(more photos at Yahoo! TV)
That very popular show on AMC. A critique at Taki's Mag. A response and defense of the show at @TAC. And a piece at Whiskey's Place (the author is the same person who categorized shows as being for men or for women).
I've watched maybe one episode of Mad Men on TV. I wasn't really paying attention to what was being said; it didn't really hold my attention. I do find the split in opinion between a contributor to Taki's Mag and the regulars at @TAC to be fascinating, though. What is a traditional conservative to think of the show? (Is it really focused too much on existential questions of identity and purpose? A pointed critique of the "American way of life"?)
More Links:
wiki
AMC Blogs
Mad Men Show
Basket of Kisses
3 comments:
My husband was watching it last night and I really do not know what to think so this post is helpful!
I've not seen it yet!
But I see the problems from a traditionalist conservative's point of view.
We're often made fun of as worshipping the 1950s (the cultural ’50s were from about 1954 to 1965). I admit unashamedly I like them a lot. I was born too late — I like both the depictions actually from the period (old films and television) and the historical approach (trying to be accurate and including the bad aspects of life back then) that shows like this take. Not dumbed-down, inaccurate nostalgia like 'Happy Days'!
Based on another 'historical-approach' show about the period that I like a lot (mainly a cop/adventure show but it tried to be realistic), I'd say the trad sees some of the same problems the liberal does (unfairness because of race for example) but also that overall it was a better time, something many/most ordinary people who remember it will agree with. But he also sees the problems that worsened or begat the destruction in the late 1960s: the nihilism/amorality (lying for a living in the cutthroat world of advertising), the blind belief in 'progress' and the related blind faith in government (the romance of JFK/Camelot).
I think for all the show's and period's problems there's something more than hipster condescension fuelling this show's appeal.
I like my computer (obviously) and microwave but I think like most of this show's viewers I'd like to bring back a lot of the style and the upright values people at least gave lip service to back then.
P.S. As an old friend recently said about the show, everybody looks so refined and grown-up. Ordinary people often were, more so than now.
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