Mad Men

by Gary R. Edgerton

Overview

A captivating and analytical compendium to the hit show - and its creation, story, and impact on contemporary media and popular culture.

This one-stop primer offers a succinct analysis of one of the most skillfully produced, artistically innovative, and culturally resonant scripted series in modern television. It opens by explaining how Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015) functions as a representative example of much deeper and more profound structural changes happening in television since the 2000s. Gary R. Edgerton highlights influences driving the creation of the show, including creator Matthew Weiner’s personal connections to the subject matter and the development of the main character, Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Analysis of the show’s story progression is delineated by a pivotal shift from a culturally relevant Zeitgeist phenomenon to a narrative more concerned with Draper’s introspective and existential journey to reconciliation and self-awareness. Cultural reflections are also explored with interrogations of privilege and prejudice, the American Dream, ethnicity, race, gender politics, and class as witnessed through the program’s complex and conflicted characters.
Following its debut, Mad Men quickly became a bellwether of contemporary culture. The award-winning series set the creative standard in drama over the span of its initial run and is now recognized as a milestone in the history and development of scripted television. Throughout its seven seasons, the series struck a delicate balance of being both complex and cerebral while also entertaining and accessible, a balance that Edgerton skillfully carries over to this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814345474
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Series:	TV Milestones
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Gary R. Edgerton is professor of creative media and entertainment at Butler University. He has published twelve books, including The Sopranos (Wayne State University Press, 2013), and more than ninety essays on a variety of television, film, and cultural topics.

Table of Contents

*Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Foreword: From Rod Serling to Roger Sterling -- Robert Thompson
• Introduction: When Our Parents Became Us -- Gary R. Edgerton
• Part 1: Industry and Authorship
• The Selling of Mad Men: A Production History -- Gary Edgerton
• ‘If It’s Too Easy, Then Usually There’s Something Wrong’: An Interview with Mad Men’s Executive Producer Scott Hornbacher -- Brian Rose
• Don Draper Confronts the Maddest Men of the Sixties: Bob Dylan and George Lois -- Ron Simon
• Part 2: Visual and Aural Stylistics and Influences *  ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’: Historicizing Visual Style in Mad Men -- Jeremy Butler
• Uneasy Listening: Music, Sound, and Criticizing Camelot in Mad Men -- Tim Anderson
• Suggestive Silence in Season One -- Maurice Yacowar
• Part 3: Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy
• Learning to Live with Television in Mad Men -- Horace Newcomb
• Space Ships and Time Machines: Mad Men and the Serial Condition -- Sean O’Sullivan* ‘The Catastrophe of My Personality’: Frank O’Hara, Don Draper, and the Poetics of Mad Men -- David Lavery
• Part 4: Sexual Politics and Gender Roles
• Mad Women -- Mimi White
•  Women on the Verge of the Second Wave -- Mary Beth Haralovich
• The Best of Everything:  The Limits of Being a Working Girl in Mad Men -- Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
• Part 5: Cultural Memory and the American Dream
• Men Behaving like Boys: The Culture of Mad Men  -- William Siska
• The Strange Career of Mad Men: Race, Paratexts, and Civil Rights Memory -- Allison Perlman
• Mad Men: A Roots Tale of the Information Age -- David Marc
• Creative Team and Cast List
• Episode Guide *  General Index
• Television Series Index
•

What People are Saying About This

Professor of Television and Popular Culture, Syracuse University - Robert Thompson

From the first scene ('I love smoking') to the last ('I'd like to buy the world a Coke'), Mad Men was all about packaging. With compact precision, venerable television historian Gary Edgerton describes how this remarkable series employed the new aptitudes of twenty-first-century television to repackage the 1960s.

2021) and Co-Editor of the Legacy of Mad Men Karen McNally of American Television During a Television Presidency (Wayne State University Press

Gary Edgerton's comprehensive understanding of Mad Men makes this book a delicious feast for readers. With production research, astute analysis, and detailed readings throughout, Edgerton demonstrates why Mad Men remains one of the smartest and most culturally relevant dramas produced by American television.

Associate Professor in Media and Communication, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand - Trisha Dunleavy

Gary Edgerton's meticulous research and industrial/cultural expertise has yielded a rich study of Mad Men that those familiar with this acclaimed show will treasure. It provides a 'one-stop' account by deploying the multifaceted analysis that is Edgerton's forte, allowing Mad Men's significance to be demonstrated socioculturally, creatively, and industrially. This fascinating book explains why Mad Men—a show about advertising in the 1960s yet one whose overarching obsession is the 'high-wire act' performed by Don Draper—so successfully engaged its contemporary audience through its critical reassessment of a much-celebrated yet manifestly flawed past.

Professor of Media Studies, Auburn University - George Plasketes

As a Triple Crown historian, critic, and fan, the ever-eloquent Gary Edgerton dexterously shape-shifts through the period drama as if a partner in the Sterling Cooper Ad Agency, Don Draper's psychotherapist, and Matthew Weiner's production assistant. The keenly crafted chronicle is comprehensive and richly contextualized, a graceful and singular exploration of a touchstone series in which Edgerton identifies, interprets, and illuminates nuances that the rest of us mere Mad Men mortals overlook. Profound and penetrating are understatements. This is another casually brilliant masterpiece from one of the preeminent and prolific voices in media culture criticism.

Marjolaine Boutetn Studies Professor at Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University and Tv Series Critic

To understand how and why Mad Men made history, read this book! Gary Edgerton offers here a much-needed and comprehensive historian's perspective on a historic and historical TV series. For TV lovers and history buffs alike.

Editorial Reviews

Edgerton’s smart analysis highlights the brilliant ways that Mad Men punctured rose-colored views of the ’60s, and the behind-the-scenes stories captivate. Fans will be enthralled.

Publisher's Weekly

From the first scene (‘I love smoking’) to the last (‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’), Mad Men was all about packaging. With compact precision, venerable television historian Gary Edgerton describes how this remarkable series employed the new aptitudes of twenty-first-century television to repackage the 1960s.

professor of television and popular culture, Syracuse University - Robert Thompson

To understand how and why Mad Men made history, read this book! Gary Edgerton offers here a much-needed and comprehensive historian’s perspective on a historic and historical TV series. For TV lovers and history buffs alike.

Marjolaine Boutetn studies professor at Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University and TV series critic

As a Triple Crown historian, critic, and fan, the ever-eloquent Gary Edgerton dexterously shape-shifts through the period drama as if a partner in the Sterling Cooper Ad Agency, Don Draper’s psychotherapist, and Matthew Weiner’s production assistant. The keenly crafted chronicle is comprehensive and richly contextualized, a graceful and singular exploration of a touchstone series in which Edgerton identifies, interprets, and illuminates nuances that the rest of us mere Mad Men mortals overlook. Profound and penetrating are understatements. This is another casually brilliant masterpiece from one of the preeminent and prolific voices in media culture criticism.

professor of media studies, Auburn University - George Plasketes

Gary Edgerton’s comprehensive understanding of Mad Men makes this book a delicious feast for readers. With production research, astute analysis, and detailed readings throughout, Edgerton demonstrates why Mad Men remains one of the smartest and most culturally relevant dramas produced by American television.

editor of American Television during a Television Presidency (Wayne State University Press, 2021) and co-editor of The L - Karen McNally

Gary Edgerton’s meticulous research and industrial/cultural expertise has yielded a rich study of Mad Men that those familiar with this acclaimed show will treasure. It provides a ‘one-stop’ account by deploying the multifaceted analysis that is Edgerton’s forte, allowing Mad Men’s significance to be demonstrated socioculturally, creatively, and industrially. This fascinating book explains why Mad Men—a show about advertising in the 1960s yet one whose overarching obsession is the ‘high-wire act’ performed by Don Draper—so successfully engaged its contemporary audience through its critical reassessment of a much-celebrated yet manifestly flawed past.

associate professor in media and communication, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand - Trisha Dunleavy

To understand how and why Mad Men made history, read this book! Gary Edgerton offers here a much-needed and comprehensive historian’s perspective on a historic and historical TV series. For TV lovers and history buffs alike.

American studies professor at Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University and TV series critic - Marjolaine Boutet

*Rammed with exclusive interviews and beyond-nerd observation. The next best thing to a Dirty Don Draper (dark rum and even darker sugar) in the Blue Bar of the Algonquin.*— Antonia Quirke, Sunday Times, December 2010
 
*In this stunning collection, a stellar lineup of television scholars explains why Mad Men is the most important work of *filmed entertainment* on any America screen in the past decade-including The Sopranos, which may have ushered in a new golden age of American television, but has been long since eclipsed by this brilliant series.  And while building the case that original cable series like Mad Men are now the gold standard in contemporary American culture, this compendium of consistently compelling, insightful essays also indicates that the most exciting work in media studies today is being done by television scholars.*-Thomas Schatz, Philip G. Warner Regents Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin

*Gary Edgerton brings together leading TV scholars who think about the creators, stories, visual design, and cultural significance of AMC's break away hit.  A terrific set of essays that not only sheds light on Mad Men but also on the role that TV plays in depicting the American dreams-and nightmares-of the Baby Boom past.*-Lynn Spigel, Frances E. Willard Professor of Screen Cultures at Northwestern University

*Matthew Weiner's Mad Men is all about the hidden meanings behind sleek surfaces and evasive silences, and Gary Edgerton's collection of essays cleverly mines those depths for a rich bounty of treasure.  Some of the sharpest TV-analysis minds around-Horace Newcomb, Ron Simon, David Marc, Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, David Lavery and others-tackle Mad Men from angles both required and refreshing.  Music and props, race and sexism, costuming and lighting, poetry and literature, even the DVD extras and the TV shows these characters watch-all of it is covered, and uncovered, in one thoughtful readable essay after another.*-David Bianculli of TVWorthWatching.com and TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air

*Some of the leading names in television studies bring their analytical abilities to one of the best television shows of all time, considering Mad Men from industrial, ideological, and aesthetic perspectives. A winning collection-highly recommended!* -Dr. Roberta Pearson, Professor of Film and Television Studies and Director of the Institute of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham

From the Publisher