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April 28, 2010
It was Season One Disc One tonight of Mad Men---we have just made contact with it. The location is an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City in the 1960's consumer culture before the emergence of the women's movement.
Mad Men has an impressive visual style---at one level it is the sleek Kodachrome modernism of the offices of the towering Manhattan skyline in which the admen of the struggling advertising firm of Sterling and Cooper spend their days manipulating reality amidst smoke, alcohol and philandering. They understand the power of the image to create new realities.
At another level it's the animation accompanying the opening credits:--silhouettes of businessmen free-fall in slow motion past glass skyscrapers emblazoned with advertising slogans and images that veil the harsh sexist office environment.
It's self-reflexiveness and edginess refers back to the David Lynch of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. Or maybe it is Edward Hopper for the lighting. Or is it to the Sopranos? The few images of suburbia suggest loneliness, the feminine mystique, alienation and the cracks in the facade. It is a satirical take on a time, place, and institution filtered with an eye on the fashions, cigarettes, and alcohol in which the modern world is dominated by appearances. Behind it lies anxiety and a quiet desperation.
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At first I was a bit ambivalent about Mad Men, but then I got sucked into each character’s struggles as they tried to exist in the very narrow role early 1960s America had assigned them. It can be a sad show to watch, seeing these individuals thrash against the hard borders of these roles. Betty and Joan especially seem so hungry for more but there is no model for “more” for women at that time, except to become neutered like Peggy. Betty’s frustration is even “pathologized” as she is sent to a psychiatrist.
I am just ending season two and have begun to feel repelled by Don’s totally myopic self-serving, but maybe that’s my 2010 talking. Perhaps such entitlement is part and parcel of the 1960s male exec?