The Half-Imagined Past

The Audio-Depiction of 1960s Capitalism and Freedom in the Music of Wolfenstein: The New Order and Mad Men

Abstract

In this article, we investigate how music is used in Mad Men (Lionsgate, 2007-2015) and Wolfenstein: The New Order (Bethesda Softworks, 2014) to signify a temporality in media that we call the “half-imagined past”: anterior time situated partly in mediated imagination and partly in historical reference. We thus refer to a qualitative concept of an anterior time signified by pointers to the historical period through media, objects, emotions, symbols and sensorial experiences. We further argue that the half-imagined past in screen media not only converges in imagination, memory and historical reference, but does so in a nexus of contemporary ideological and cultural politics. In that sense, pastness in popular media is not only an audiovisual representation, but also a co-construction between media and audience made up of both imagination and the ideological placing of historical references, in this case through the use of music.