Nostalgia del nemico. Il ritorno della Guerra fredda nelle serie tv

• Main Authors: Sabino Di Chio, Emmanuele Quarta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2020-02-01
• Series: Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
• Online Access: http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/2405

Recently, some TV series turned their nostalgic gaze to one of the least reassuring parts of the 80s: the Cold War between the USA and the USSR. “Stranger Things” third season (Netflix 2019), the success of “Chernobyl” (HBO 2019), along with the cult status reached by “The Americans” (Fox 2013-2018), brought back to life the collective image of geopolitical struggles, the existence of an enemy, as well as the dialectics between opposed systems of thought. This paper discusses the success of the three series in the light of the socio-political debate on Cold War nostalgia. Through the comeback of the Soviet Evil Empire on our screens, then, contemporary TV series seem to try and recall the underlying reasons for the contemporary neoliberal order. Lastly, we read these narrative devices as a possible form of repoliticisation of the collective imagination. The resurrection of an enemy from the past forces the audience to deal with the uncertainties, inequalities, and the ideological drifts of an actual socio-political context “with no alternatives”.