American film and television have long imagined the mid–twentieth century as a moment of security and confidence, a time when you could order liberal political consensus with your milkshake at the local Woolworth’s. Movies and shows of the 1990s were especially preoccupied with postwar optimism, presenting their own portraits of progress dosed with nostalgia. Pleasantville gave its characters a respite from the present in the black-and-white world of ’50s sitcom, while Blast From the Past showed a modern woman learning to embrace chivalry from a man raised in a Cold War bunker. The past may not have been perfect in these films, but these narratives offered a comforting illusion of safety, like duck-and-cover drills for the mind.
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