It would be fair to describe popular culture as something akin to the shared dream of a people and their times. Popular culture, when its really popular, reveals something that resonates in the psyches of such people at the same time. The German word for this would be that it captures the zeitgeist: the spirit of the time. Though we're never aware of it, this is at the heart of all successful popular culture, And that is even more so when it crosses the threshold into the category of fad.
Be that as it may, something is missing from that description. What precisely is it that allows a TV show set a full half century ago to capture the modern zeitgeist? What is the success of a program like the Mad Men TV show?
I don't have the job description to qualify as providing some definitive explanation: I'm not a social psychologist or modern ethnographer. But I do have a few ideas.
First off, those who claim Mad Men's appeal lies in capturing a simpler time have me baffled. Are we watching the same show? That's not what I see weekly on my television screen. Surely no one is mistaking this for Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet. We have here a fifties and even early sixties that usually are pretty much invisible to the standard, mainstream cultural depiction: full of adultery, narcotics and ennui. Likewise, the show hardly downplays gruesome iconic political assassinations, the racial problems, gender inequalities nor the gradually approaching disaster of the Vietnam War. The popularity of the show could well in part be precisely the unusually candid depiction of such aspects of the era.
If it's just period accuracy you want, though, you can stop your dial at PBS. There is a whole other dynamic at work in the recipe for success of the Mad Men TV show. The production qualities can be itemized: yes, the writing is enthralling, full of profound character development and depicts real life adult conflict; the acting is superb; and the show is a constant delight visually, with meticulously accurate art work in settings and costumes and the luscious cinematography. That is of course perfectly true. There remains though something further, not accounted for in such descriptions.
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.
Challenges a plenty they may well have, but the characters of Mad Men won't be found whining over unfairness of life; they don't complain that daddy didn't show them any affection or mommy was heartless and cruel (though in some cases, that may well be true). They face life's roadblocks and obstacles free of our contemporary fixation on communication, introspection, finding ourselves and "working on" our emotional IQ. Mad Men reveals the last great era of Americana, before the guidance tyrants, emotion police and relationship regulators corrupted the culture.
Certainly, the social colonization of these so-called "experts" was already beginning at the time that Mad Med is set. This is gestured toward in the sub-plot of Betty's breakdown. The child psychologists, the local school snoops, the know-it-all therapists, talk show mental health snake oil salesmen and social engineering public policy savants, even then, were rearing their ugly heads. Mad Men though preserves for us a glimpse of an era before these self-righteous do-gooders had managed to hijack modern culture, reducing it to the current state of incipient therapeutics and runaway, claustrophobic paternalism.
It was a time before men were feminized, women were androgynized and children were pathologized. No one would say their life was perfect, that's not the point. The problems they did have, though, they dealt with on their own terms, free from the peeping toms and patronizing nannies poking noses into their lives. They didn't make their choices constantly inundated with judgments and accusations about the legitimacy of their feelings, ridiculing their choices and regulating their hopes and desires.
The Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons of their world were the last of a unique generation, freed of having theirs emotions, feelings and actions relentlessly monitored, judged and administered by the therapeutic class. They were free in a way strangely foreign to us. And I suspect that that's part of our fascinated with their world. So close to ours, but oh so far away. That is what we're talking about, in the end, when talking about Mad Men's secret success: old school cool.
Be that as it may, something is missing from that description. What precisely is it that allows a TV show set a full half century ago to capture the modern zeitgeist? What is the success of a program like the Mad Men TV show?
I don't have the job description to qualify as providing some definitive explanation: I'm not a social psychologist or modern ethnographer. But I do have a few ideas.
First off, those who claim Mad Men's appeal lies in capturing a simpler time have me baffled. Are we watching the same show? That's not what I see weekly on my television screen. Surely no one is mistaking this for Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet. We have here a fifties and even early sixties that usually are pretty much invisible to the standard, mainstream cultural depiction: full of adultery, narcotics and ennui. Likewise, the show hardly downplays gruesome iconic political assassinations, the racial problems, gender inequalities nor the gradually approaching disaster of the Vietnam War. The popularity of the show could well in part be precisely the unusually candid depiction of such aspects of the era.
If it's just period accuracy you want, though, you can stop your dial at PBS. There is a whole other dynamic at work in the recipe for success of the Mad Men TV show. The production qualities can be itemized: yes, the writing is enthralling, full of profound character development and depicts real life adult conflict; the acting is superb; and the show is a constant delight visually, with meticulously accurate art work in settings and costumes and the luscious cinematography. That is of course perfectly true. There remains though something further, not accounted for in such descriptions.
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.
Challenges a plenty they may well have, but the characters of Mad Men won't be found whining over unfairness of life; they don't complain that daddy didn't show them any affection or mommy was heartless and cruel (though in some cases, that may well be true). They face life's roadblocks and obstacles free of our contemporary fixation on communication, introspection, finding ourselves and "working on" our emotional IQ. Mad Men reveals the last great era of Americana, before the guidance tyrants, emotion police and relationship regulators corrupted the culture.
Certainly, the social colonization of these so-called "experts" was already beginning at the time that Mad Med is set. This is gestured toward in the sub-plot of Betty's breakdown. The child psychologists, the local school snoops, the know-it-all therapists, talk show mental health snake oil salesmen and social engineering public policy savants, even then, were rearing their ugly heads. Mad Men though preserves for us a glimpse of an era before these self-righteous do-gooders had managed to hijack modern culture, reducing it to the current state of incipient therapeutics and runaway, claustrophobic paternalism.
It was a time before men were feminized, women were androgynized and children were pathologized. No one would say their life was perfect, that's not the point. The problems they did have, though, they dealt with on their own terms, free from the peeping toms and patronizing nannies poking noses into their lives. They didn't make their choices constantly inundated with judgments and accusations about the legitimacy of their feelings, ridiculing their choices and regulating their hopes and desires.
The Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons of their world were the last of a unique generation, freed of having theirs emotions, feelings and actions relentlessly monitored, judged and administered by the therapeutic class. They were free in a way strangely foreign to us. And I suspect that that's part of our fascinated with their world. So close to ours, but oh so far away. That is what we're talking about, in the end, when talking about Mad Men's secret success: old school cool.
About the Author:
Mickey Jhonny writes as well for The Walking Dead celebration site, Pretty Much Dead Already, about the Walking Dead fanfiction and the Walking Dead news.
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