Abstract

This essay articulates an ethical reflection on the notion of fantasy within a context of the social bond marked by the inexistence of the Other. Taking the series Mad Men as its field of analysis, it proposes a reflection on consumption and its articulation with the symptom and object a.

Drawing on the developments of Freud, Lacan, and Miller, Mad Men is approached as a fictional form that makes it possible to read a transformation in the modes of dealing with lack. Whereas mythical forms provided a signifying order and the novel offered a fantasmatic support articulated to the Other, the series stages a shift toward the object of consumption as a privileged response, promoting a mode of jouissance detached from symbolic mediation.

The analysis of Don Draper and Manhattan allows this shift to be situated as an ethical problem. Finally, the article advances the hypothesis that the series form constitutes a privileged dispositif for approaching the contemporary real, not through its representation but through the staging of its impasses.

Keywords: Ethics | Fantasy | Inexistence of the Other | Consumption | Object a | Symptom | Mad Men