Mad Men: Serialized Television Narrative and Depictions of Social History in the Early 1960s
The acclaimed cable television drama Mad Men depicts the process of cultural change in early 1960s America through narratives of the personal and professional lives of men and women in a New York City advertising agency.
The series two most central protagonists, creative director Don Draper and secretary-turned-writer Peggy Olson, are attempting to:
- re-make themselves and re-tell their own stories,
- while working in an advertising industry that defines desires and creates narratives to sell products,
- at a time in which the country is re-making itself, re-telling the story of what it means to be an American and who can participate in the telling of that story
In this independent study, we will examine both the social history of the early 1960’s, and the ways in which this serialized television narrative tells the story of cultural change in this period (1960 – 1965).
From that examination, we will also look at larger questions. Contemporary politics and popular culture debate the meaning of “the sixties” through broad symbols and shorthand references. Does this study of Mad Men and the social history of the early 1960s tell us something about the current cultural fault lines that are seen as resulting from “the sixties”? Can it tell us something about which cultural changes have been accepted and absorbed by American culture and which are still up for debate?
A note on reading assignments:
The book Mad Men: Dream Come True TV, a collection of scholarly essays on Mad Men edited by Gary R. Edgerton, will be published April 26, 2011. The essays will be assigned reading and integrated with the syllabus as appropriate.
A note on viewing assignments:
The entire series to date is required viewing (four seasons to date of 13 episodes each). The episodes mentioned below are highlighted for additional examination.
Writing Assignments and Evaluation:
Reading Responses (Blog posts during each unit of the syllabus) |
Book Review (1500 word review of Mad Men: Dream Come True TV) |
Final Paper (20 page final research paper) |
Reading and Viewing Assignments:
Week 1-2 -- Overview of Television Storytelling & Serialized Narrative
“From Beats to Arcs: Towards a Poetics of Television Narrative”, Michael Z. Newman
Storytelling in Film and Television, Kristin Thompson
Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen, Glen Creeber
Mad Men episodes:
1.6 “Babylon”
2.7 “The Gold Violin”
2.12 “The Mountain King”
3.6 “Guy Walks in to an Advertising Agency”
3.11 “The Gypsy and the Hobo”
4.4 “The Rejected”
Week 3-4 -- The “Crisis of Conformity” in the late ‘50s
The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank, chapters 1-3
The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman
“The White Negro”, Norman Mailer
The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment, Barbara Ehrenreich
Mad Men episodes:
1.1 “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”
1.8 “The Hobo Code”
2.11 “The Jet Set”
3.7 “Seven Twenty Three”
4.7 “The Suitcase”
Week 5-6 – Changes in Advertising and American Culture
Conquest of Cool, chapters 4 – 8
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard
A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, Lizabeth Cohen
The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, chapters 1-2
Mad Men episodes:
3.2 “Love Among the Ruins”
3.13 “Shut the Door. Have a Seat”
4.5 “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”
4.7 “The Suitcase”
4.11 “Chinese Wall”
Week 7-9 – Feminine Mystique and the early Women’s Movement
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, Stephanie Coontz
Sex and the Single Girl, Helen Gurley Brown
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, Jennifer Scanlon
Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks, Alice Echols, chapters 1-4
Mad Men Episodes:
1.3 “Ladies’ Room”
1.13 “The Wheel”
2.6 “Maidenform”
3.8 “Souvenir”
4.9 “The Beautiful Girls”
Week 10-12 – Political Change and Social Change / Re-telling the American Story in the Early 1960s
Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Todd Gitlin, chapters 1-7
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, Taylor Branch
Mad Men Episodes:
1.12 “Nixon vs. Kennedy”
2.13 “Meditations in an Emergency”
3.3 “My Old Kentucky Home”
3.12 “The Grown-Ups”
4.13 “Tomorrowland”
Week 13-15 -- Final Paper
I received a question via e-mail that seemed worth answering here as well for anyone who may be using this syllabus as a reference. The questioner asked how I narrowed down my list of required reading from hundreds of potential titles related to the history of the Sixties.
ReplyDeleteI have a bookshelf full of titles on Sixties history, as well as works of sociology, political commentary, and cultural commentary related to changes in American history and culture since World War II. For the initial planning of the syllabus, I selected the greatest hits of those works that (a) covered the period of 1960-1965, the time in which the first four seasons of the series are set, and (b) covered themes of cultural change that seemed related to the series.
In retrospect, as am more than halfway through the writing of the final paper as I write this comment, I would include the following two titles as required reading (perhaps dropping others): Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein and Framing the Sixties: the Use and Abuse of a Decade by Bernard von Bothmer. Although both titles are about history that occurs after 1965, they address political and cultural uses of "the Sixties" as a symbol, which are relevant to Mad Men's approach to history (which I will explain further in the paper).
Additionally, for those looking for a grounding of the basic contours of American history in this period, I'd also recommend relevant chapters of James T. Patterson's Great Expectations, which offers a concise but thorough history of the United States between 1945 and 1972.