A friend recently asked if it was fair to attribute the success of MAD MEN to Americans yearning for glamor in the midst of economic crisis.
Since Gawker says poor people don’t watch the show, they’d probably agree.
An article by TIM GRIFFIN in last month’s Art Forum suggests that it functions as an allegory for today’s United States, “where, underlying the political volleys of Left and Right alike, lurks the anxious suspicion (and in some quarters, denial) that the determinants of cultural identity during the past century — energy, resources, wealth, power — have already assumed radically different characters, even as they are yet to be quantified and articulated in the popular consciousness.”
Translation: in many ways we’re a country full of Don Drapers, scratching our heads in wonder that a Kennedy can trump a Nixon.
Or at least we were.
A lot has been made of what effect the Obama presidency will have on comedy, but do you think it will also play a hand in what we look for in our dramas?
Will Season 3 prove too dark for a nation that’s still hopped up on hope?