mad Men (Matthew Weiner, AMC, 2007-15) by its cultural and historical references to the 1960s, the series diegetic time period. At first, I will investigate how the historical period is temporally structured throughout its seasons, to then analyze how it uses music in its episodes, highlighting how the series wants to position itself in relation to the cultural memory of the 1960s, how it works with it and legitimizes itself by what it quotes in its scenes. Lastly, this analysis will help to better interpret the critical project of Mad Men and the ways with which it operates a nostalgic vision of the past.
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