Retro Aesthetics, Jewish Humor, Transmedia Promotion and Popular Misogyny in Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–2023)

Abstract: To appeal to both investors and contemporary audiences, many digital streaming TV showrunners revisit a familiar past yet implant anachronistic elements—especially popular feminist characters, plotlines, dialogue, and themes—to make their work more inclusive. Amy Sherman-Palladino's fictional Amazon Prime Video series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–2023) focuses on the standup comedy career of Jewish American Miriam (Midge) Maisel and her unlikely friendship with her manager, Susie Myerson. The show, set mainly in Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, incorporates traditional tropes of Jewish humor to create a nostalgic and fantastical vision of Jewish American life. Sherman-Palladino's dependence on retro aesthetics, however, ultimately promotes popular misogyny. The program's use of a transmedia marketing campaign to promote the show also commodifies Jewish humor, ritual and tradition. Retro aesthetics and transmedia marketing impose limitations on inclusive content in revisionist histories, a trend that extends well beyond this particular show.