The Three Faces of Mad Men: Middlebrow Culture and Quality Television

Melissa Jane Hardie

doi:10.5130/csr.v18i2.2762

PDF

Published: Sep 17, 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v18i2.2762

Keywords:

quality tv, middlebrow, gender, identity

Melissa Jane Hardie

University of Sydney

Abstract

This article examines how history is represented in Mad Men and how anxiety about period is registered in the series' documentation of the relationship between pleasure and aesthetic experience. the author argues that the series re-animates mid-century debates about the relationship between low and middlebrow culture and does so by demonstrating the middlebrow's self-conscious representation of processes of mechanical reproduction. She shows that Mad Men's representation of historical period is intimately tied to its own status as "quality tv", and that this alliance is made available in the series' representation of gendered pleasure. Svetlana Boym's notion of the "off-modern" is considered as a way to think about Mad Men's historical detours and revisions, and its reckoning with questions of gender, identity, and aesthetic experience.

Issue

Vol 18 No 2 (2012): Secular Discomforts and On Mad Men

Section

On Mad Men (Peer Reviewed)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed undera Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.

Author Biography

Melissa Jane Hardie, University of Sydney

Melissa Jane Hardie teaches in the English Department, University of Sydney. Recent publications include an article on Kitty Genovese and chapters on Djuna Barnes and the editing of modernist texts, Law and Order: SVU and its fans, and Lindsay Lohan and her closet.

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content

Abstract

Article Details

Melissa Jane Hardie, University of Sydney