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

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.