Mad Men

My farm-boy upbringing in the 19th century without TV uniquely failed to prepare me for the excesses of popular programming. Consequently, it’s no secret that, unlike the desensitized general population, I’m a huge pussy can’t handle TV’s speed and impact[we're talking about someone who had to stop watching Six Feet Under, because of his obsessive lust for fictional Keith Charles(Matthew St. Patrick)]

Now, in pseudo-preparation for the second season premiere of AMC’s much-hyped Mad Men, I’m watching the first season and dislike it. Mad Men is obsessively period–it’s set in the heady advertising years of the ’60s- but is so overboard that it simply becomes a caricature-ish wet dream of what 2008 wishes the decade was like. Everyone smokes, the costumes are spot-on, but there is a mania for demonstrating the ruthless sexism, anti-semitism, and homophobia of the period that exaggerates and makes manifest what surely must have been a much more subtle and pervasive social tone. The script of Mad Men is funny and well-written, but it amounts, nonetheless, to a semi-obscene bout of back-patting. “Look at us!”, the characters scream, “we live in the early 60s and it’s sooooo backward! Good for you, 2008!” Jew jokes alternating with quips about women’s place sprinkle the script so heavily that the period is re-envisioned as a no-holds-barred, non-stop verbal artillery attack on women and minorities. This is not to say, of course, that this kind of thing didn’t take place, but it surely was not so overtly exhibited. Weiner, rather than capturing the 60s, has rewritten them.

~ by genghiskuhn on July 25, 2008.