What I Have Learned From “Mad Men”: Now I Am Beginning To Understand

www.politicalcastaway.com ^ | 04 Nov 09 | Pitcairn

[Pitcairn]

For many months now, many of my posts have been, admittedly, overly lamenting the on “loss” of American culture. As a member of Generation X, perhaps I have often been very overly vitriolic in my opinion that life is just not as it once was in America.

I recently watched my first few episodes of the series “Mad Men” on DVD. And the experience has been enlightening on my own view of American culture and cathartic of my own personal history.

I must say, I am coming to grips with my own political views. And my watching a TV show has never been as so meaningful as when I watched my first episode of “Mad Men.” My comparison is only as close as when watching my favorite TV shows as a child—most of which were reruns of 1960s classics.

This is not to say that “Mad Men” has transformed me into some born-again liberal. Far from it. But it has certainly helped in my understanding of the personal revulsion I have for modern-American culture. Here are my thoughts.

[Tainan]

Dude...its a vanity.

What are your thoughts?

[period end of story]

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, world.

[unsycophant]

Sixties soap opera.

[period end of story]

Edge of night.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Mad Men is a poor point of departure for such musings on the 60s because it portrays those times through the twisted imagination of liberals.

See:

What Mad Men Gets Wrong — The fifties, a decade of forgotten loyalty, honor, and patriotism

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374073/posts

“No mystery there, since in its depiction of the fifties and early sixties, Mad Men faithfully reflects the dominant liberal view of that era as a time of rampant materialism, spiritless conformity, and reflexive bigotry. The corollary is that we were redeemed—liberated—not just by the civil rights movement but by the antiwar, feminist, and sexual-liberation crusades that followed. So ubiquitous is this view that its adherents can scarcely mention Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, or Leave It to Beaver, even in print, without sneering. Almost any graduate of today’s public schools will tell you, and plenty of their aging antiwar moms and dads will agree, that their grandparents were racist, sexist, and shockingly homophobic, and that’s before you even get to the hypocrisy that characterized their interpersonal relations.”

[Pitcairn]

Don't disagree. My one beef with the show is an apparent overblown characterization of the white men that star in it. If anything, the white male executives of that time had more honor and manners that the idiots of Generation Y and beyond that do not even know how to hold a folk and knife correctly.

[tlb]

The primary lesson to be taken from “Mad Men” is under NO circumstances is it good office policy to allow your secretary a joyride on a riding lawnmower.

[MestaMachine]

The only thing that “Mad Men” proves is that people will watch anything and think it means something. It’s a fantasy. Think FOR YOURSELF, for GOD’S Sake!
Right and wrong never changes. Good and evil never changes.
I haven’t watched a sitcom or a series except for sci-fi for over a decade. And even with sci-fi you got to watch for the agitprop.
Never watched idol, or any of that crap...because it’s CRAP. If you really think you can learn life lessons from a TV show, PLEASE eat lots of fish or some other brainfood and come away from your couch and in to the real world.

[SampleMan]

Its fiction, not a documentary. You know, like a Michael Moore movie.

[wastoute]

Check Sir Barleycorn. Youngun', listen to those of us who were THERE in the 50s and 60s. Most of us were going to church every week, singing in the choir, EVERY Memorial Day and Labor Day EVERYONE in town turned out for the parade. We ALL knew someone personally who had suffered "over there" and we wanted them all to know how much we REALIZED how they had sacrificed and were appreciated. We happily recited the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school and at my high school we all had to memorize, yes MEMORIZE, not just the Declaration of Independence, and not just the Preamble but THE WHOLE DAMN CONSTITUION. And that was by Christmas, we spent the rest of the year talking about what those documents meant and the reasons for the PRECISE wording of those documents. Those times were very different. That was what made the "Sixties" such a contrast. In ten years we went from a country where you married your high school sweetheart and settled down at the job you would have for the rest of you life, joined the church you got married in where you would have your funeral to "Why bother with marriage and a carreer when Suzie down the street will sleep with me whenever I want and in between I can get stoned and listen to the Beatles?" Of course, now we know what was wrong with that but it seemed pretty sweet at the time. So there you have it. It is OUR fault, but trust me the '50s were nothing like any TV show out of Hollywood in the last 40 years. "Leave it to Beaver" is probably the closest thing to what the reality was.

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[bmwcyle]

I found “Mad Men” to be just another Soap Opera.

[HHFi]

I remember when I was a kid in the mid-’60s. My favorite show was “Leave It To Beaver,” which at that time was only a few years out of production and in local reruns. As the younger of two boys in a family with both a mother and father, I clearly remember thinking that that show seemed exactly like my life. Sometimes, the embarrassing scrapes Beaver would get into would almost perfectly mirror problems I had in school (dealing with a bully, having to get up the courage to admit you broke a rule or a vase, etc.) They seem minor and laughable now, but to a kid, they were end-of-the-world problems, and I couldn’t get over how well that show understood my feelings. The writers really knew what it was like to see the world through the eyes of a kid.

Nowadays, “Leave It To Beaver” is usually only mentioned when some leftist snot sneers at Republicans that “Leave It To Beaver” America never really existed. That’s odd. It existed in my house, with its intact family, good moral values, and strict but loving parents. Maybe if it had existed in their houses, they wouldn’t have grown up to be such nasty, cynical, judgmental dillweeds.

[ikka]

You are watching an admittedly fictional portrayal, ON TV, and think that you know something more than you did when you sat down to watch. That is the problem.

Read "Destructive Generation" by Collier and Horowitz, then, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman and you will begin to understand.

[gussiefinknottle]

I think “Leave it to Beaver” is one of the best written shows ever.
The ear for kids dialogue is perfect. The small, but meaningful
situations are resolved in a touching, delicate manner.
I have found it almost Joycean in depiction of the time,
and it rings true to my own early childhood.