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.
Yet, as true as all that is, the particulars are missing from such an explanation. What is it in fact that a show set in a time a solid half century earlier is so perfectly capturing of the zeitgeist that it goes viral in the way that has the Mad Men TV show? This is another question.
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.
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, though, you can get from PBS. There's something else at work in the formula for success of the Mad Men TV show. Sure, the writing is great, full of deep character development and real life adult struggle; the acting is impeccable; and it is aesthetically delightful, with meticulously detailed attention to the art work in settings and costumes and the gorgeous cinematography. Yes, yes, all that is there, too. But there's still something more.
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.
Yes, it's true, this colonization of the culture by the "experts" was already beginning at this time, as hinted at with the story line around Betty's breakdown. The child psychologists, the prying school counselors, the know-it-all therapists, talk show emotional snake oil salesmen and big brother policy makers, even at this time, were rearing their ugly heads. But Mad Men shows a time before these sanctimonious do-gooders had succeeded in hijacking our society and reducing it to the current state of therapeutic culture and rampant, suffocating paternalistic political correctness.
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.
Yet, as true as all that is, the particulars are missing from such an explanation. What is it in fact that a show set in a time a solid half century earlier is so perfectly capturing of the zeitgeist that it goes viral in the way that has the Mad Men TV show? This is another question.
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.
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, though, you can get from PBS. There's something else at work in the formula for success of the Mad Men TV show. Sure, the writing is great, full of deep character development and real life adult struggle; the acting is impeccable; and it is aesthetically delightful, with meticulously detailed attention to the art work in settings and costumes and the gorgeous cinematography. Yes, yes, all that is there, too. But there's still something more.
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.
Yes, it's true, this colonization of the culture by the "experts" was already beginning at this time, as hinted at with the story line around Betty's breakdown. The child psychologists, the prying school counselors, the know-it-all therapists, talk show emotional snake oil salesmen and big brother policy makers, even at this time, were rearing their ugly heads. But Mad Men shows a time before these sanctimonious do-gooders had succeeded in hijacking our society and reducing it to the current state of therapeutic culture and rampant, suffocating paternalistic political correctness.
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.
