Mad Men’s Serially Falling Man

The opening credits of Mad Men have often been mentioned as part of a broader post-9/11 cultural repertoire that imagines the act of falling. This article argues that falling is a powerful way to depict the fetishistic knowledge structures that are typical of both serial period dramas and trauma narratives more generally: the dilation of time around a turning point, the repeated rehearsal of the oblivious moment before the dramatic change, the investigation of the consequences of traumatic knowledge, and the scarred sense of futurity. Mad Men, like other period serials, asks whether it matters to know in time.