Mad Men, using the historical backdrop of the many events that came to demarcate the 1960s, has presented a beautifully-styled rendering of this tumultuous decade, while teasing out a number of themes that resonate throughout the show and connect to the contemporary discourses that dominate today's political landscape. The chapters of this book analyze the most important dimensions explored on the show, including issues around gender, race, prejudice, the family, generational change, the social movements of the 1960s, our understanding of America's place in the world, and the idea of work in the post-war period.
Mad Men and Politics provides the reader with an understanding not only of the topics and issues that can be easily grasped while watching, but also contemplates our historical perspective of the 1960s as we consider it through the telescope of our current condition.
Lilly J. Goren is Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Carroll University, USA. She is the author of You've Come a Long Way, Baby: Gender, Politics and Popular Culture (2010) and co-author of Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture and Presidential Politics (winner of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Susan Koppelman Award 2014).
Linda Beail is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Margaret Stevenson Center for Women's Studies at Point Loma Nazarene University, USA. She is co-author of Framing Sarah Palin: Pit Bulls, Puritans, and Politics (2012).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
The American Century
I. Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and The Remaking of America
Lilly J. Goren and Linda Beail
II. If You Don't Like What They Are Saying, Change the Conversation: The Grifter, Don Draper, and the Iconic American Hero
Lilly J. Goren
III. The Power Elite and Semi-Sovereign Selfhood in post-War America
Loren Goldman
IV. Cash or Credit?: Sex and the Pursuit of Happiness
Laurie Naranch
Business and Identity
V. Appearances, Social Norms, and Life in Modern America: Nationalism and Patriotism in Mad Men
Lawrence Heyman
VI. Going Groovy or Nostalgic: Mad Men and Advertising, Business, and Social Movements
Kate Edenborg
Those Seen and Not Seen, Heard and Not Heard
VII. Masculinity and Its Discontents: Myth, Memory and the Future on Mad Men
Denise Witzig
VIII. “You Can't Be a Man. So Don't Even Try”: Femininity and Feminism in Mad Men
Natalie Fuehrer Taylor
IX. Invisible Men: The Politics and Presence of Racial and Ethnic “Others” in Mad Men
Linda Beail
Conclusion
X. Tomorrowland: Contemporary Visions, Past Indiscretions
Rebecca Colton Josephson
Appendix I: Products of Mad Men
Appendix II: Episodes of Mad Men
Bibliography
Author Biographies
Index