All popular culture is the shared dream of our times. It's an expression of something that resonates in the psyches of many people at the same time. To use a rather fancy German word, it captures the zeitgeist - the spirit of the time. This is basic to all popular culture, especially that which crosses over into the domain of genuine fad. The stuff that, in modern lingo, goes viral.
For all that, the particulars are missing in this explanation. How in fact do we explain the specific popularity of a TV set a half century earlier than the zeitgeist that it captures, as in the case of the Mad Men TV show? This is another matter.
Well, I don't claim to have the credentials of social psychologist or modern anthropologist -- that one might claim necessary to provide a definitive explanation. I will share a few thughts with you, though.
Strangely, some people suggest that Mad Men captures a simpler time. Fooled me. That's not what I see each episode on my TV. We're not talking about Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet, here. What we see on Mad Men is a 1950s and even early 1960s often unacknowledged by our contemporary mass media: it's rife with adultery, narcotics and loneliness. Also, it doesn't gloss over the uglier parts of the era: tragic political assassinations, the difficulties in race relations, sexual discrimination nor the mounting fiasco of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. If anything, perhaps one of the show's charms is precisely its far more realistic presentation of the period.
That doesn't seem though to provide a sufficient explanation. If that's all you want, you can watch PBS (if you can stomach it). There's something else cooking in the secret recipe of the Mad Men TV show's success. Yes, of course, there are all the great production values: the spectacular writing, full of insightful character development and the presentation of adult conflicts; spot on precision acting; and of course it looks incredible, with finely detailed attention to the art work, settings and costumes, and the gorgeous cinematography. Still, true as all that is, there's still something else to be explained.
There's still that something called, on this blog, the old school cool of Mad Men. The charm, the glamour, the charisma of lives lived with intention and absent cloying introspection. It's so subtle at first that it easily slips by your cultural radar. But it's there; the most compelling accuracy in Mad Men's great arsenal of period authenticity is the depiction of a time before the inundating of our society with a therapeutic ethos.
Whatever their challenges, the characters of Mad Men do not whine about how unfair life is, they don't complain that daddy didn't love them or mommy was too mean (though in some instances, that might well be the case). They take on life's challenges free of our contemporary fixation on communicating, expressiveness, finding ourselves and fretting over emotional IQ. This show captures the last great era of American life, before the guidance tyrants, emotion police and relationship regulators took over the culture.
Yes, it's true that the therapeutization of the culture by these self anointed "experts" had already begun at this time. This fact is hinted at in the story line of Betty's breakdown. The insinuating psychologists, the prying school counselors, the know-it-all therapists, talk show mental health hucksters and big brother for-your-own-good social planners, even at this time, were rearing their ugly heads. Mad Men preserves for us a time before these insidious PC do-gooders had yet pulled off their hijacking of our society. They hadn't yetreduced it to the current state of therapeutic culture and rampant, claustrophobic paternalism.
It was a time before men were feminized, women were androgynized and children were pathologized. Sure, they weren't living anything like perfect lives. They had as many problems as we do. Whatever problems they did have, though, they dealt with free of today's peeping toms and patronizing nannies, poking noses into their lives.
Don Draper and Peggy Olson were the last generation who could live their lives free from having their emotions monitored, validated or otherwise administered by the therapeutic class. Their very real life problems notwithstanding, they were free in a manner peculiarly foreign to us. And we, I suspect, where conscious of it or not, can't help feeling just a little fascinated with them because of it. That above all is the greatest secret to the old school cool of Mad Men.
For all that, the particulars are missing in this explanation. How in fact do we explain the specific popularity of a TV set a half century earlier than the zeitgeist that it captures, as in the case of the Mad Men TV show? This is another matter.
Well, I don't claim to have the credentials of social psychologist or modern anthropologist -- that one might claim necessary to provide a definitive explanation. I will share a few thughts with you, though.
Strangely, some people suggest that Mad Men captures a simpler time. Fooled me. That's not what I see each episode on my TV. We're not talking about Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet, here. What we see on Mad Men is a 1950s and even early 1960s often unacknowledged by our contemporary mass media: it's rife with adultery, narcotics and loneliness. Also, it doesn't gloss over the uglier parts of the era: tragic political assassinations, the difficulties in race relations, sexual discrimination nor the mounting fiasco of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. If anything, perhaps one of the show's charms is precisely its far more realistic presentation of the period.
That doesn't seem though to provide a sufficient explanation. If that's all you want, you can watch PBS (if you can stomach it). There's something else cooking in the secret recipe of the Mad Men TV show's success. Yes, of course, there are all the great production values: the spectacular writing, full of insightful character development and the presentation of adult conflicts; spot on precision acting; and of course it looks incredible, with finely detailed attention to the art work, settings and costumes, and the gorgeous cinematography. Still, true as all that is, there's still something else to be explained.
There's still that something called, on this blog, the old school cool of Mad Men. The charm, the glamour, the charisma of lives lived with intention and absent cloying introspection. It's so subtle at first that it easily slips by your cultural radar. But it's there; the most compelling accuracy in Mad Men's great arsenal of period authenticity is the depiction of a time before the inundating of our society with a therapeutic ethos.
Whatever their challenges, the characters of Mad Men do not whine about how unfair life is, they don't complain that daddy didn't love them or mommy was too mean (though in some instances, that might well be the case). They take on life's challenges free of our contemporary fixation on communicating, expressiveness, finding ourselves and fretting over emotional IQ. This show captures the last great era of American life, before the guidance tyrants, emotion police and relationship regulators took over the culture.
Yes, it's true that the therapeutization of the culture by these self anointed "experts" had already begun at this time. This fact is hinted at in the story line of Betty's breakdown. The insinuating psychologists, the prying school counselors, the know-it-all therapists, talk show mental health hucksters and big brother for-your-own-good social planners, even at this time, were rearing their ugly heads. Mad Men preserves for us a time before these insidious PC do-gooders had yet pulled off their hijacking of our society. They hadn't yetreduced it to the current state of therapeutic culture and rampant, claustrophobic paternalism.
It was a time before men were feminized, women were androgynized and children were pathologized. Sure, they weren't living anything like perfect lives. They had as many problems as we do. Whatever problems they did have, though, they dealt with free of today's peeping toms and patronizing nannies, poking noses into their lives.
Don Draper and Peggy Olson were the last generation who could live their lives free from having their emotions monitored, validated or otherwise administered by the therapeutic class. Their very real life problems notwithstanding, they were free in a manner peculiarly foreign to us. And we, I suspect, where conscious of it or not, can't help feeling just a little fascinated with them because of it. That above all is the greatest secret to the old school cool of Mad Men.
About the Author:
Mickey Jhonny is lead writer at the Mad Men celebration cite, the Don Draper Haircut.
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