Nostalgia marketing

AMC has placed the finale of the first season of Mad Men online for free, with the last part conveniently starting at one of the greatest moments in TV history: Don Draper's presentation for the Kodak slide projector.

The scene's nostalgia theme has been on my mind quite a bit this week, no doubt due to current events. The gourmet soft swirl trendlet that's been evident this summer caught the attention of the NYTimes, and the purveyors of this ice creamy goodness note their fondness for the Carvel, Dairy Queen & Mr. Softee of their childhood.

A poster on the subway touts the upcoming last concert of the Police for PBS, part of a partnership in which the Police and PBS have joined together to promote classic rock as "television that is untainted by commercialism."

And of course, we can't forget the mothership of nostalgia marketing, the San Diego Comic Con, which the child consumers of the fifties through the nineties have grown up to make comics a respected creative art, playing a role similar to that of leading filmmakers from the nineteen fifties through the seventies.

It all reminds me of the work of Ellen Dissanayake, who writes about the human proclivity for "making special" as the heart of evolutionary aesthetics. We take the found items of existence--childhood, work, mere survival--and create something more.