I’ve heard at least two interviews with the creator of the show in which he says that his inspiration for the show was to recreate his memory of his childhood and a key component of that memory was that people were smoking all the time. So I don’t think “Mad Men” was created merely as a payoff to Big Tobacco.
“Thank You for Smoking” was about an amoral smoking lobbyist. “Mad Men” is is set an era in which people smoked all the time. See the difference? “Mad Men” is not about smoking. It’s about people who smoke all the time. So, you kind of have to show them smoking all the time.
I think Mad Men is like The Sopranos in that the show doesn’t want to give you a character that you can identify with without reservations. They’re all flawed and they all do some pretty horrible things to each other.
Given that, the one character I find completely unwatchable is Betty Draper, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I find January Jones’s face and mannerisms extremely unattractive. Pete Campbell (the kid from Angel) is close behind her – I find him so bleargh that I have trouble looking at him when he’s on screen.
Everyone else is delicious to watch, especially Christina (Joan Holloway). Her strut just knocks me over.
No, but I bet they cash the checks anyway. Showing smoking is almost never by accident, it is almost always bought and paid for- even if intended by the scriptwriter.
Yes, I’m sure they took themselves perfectly seriously, but that’s not what I was saying. Can you really dismiss MAD Magazine’s contemporary satires, or movies of the era such as “A Face in the Crown,” or “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” etc., etc. (But you’ll never convince me that the casting of Robert Morse wasn’t a tip of the hat to “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” IRG the era’s corporate culture in general)
And as vital as advertising and its methods are at the consumer-end of the market (since I know I sure ran out and bought a sub-prime mortgage just because I saw a flash animation of two silhouettes dancing on a rooftop), before any of that stuff gets to the shelves, there is a monstrously huge manufacturing base and transportation train behind it; in which there are supply and maintenance offices with shelves of Gutenberg-Bible-sized manuals and catalogs from vendors and more manufactures filled with thousand of items which need to be decided upon and purchased or else everything would grind to a halt. And it all gets decided upon and purchased, without any catchy jingles being sung or three-martini lunches being drunk.
How do you explain that? (But only if its worth your while, please, and if you can do it without calling me silly and telling me I have my head up my ass. Pull that again and I’ll ask a mod to ponder if they agree with you that you’re doing us all such a big favor by gracing our message board and are above the “don’t be a jerk” rule)
Anyway, back to the show: will it be possible for the writers to do anything with this material and not have it appear that they are always asking “What Would JC Do?” (“JC” in this case being John Cheever.) That’s a tall order, and more possible to do with the female characters that with the males as they’ve been written so far.
I don’t believe this for a second. I’d ask for a cite, but I know there is none.
I don’t have a clue as to what you trying to say. Did (and does) advertising get satirized? Yes, of course. But that’s because it takes itself so seriously, not the reverse. Why should Man Men incorporate any of the satire when it would destroy the show?
Does advertising generate every sale at every level? An absurdity. Yet there are tens of thousands of trade journals thick with advertising for products that consumers have never heard of. Are every single one of them a waste? Does the firm you work for advertise? If so, where? And why? It apparently doesn’t work or mean anything. And there is absolutely no subprime crisis because nobody took out a subprime loan.
If you have a point of any sort, make it. You haven’t succeeded so far. If you have any understanding how advertising works, demonstrate it. You haven’t done so at all. Your statement that “Historically, it was understood by pretty much everyone that advertising was a deliberate insult to intelligence.” is on the level of DrDeth’s absurd speculation. It is an understatement to say that both are silly.
Re the smoking & drinking thing–it’s absolutely accurate! I remember how it was when I was a kid, when my dad the IBM exec used to have cocktail parties constantly. I learned how to bartend at the age of eight and everyone thought it was so cute when I’d stir the drinks with my finger then taste to “make sure I mixed it right.” Everyone smoked–my dad quit when I was about five but he was considered to be incredibly weird for having done so. Shoot, even when I had my daughter in '76 I was the only nonsmoker (AND the only mother breastfeeding!) in a hospital ward of six beds–they smoked in the middle of the night and when the babies were in the room, so gross! Shit, the fucking NURSES smoked in the rooms and hallways! Barf!
This show is so subversive in so many ways–I love the “boss coming home for dinner” schtick and getting so plowed he has to be directed to the right car and reminded to turn the headlights on as he screeched away. Also, the asshole boss hitting on Don’s wife in the kitchen–at first he got mad at her and accused her of instigating it, but then exacted a fabulous revenge by
[spoiler] Getting the asshole boss wildly drunk on martinis during a meal of literally DOZENS of raw oysters, complete with horseradish, Tabasco and lemon, then topping it all off with a gigantic slab of cheescake. He then bribes the elevator operator to declare the elevator out of order so the old, drunk fuck has to climb 23 flights of stairs–resulting in a truly embarrassing personal protein spill in the foyer, at the feet of the important client they were supposed to be meeting with. Fabulously done, not a hint of what was going on in Don’s mind at ALL! He’s smooooth…
How about the shrink reporting chapter and verse of Betty’s sessions to hubby? Is that squicky enough for you?
Oh, and while still spoilered, I’m weighing in that Peggy is knocked up with Newlywed Boy’s offspring and the resulting scandal is going to result in the use of that cute little rifle he just picked up… How creepy was that whole aiming at the secretaries thing? He freaks me out… [/spoiler]
You have some inside information on this you want to reveal? Television producers have widely ranging policies towards showing branded goods. Some fuzz out all brand names except the ones that have paid, some take special care to highlight brands that have paid, some (like Seinfeld) seek out payment after they have decided what brands are relevant to the script, and some refuse all payment for brands that are shown.
So unless you can show specifically that “Mad Men” has a paid placement deal with tobacco companies or some other fairly solid evidence, then it’s really just rank speculation.
And, furthermore, so what anyway? If Matt Weiner is keeping true to his artistic vision, then what does it matter if cigarette companies are paying him?
Another thing I find amusing is the food that they show Don’s wife preparing. Processed frozen foods, basically what we consider convenience foods for a one-person household or a two-income household. A full-time housewife, though? C’mon! You can do better than that!
I want to know what the deal is with Draper. I get the feeling there’s more going on in his background that hopefully the writers will address and not let fall by the wayside.
His revenge on his boss was primo. Subtle, but primo!
Pete scares me. He’s so cool and professional but his snarking at Peggy when she asked him to dance made me go “whuuuuuh!” There’s something disturbing about him, something that is going to go kaboom eventually.
Oh heck yeah. That and him sitting in his office with the rifle after his wife browbeat him into taking it back, and the soliloquy he delivers to Peggy about hunting…creepy!
Are you sure? There was a whole episode in which the catty women at the party take apart the struggling divorced mother who has to feed her family frozen foods, while Don’s wife is always being shown preparing roasts, chops and other full meals. She has a freezer for meats, but that was standard. You bought ahead. In that same party episode the single mother saves the day by bringing over a frozen Sara Lee cake, something that Betty would never have because she bakes her cakes from scratch.
Did you see what she serves her kids for lunch? Fishstix. All her vegetable dishes look like they were poured out of a can. The steak she served Don and Roger Sterling looked positively anemic.
The majority of stuff that she put into her cart in her aborted supermarket outing seemed to be canned or otherwise processed.
My take on the cattiness was that it was a demonstration of irony – the food they were serving their own families was only marginally if at all better than the aluminum-TV-tray dinners (remember those?) that the divorced woman was serving.
The roast that she made the night after the Sterling disaster – I took it to be out of the ordinary. Don said “Didn’t you hear? It’s only me tonight.”
The men make a point of saying “my wife’s cooking tonight” as a reason for not being able to join in – as if real cooking that takes a lot of effort is not routine, or at least not daily.