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

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