Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s ISBN: 9780822399063 Platform/Publisher: e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection / Duke University Press Digital rights:Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: chapter Subjects: Film & Television Studies; Cultural Studies; American Studies;
One of the most critically acclaimed and culturally fetishized television shows of the past decade receives an intellectual deconstruction in this collection of academic essays. Sixteen entries address the broad range of historical, cultural, and philosophical elements of the series' settings, situations, and characters. Collectively, they combat the show's "altered... vision of the 1960s, and of pastness itself." This is done most eloquently in Jeremy Varon's piece, "History Gets in Your Eyes: Mad Men, Misrecognition, and the Masculine Mystique," wherein he argues that the show is rooted in fantasy, and while the program "does not entirely escape the question of history," it does miss "an opportunity to engage it more deeply." Mabel Rosenheck asserts in "Swing Skirts and Swinging Singles: Mad Men, Fashion & Cultural Memory" that the show's meticulous detail derives not from a desire to achieve historical accuracy but from a "contemporary negotiation of past and present and a representation of the performance of cultural memory." Throughout the book are intelligent discussions dissecting the central themes addressed in the show, such as masculinity and feminism, identity, and race relations and representations. Perhaps too academic for the casual Mad Men fan, the book nevertheless accomplishes the admirable feat of offering considerable critique and examination from a standpoint of admiration and fandom. Photos. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Lauren M. E. Goodlad is University Scholar, Associate Professor of English, and Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic: Realism, Sovereignty, and Transnational Experience (forthcoming) and a coeditor of Goth: Undead Subculture , also published by Duke University Press.
Lilya Kaganovsky is Associate Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of How the Soviet Man Was Unmade .
Robert A. Rushing is Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Resisting Arrest: Detective Fiction and Popular Culture .
