Amanda Marcotte on the advertising culture represented in Mad Men and its effect on youth rebellion:
The AMC series Mad Men, an hour-long drama about the lives and loves of Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early 1960s, may still want for a larger audience, but as its awards stack up, and many deem it the best show on television, it’s not wanting for critical reception.
In a way, it’s surprising that the show has marshaled such enthusiasm, since, on its surface, it seems to retread two of the most cliché themes of modern narrative: the repression and bigotry of 1950s America and the times-they-are-a-changing mood of the 1960s. The show has found a way to portray the 1960s without falling into the trap of revisiting, and refighting, the same culture wars. But what Mad Men really gets about the 1960s is a story that isn’t told as much: how much the era was about collapsing the boundaries of pop culture and lived experience, how the illusions we built up quit being fantasies and became indistinguishable from reality.