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Elisabeth Bronfen: Mad Men, Death and the American Dream

Elisabeth Bronfen

Mad Men, Death and the American Dream

Softcover, 216 pages

ePub

Matthew Weiner’s series Mad Men is more than a resonant time capsule. Elisabeth Bronfen’s claim is that the show not only thrives on a significant double voicing, reviving the literature, film, music and fashion of the past within and for the cultural concerns of the present. With Don Draper an embodiment of the prototypical con man, his precarious journey from poverty to fame and prosperity can also be seen as a continuation of the moral perfectionism so key to the American tradition. His fall and spiritual recovery is as much an individual story as a comment on the state of the nation. Mad Men reflects on the role television has come to play in this work of the cultural imaginary, both fragile and fruitful. We identify and sympathize with the people in this series not despite but because they are fictional representations, different yet also a mirror of ourselves.

Content
  • society
  • 1960s
  • cultural imaginary
  • advertising
  • everyday life
  • serial
  • USA
  • gender
  • happiness
  • television
  • sex ratio
  • culture industry
  • collective memory
  • pop culture
  • morals

My language
English

Selected content
English

Elisabeth Bronfen

is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich and, since 2007, Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. A specialist in the 19th and 20th century literature she has also written books and articles in the area of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and visual culture. Current research projects include a book on Shakespeare and contemporary culture and another study on women war correspondents.

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