MAD MEN

“If you don't like what is being said, change the conversation”— this is Don Draper's master rule for managing conflictual interactions with people at a dialogic level. In the Mad Men world, this process usually requires the capacity to shift the perspective from which an idea, a discourse or a fact is approached so as to attract one's interlocutor(s) toward a terrain that is familiar, safe. In a world of this kind, populated by individuals who have mastered the art of persuasion (and manipulation), the meaning of things— ranging from words uttered to acts performed and feelings experienced— is not apparent, but rather stratified, hidden among the many layers that constitute the nuances of human behavior. An intricate world, it needs to be followed with attention, processed, interpreted and reinterpreted. A TV series that turns on this paradigm may well be a “difficult” text for its viewers, but both the popularity of the show and the participants in this study suggest that viewers are attracted by the challenge, finding in the complexity of the storylines and characters’ profiles a potent stimulus for dedicated viewing. With Mad Men, therefore, it is essential to start from the text, from the themes, visual attributes and human portraits that enliven the fabric of its story-world, so as to properly understand the emotional responses that the program is capable of generating and that, in turn, substantially impact on fans’ modes of engagement with this show. In this chapter, the characteristics of Mad Men are examined through focus group participants’ comments on the various textual elements that contribute to the series’ fascination, both in terms of its accurate historical recreation and subtlety of the narrative.

ADVERTISING THE 1960s: THE NOTION OF “NOSTALGIA”

Let's start from the title. In the first place, “Mad Men” stands for “the Men of Madison Avenue.” In the story-world of the show, Madison Avenue identifies the street, in New York City, where the most important advertising agencies had their offices and headquarters from the late 1950s. Hence, the expression— coined by the executives themselves in the postwar period— refers to the men who worked in the advertising industry in Manhattan in that specific period.