Clik here to view.
On the Mad Men backlash
Fair enough: Mad Men has been on for a long time, and there was bound to be a backlash at some point. What’s interesting to me, though, is the form the backlash has taken. Over and over, people are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Don Draper the Jew
One of the dominant themes of the first season of Mad Men is Jewishness. In the very first episode, Sterling Cooper is courting the Jewish department store Menken’s, which is trying to convert to a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“I’m not here to tell you about Jesus”: Don Draper and the Death of God
In the first-season episode “The Hobo Code,” which in many ways is the most important of the series, Don Draper is selling Peggy’s copy to a reluctant client. He goes on the offensive, asking them to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The abyss of freedom: On the recently-concluded season of Mad Men
This season of Mad Men was not much fun. Not that they ever really are — but this season was sad in a different way, a more anxiety-provoking way. We’re all sick of Don Draper by this point, sick to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Repetition and Remembering – Thoughts on the Season Finale of Mad Men
1) The Bar Scene – During this scene, I really worried Don was going to have a conversion experience to Xianity. Instead, he punched the minister for offering him salvation and for damning JFK and MLK...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heidegger and Mad Men
In the fifth chapter of Division Two of Being and Time, Heidegger addresses the question of Dasein’s historicity and how it relates to the academic discipline of history. He argues that authentic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Living in the prequel
Over the last year, The Girlfriend and I invested a truly appalling amount of time in a full viewing of all the contemporary Star Trek series (Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
All This: Mad Men and the Persistence of the Old Regime
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to childhood? Like pain from an old wound, we remember the joy of Christmas — the joy of getting stuff, without having to realize we were being bought off. We wish that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
As good as it gets: Mad Men and neoliberalism
It’s difficult to imagine the scale of the postwar abundance compared to previous eras. The US was not only able to completely tear out its old infrastructure and build new while also providing an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The commodity is the better Jesus: On the Mad Men finale
The Mad Men finale is doing two things at once. The first and most obvious is that it’s giving us some form of resolution for all our favorite characters. Most of these endings are happy — and even if...
View Article
