Postfeminist masculinity and the complex politics of time: contemporary quality television imagines a pre-feminist world

Abstract

Television's Life on Mars (BBC 2006–2007), The Sopranos (HBO 1999–2007), Mad Men (AMC 2007–), and Bored to Death (HBO 2009–11) exemplify a recent and ongoing trend in representations of masculinity and contemporary gender politics. Heralded as sophisticated and progressive in both aesthetic and ideological terms, these programs refute obvious sexism, yet bear complex investments in restoring a past state to men. This paper explores the ways in which time travel to the past or nostalgic overlay of the present signifies ‘quality television’ while simultaneously expressing attitudes about a postfeminist world, where the gains of feminist politics are meant to be firmly established, understood as necessary, and respected. In these television representations, sensitized men are suffering and victimized. They, therefore, are justified in retreating, through spatial and temporal means, to alternatives to the existing social order. In investigating these configurations of masculinity and time, this paper identifies the terms by which contemporary television expresses, yet masks discontent with feminist gains.

Keywords::

• postfeminist masculinity
• time travel and nostalgia
• television
• Life on Mars
• The Sopranos
• Mad Men
• Bored to Death

Notes

^1. The progressive nature of quality television is oftentimes a matter of economic calculations rather than ideological goodwill. See, for instance, Newcomb 2006.

^2. This notion of waves has been problematized by a number of scholars. See, for instance, Hewitt's (2010) edited collection, No More Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminisms, on the matter.

^3. The notion of backlash, popularized by Susan Faludi's 1991 book, aligns with other feminist scholarship that perceives postfeminism as a rejection of feminist ideas. Amanda D. Lotz (2001) rehearses this school of thought, along with other definitions of postfeminism forwarded by feminist scholars.

^4. See Gill (2007) for an example of such a stance. My point here is not to say that postfeminism is any of these things, but that television assumes widely circulating definitional concepts about postfeminism.

^5. The freighted meanings of quality television are ones that I want to signal, but not rehearse in full here. For a clarifying set of discussions about the contested meanings of ‘quality’, see McCabe and Akass' (2007) Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, in particular Part 1: ‘Defining Quality: Critical Judgements and Debates’.