The front page of Slate asks, “Why Are Critics Slobbering Over Mad Men?”
The link leads to a page where the negative side of that question isn’t addressed.
Mad Men (AMC, Sundays at 10 p.m. ET) is not just about marketing, it’s also a triumph of it.
Triumph? Like this is a good thing?
I must confess that I am not a fan of marketing for marketing’s sake. I have worked with marketeers who had no real skills, could contribute nothing of value to this world. TV shows and movies about marketing are really about hollow people trying to get other people to part with their money for things they don’t need.
Mad Men is not the first show about advertising, nor will it be the last. I don’t understand why television shows return to this setting. There is nothing inherently good about selling stuff. Police shows are about justice. Family set shows are about the daily struggle to find humanity in daily life and continue trying to make ends meet (even Married With Children). Shows about advertising have as much good in them as adult soap operas about rich people, that is, none.
I think that TV production people like advertising because some of them are educated in Communications, which is just advertising. The School of Communications at any university is a factory for turning out people who think in terms of advertising. These TV production people, while not versed in the ethics balance of rights and responsibilities, see much dramatic conflict in the struggles to sell stuff. While there may be conflict, it is not confict that lends itself to drama, as it is just the featureless conflict of personalities, not ideas. Shrieking harridans give way to morose monoliths who are supposed to be conveying character.
Feh.