ABSTRACT
Nostalgia is central to Mad Men's plot in the early 1960s as well as to its success in the late 2000s and its subsequent critical and academic scrutiny. In "California and Irony in Mad Men", American Studies scholar Rodney Taveira writes that "the instance of the past on the present structures Mad Men and this is compounded by the show being set in the past". Katixa Agirre suggests that the show goes a step beyond historical realism in its representation of past-ness. The American Dream is central to Mad Men's narrative, and Draper's ability to be wildly successful in his endeavor to achieve that dream is remarkable to the point of unbelievable from a twenty-first-century perspective. The tenuous relationship to a masculine identity that appears so normalized is indeed a recurring feature of the show. The notion of sinthomo sexuality provides a framework for a potentially radical reading of the character of Don Draper.
