Here is a link to a blog post about race and "Mad Men." Those who are interested in discussing such things here, I am interested in your comments:
[link]
Here is a statement from the opening paragraph:
Ultimately, Mad Men is a meditation on the lie of whiteness, suburbia, American prosperity and consumerism. In exposing this true lie as such, Mad Men deftly engages questions of power and identity in ways that often go unnoticed by the casual viewer (and frankly by many professional reviewers who to my astonishment have not commented on the centrality of race to the show's melodrama).
Man, I don't watch Mad Men, but that may have to change. And that blog post you linked is awesome, le nubian.
Mad Men seems to invite excellent discussion and essays.
Interview with the actress who played Miss Blankenship.
it could easily be read as "Go white privelidged male, with your manpain!"
I don't know how you can watch it without getting a constant reminder of This Is White Male Privilege At Work. They constantly expose the white men as slopping around in their privilege like pigs in shit, and they show how shitty it is.
That's exactly why characters we like indulge in all the casual racism and sexism, homophobia and antisemitism. They like the way the game plays because it's rigged in their favor and they never once stop to think about how it's rigged.
I don't know how you can watch it without getting a constant reminder of This Is White Male Privilege At Work.
Well, first you have to understand the concept of privilege and know that you have it. Many people do not.
Well, first you have to understand the concept of privilege and know that you have it. Many people do not.
Whether you understand the concept or not, that's what the show is exhibiting. It doesn't show the white guys misbehaving as outliers or socially unacceptable. It shows that their dickishness (I use the word advisedly) is the culture. It also shows how the women - Joan in particular - both supports and suffers from that system. How everybody participates to maintain that status quo; that's pretty much this season's subplot about the friction between Peggy and Joan.
Whether you understand the concept or not, that's what the show is exhibiting.
I agree, but that doesn't mean that a large portion of people watching it are missing the point. This board evolved out of a shared love of overanalyzing a TV show - we are not a representative sample of the general viewing population.
we are not a representative sample of the general viewing population.
Judging from the active fora I've seen eagerly awaiting in-depth analysis for Mad Men (AV Club, Sepinwall, Goodman, Coates, Tom & Lorenzo...) I think most people watching the show are in it for the complexity.
I don't see people talking about it now the way they did in the first season when there was much more interest in the look, and Don Draper as Superstud.
9. When will the 800 pound elephant in the room be dealt with: There is something amiss with Sally. She is oddly adult at times and is clearly the victim of more than parental dysfunction and divorce. The signals are all present: I would suggest that Sally was in fact molested by her grandfather. Thus, the root-spring of her sexual acting out earlier in this season.
I keep seeing this suggestion (that Sally was molested by Gene), and I have to ask if any of these bloggers remember being that age. Being "oddly adult at times" is what puberty IS. Figuring out masturbation? Ditto.
