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.
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.
What's missing is an appreciation of that special something called, on this blog, the old school cool of Mad Men. It's so subtle initially that it can fly right under your cultural radar. But it's there; the most endearing accuracy in Mad Men's great inventory of 60s era authenticity is its illustration of a time before the colonizing of our modern world by the therapy gurus.
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. 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.
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.
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.
What's missing is an appreciation of that special something called, on this blog, the old school cool of Mad Men. It's so subtle initially that it can fly right under your cultural radar. But it's there; the most endearing accuracy in Mad Men's great inventory of 60s era authenticity is its illustration of a time before the colonizing of our modern world by the therapy gurus.
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. 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.
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 is lead writer at the Mad Men celebration cite, the Don Draper Haircut.
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