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'm no social psychologist or anthropologist of the modern, or whatever job description would presumably qualify one to provide a definitive explanation. 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.
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.
That something I've called I've called elsewhere the old school cool of Mad Men. The charm of lives lived with intention and absent cloying navel gazing. It subtle. Initially it can slip in under the radar. But it's there; the most compelling tidbit of authenticity in Mad Men's notorious inventory of 60s accuracy is the depiction of an era before the swamping of our society in the grim 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. No, life wasn't perfect, but whatever other problems people had, they didn't have to deal with the peeping toms and patronizing nannies poking noses into their lives, guilt-tripping them about their feelings, ridiculing their choices and regulating their pleasures.
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.
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'm no social psychologist or anthropologist of the modern, or whatever job description would presumably qualify one to provide a definitive explanation. 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.
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.
That something I've called I've called elsewhere the old school cool of Mad Men. The charm of lives lived with intention and absent cloying navel gazing. It subtle. Initially it can slip in under the radar. But it's there; the most compelling tidbit of authenticity in Mad Men's notorious inventory of 60s accuracy is the depiction of an era before the swamping of our society in the grim 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. No, life wasn't perfect, but whatever other problems people had, they didn't have to deal with the peeping toms and patronizing nannies poking noses into their lives, guilt-tripping them about their feelings, ridiculing their choices and regulating their pleasures.
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.
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