Synopses & Reviews
Since premiering in July 2007, Mad Men has won many awards and been syndicated across the globe. Its imprint is evident throughout contemporary culture—from TV advertisements and magazine covers to designer fashions and online debate. Its creator, Matthew Weiner, a former executive producer on The Sopranos, has again created compelling, complex characters, this time in the sophisticated, go-go world of Madison Avenue of the 1960s, with smoking, drinking, and the playing out of prejudices and anxieties of an era long neglected in popular culture. As Edgerton and a host of other well-known contributors demonstrate here, Mad Men is a zeitgeist show of the early twenty-first century.
Review
"Rammed with exclusive interviews and beyond-nerd observation. The next best thing to a Dirty Don Draper (dark rum and even darker sugar) in the Blue Bar of the Algonquin."-- Antonia Quirke, Sunday Times, December 2010
Synopsis
Don and Betty Draper live in a picture-perfect world. He is a hard-living advertising executive - a 'mad man' - on the fast track. She's a Bryn Mawr graduate and former fashion model, now a suburban princess, mother of three children. If they've everything, why are they so unhappy? Why is their dream come true not enough? This book explores, analyses, celebrates the world of "Mad Men" in all its aspects, and includes an interview with it's Executive Producer and an episode guide. Every few years a new television program comes along to capture and express the zeitgeist. "Mad Men" is now that show. Since premiering in July 2007, it's won many awards and is syndicated across the globe. Its imprint is evident throughout contemporary culture, from features to fashions and online debate. Its creator Matthew Weiner, a former exec producer on "The Sopranos", has created again compelling, complex characters, this time in the sophisticated go-go world of Madison Avenue through the 1960s, with the excessive drinking and smoking, as well as the playing out of the prejudices and anxieties of an era long neglected in popular culture.
"Mad Men" is a zeitgeist show of the early twenty-first century, this book demonstrates, partly because its characters are an earlier, confused and conflicted version of ourselves, trying to make the best of a future unfolding at breakneck speed.
About the Author
Dr. Gary R. Edgerton is the newly appointed Dean of the College of Communication at Butler University. He most recently was Eminent Scholar, Professor, and Chair of the Communication and Theatre Arts Department at Old Dominion University. He has published ten books and more than seventy-five essays on a variety of television, film, and culture topics in a wide assortment of books, scholarly journals, and encyclopedias.
Table of Contents
*Acknowledgments * Contributors * Foreword: From Rod Serling to Roger Sterling -- Robert Thompson * Introduction: When Our Parents Became Us -- Gary R. Edgerton * Part 1: Industry and Authorship * The Selling of Mad Men: A Production History -- Gary Edgerton * ‘If Its Too Easy, Then Usually Theres Something Wrong: An Interview with Mad Mens Executive Producer Scott Hornbacher -- Brian Rose * Don Draper Confronts the Maddest Men of the Sixties: Bob Dylan and George Lois -- Ron Simon * Part 2: Visual and Aural Stylistics and Influences * ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Historicizing Visual Style in Mad Men -- Jeremy Butler * Uneasy Listening: Music, Sound, and Criticizing Camelot in Mad Men -- Tim Anderson * Suggestive Silence in Season One -- Maurice Yacowar * Part 3: Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy * Learning to Live with Television in Mad Men -- Horace Newcomb * Space Ships and Time Machines: Mad Men and the Serial Condition -- Sean OSullivan* ‘The Catastrophe of My Personality: Frank OHara, Don Draper, and the Poetics of Mad Men -- David Lavery * Part 4: Sexual Politics and Gender Roles * Mad Women -- Mimi White * Women on the Verge of the Second Wave -- Mary Beth Haralovich * The Best of Everything: The Limits of Being a Working Girl in Mad Men -- Kim Akass and Janet McCabe * Part 5: Cultural Memory and the American Dream * Men Behaving like Boys: The Culture of Mad Men -- William Siska * The Strange Career of Mad Men: Race, Paratexts, and Civil Rights Memory -- Allison Perlman * Mad Men: A Roots Tale of the Information Age -- David Marc * Creative Team and Cast List * Episode Guide * General Index * Television Series Index *