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Mad Men
So, I rented Mad Men, and I have to say...I don't like it. Oh, I recognize what a high quality show it is, but I really don't like it. When the character I like the most is the one with the wife, the mistress, and the new girlfriend...something is seriously wrong. I dislike all the characters, and there are a few that I despise completely, to the point of wanting to turn of the tv when they are in the scene. It's not that I can't root for amoral people, but this isn't at the level of a Profit, where you're just waiting to see the new ways he destroys people. No, this show is about run-of-the-mill shitty behavior. Lives of quiet desperation, and all that. And I've never really gone for that. The only way I could watch The Ice Storm was by leaving it on and playing solitaire on the computer in the next room.
What really makes me uncomfortable is the rampant sexism, and the ways that women reinforce and tutor each other in their subservient roles. Yes, I get that this is part of the point--that they are showing what work environments were really like for women at the time, not some sanitized version, and are consequently showing how trapped both men and women were in that dynamic. But it's really hard to watch.
I think what I find interesting about the premise of the show is how advertising at that time created the American mythology--what it meant to be manly, or feminine, or American--in a way that we are still wrestling with. But I think I'd be happier with a documentary of the golden age of advertising. There's just not enough time in the show spent on the ads.
I'll finish out the season, but despite all the gushing I've heard over the show, I think that will be it for me. Sorry folks.
What really makes me uncomfortable is the rampant sexism, and the ways that women reinforce and tutor each other in their subservient roles. Yes, I get that this is part of the point--that they are showing what work environments were really like for women at the time, not some sanitized version, and are consequently showing how trapped both men and women were in that dynamic. But it's really hard to watch.
I think what I find interesting about the premise of the show is how advertising at that time created the American mythology--what it meant to be manly, or feminine, or American--in a way that we are still wrestling with. But I think I'd be happier with a documentary of the golden age of advertising. There's just not enough time in the show spent on the ads.
I'll finish out the season, but despite all the gushing I've heard over the show, I think that will be it for me. Sorry folks.