May 17, 2015, - 8:31 pm
Saying Good-Bye to “Mad Men”: Will You Be Watching? Leftist Take on Middle Class US
I’ve written a lot here about “Mad Men” (see also here), the AMC series, which ends its run tonight. Will you be watching the series finale?
The show, in case you aren’t aware, is an ensemble series that spanned the late 1950s through the early 1970s through seven seasons, finishing tonight. The show, about an advertising agency, centers around the suave, handsome Don Draper, a Korean War veteran played by Jon Hamm. His real name is Dick Whitman, but to get away from his real life as the son of a prostitute in a brothel, he’s assumed the identity of a dead fellow soldier. Thereafter, he’s fought his way from car salesman into the American middle class and ownership of a major Madison Avenue advertising agency in New York. He’s a serial adulterer and constantly brooding and yearning to be something he knows he really isn’t deep down. The show follows the glamor and social mores of that era, but exaggerates them, such as the amount of adultery and casual hedonism that went on and so forth.
I have a love-hate relationship with “Mad Men,” as long time readers know. I’ve noted that it’s largely an anti-male series (as if we need more of that), and you might even say it’s anti-military, since the two most sleazy characters on the show (Don Draper and Roger Sterling) are U.S. military vets. All of the men on the show are jerks. They are serial cheaters, alcoholics, and all-around jerks with no morals. Almost all of the women on the show are sympathetic, even when they do wrong. They are seen as “forced into it” by the times and a lack of job opportunities for women, such as when office manager Joan prostitutes herself and sleeps with a client in exchange for his advertising account and a partnership interest for her. Or when rising female advertising star Peggy has a child who is the product of an affair with a married advertising agency exec and then the child is all but forgotten, being raised by Peggy’s immediate family. Neither of these women are ever looked at as cads or perpetrators but, rather, victims. The men are the cads and the pathetic “bad boys.”
None of this is surprising, though, because the show is written mostly by women and it was created and is led by uber-liberal Matthew Weiner, an opponent of gun ownership who wants more gun control laws.
But what most people don’t get is that the show is also kind of anti-American. Weiner said he wrote the show the way he did because he wanted Americans who long for that era to see that, “You see, America wasn’t that great then, either.” He said exactly that in a magazine interview he gave a year or two ago. He doesn’t want us to long for that nicer, more civilized, non-Kardashian/Obama time in contemporary America. But we should. And, if that was his aim–as he claims–he failed miserably. Recent polls have shown that Americans–particularly American women–long for that era, its glamor, and the role of women then versus the post-feminist now.
The glamor and clothing are what I like most about the show. While I’m a contemporary person and love modern accoutrements, architecture, and clothing, I also love vintage stuff, particularly the design of clothing, jewelry, and some interior design of that era. The show is chock full of that. And it’s cool to look it. Eye candy for someone like me. If I could live in any era other than current times in America, it would be the era of the Wild West in the 1800s or it would be the era of “Mad Men.” So that makes it interesting to me.
Other than that, though, it’s a delicious soap opera that could have taken place in modern times, minus some of the changes in mores and values. It’s also well-written, entertaining, and full of suspense. That kills me because it has a very leftist agenda and is a not-so-veiled attempt at showing modern middle class American life as not so happy and satisfying a la “Revolutionary Road” (read my review). It attacks American life and the capitalist ideal in the same way F. Scott Fitzgerald did it in “The Great Gatsby.” So, if you enjoy watching it, as I do, you have to keep this agenda in the back–no, maybe in the forefront–of your mind.
The show has influenced modern day fashion for both men and women, especially at the beginning of the show’s run. And it has made big names out of virtual unknowns, all of them good actors, but some of them maybe not so deserving. Check out Jon Hamm’s dopey appearance on a dating game show, below, and read about his very sick apparent torture and burning of a frat brother, for which he apparently skated. His non-stop drinking on the show isn’t acting, since he recently did a 30 day stint in rehab for alcoholism.
I haven’t seen any of Season Seven of “Mad Men” yet, as mine is a cable-free household. I wait until each season comes out on DVD and then binge-watch it. But, if you watch tonight, feel free to comment here and leave spoilers. It won’t bother me, as the drama of the show is entertaining, even if you know what’s gonna happen.
So, have you been watching the show? Will you be watching tonight? Why or why not? For better or for worse, it’s a cultural phenomenon in America, or at least a pop culture phenomenon. And tonight’s last episode will be must-see viewing for millions, with many people buzzing about it probably for the next week.
Can’t wait ’til it comes out on DVD. Pour me an “Old Fashioned” in the meantime.
Tags: #MadMenFinale, AMC, Good-bye Mad Men, Jon Hamm, Jon Hamm Mad Men, Mad Men, Mad Men anti-American, Mad Men Finale, Saying Good-Bye to Mad Men
We don’t have cable either, so will have to buy it from Amazon tomorrow night for $1.99. It really spoiled it for me though when Matthew Weiner took a shot at Mitt Romney’s father (it wasn’t necessary). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/romney-mad-men-tagg-romney_n_1397017.html
MomInMinnesota on May 17, 2015 at 8:49 pm