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Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

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    #51
    Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

    But does that really matter for advertising? Like I was saying with my parents experience in the 1960s in Cincinnati, most of the country wasn't really plugged into what we think of as "the 1960s" while it was actually happening. I don't know much about the advertising of the time, but my impression was that it was mostly appealing to the same old traditional ideas of housewives. Most advertising still seems to be targeted that way right now.

    I could be off, but my impression of Don is that he'll be able to figure out how to adapt his work to the times, even if he doesn't change himself. Especially if he keeps living in a shithole downtown. In fact, I assumed he chose that because he was kind of interested in slumming it. But again, I missed the last two seasons.

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      #52
      Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

      With all due respect to your parents, I could be wrong but I suspect Cincinnati in the 60s was very different from New York, especially Madison Avenue. It's an overall indication of an...umm Zeitgeist thingy I think. Something not necessarily reflected individually but that says a lot about a place when you walk through the door. No one at SCDB looks "Now!" "Happening!" "Fab!" or "Groovy!" and some people, especially the younger creatives, should. The two Smiths filled that role previously but no one does now.

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        #53
        Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

        G.Man wrote:
        Shooting the pigeons was a pivotal moment: a brutal act rooted in protective love. Betty most certainly isn't heartless or lacking in emotions.
        See, I think that scene was about resentment of the birds' freedom. That was the episode in which Betty had a chance to return to modeling, if only for a little bit, and she was the happiest she'd ever been on the show...but Don put a stop to that.

        My theory is that the whole series is about caged birds.

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          #54
          Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

          I agree with that. Indeed, that's articulated in the last episode by the research woman who says that advertising is all about the tension between what people want and what's expected of them. That seems to be the dominant theme for most of the character arcs.

          But that's America in a nutshell isn't it?

          Collectively, we had historically unprecedented opportunities and resources but most of us have squandered our prosperity on the accumulation of material stuff that doesn't actually make us happier instead of taking advantage of industrialization to spend more time with our family, etc. And almost the moment we threw away the old world's class regime (Lords, Dukes, etc) we created a whole new set of status symbols and rigid conventions that keep us all in our place. Doubly so for women. And far worse than that for minorities.

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            #55
            Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

            Heliotrope wrote:
            G.Man wrote:
            Shooting the pigeons was a pivotal moment: a brutal act rooted in protective love. Betty most certainly isn't heartless or lacking in emotions.
            See, I think that scene was about resentment of the birds' freedom. That was the episode in which Betty had a chance to return to modeling, if only for a little bit, and she was the happiest she'd ever been on the show...but Don put a stop to that.

            My theory is that the whole series is about caged birds.
            Certainly works as a metaphor. I suppose if you push it, you've have to say though that the birds Betty shot at were always going to return to their cages. But perhaps that's all she wanted, a few moments of freedom before she returned to hers.

            So are Don's affairs with "free birds?" Is that their appeal? Midge and Rachel seem like that. Bobbie, perhaps. Suzanne, only superficially.

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              #56
              Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

              With all due respect to your parents, I could be wrong but I suspect Cincinnati in the 60s was very different from New York, especially Madison Avenue.
              Of course, it was very different and conservative. It still is. But that was my point. All the cool stuff was happening in New York, LA, London, San Francisco, etc, but the marketing people who live there have to appeal to the masses in places like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh or even Hoboken.

              They sit right in the middle of the divide between what's going on in creative hot beds and what will play in Peoria, which is why making a show about the 1960s in an ad firm makes perfect sense. Or why setting a show about an ad firm in the 1960s makes perfect sense. It was when that divide really started to get wide. The challenge of ad men is to not lose touch with either shore of that divide.

              For example, there's that scene where Don tries in vain to explain to the people making women's bathing suits that they have to get the stick out of their ass and recognize that they're getting killed because they're too conservative. He's got a great handle on the conflict typical women feel about bathing suits, but all they see are boobs and they refuse to listen. He just gives up and tosses them out, but they can't really afford to be tossing clients out the door, so it's a problem. Then they have to pull out all the stops to kiss the ass of Mr Lucky Strike, the symbol of backwardness in American commerce if there every was one, but they're stuck with it.

              I foresee more episodes where Don and Peggy especially push the firm to be down with what the young people are into, but fail to convince the client. I don't think Don personally gives a shit what the kids are into but will happily appropriate it for an ad. Peggy is open to new ideas, but not really confident in that world. Not yet, anyway.

              I have never worked in an ad firm and obviously you know more about that and more about the 60s since I wasn't there, but my image of ad firms is that there's a constant battle between the creative folks that want to do something genuinely provocative and original on one side and the idiot clients on the other, because the client is some marketing exec who doesn't want to stick his or her neck out lest this new idea backfire and they get fired by their boss who is beholden to a board that just wants the short term stock price to go up, so they just go with the safe option. So despite their appearance of being all artsy and hip to the scene, at the end of the day, they're pretty conservative.

              Yes, we get the occasional memorable bit of advertising or design like the first Macintosh ad or the "I heart NY" design, but we get far more brain dead Bud Light T&A-oriented ads and car commercials that look like every other car commercial we've seen for the last 30 years or that stupid new Vancouver Whitecaps logo.

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                #57
                Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                There is always a three-way tension between creative, accounts, and the client — but WoM would be better qualified to speak about that than I. However really I was referring to this particular agency, as portrayed in the show. Up until now Peggy and Don have had an intuitive sense of how to reach their clients' audience but my sense is that they might be losing it a bit. However conservative your clients may, or may not, be you've got to be creatively prepared. Don kicking out the Jantzen folk was a failure, not just because they lost the account, but of his own creative resourcefulness. That's the worry.

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                  #58
                  Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                  Yeah, I see that too. I think it's going to be a running theme in this season and for however long the show is on the air. Can they adapt and/or who do they have to hire in order to adapt?

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                    #59
                    Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                    Amor de Cosmos wrote:
                    Up until now Peggy and Don have had an intuitive sense of how to reach their clients' audience but my sense is that they might be losing it a bit. However conservative your clients may, or may not, be you've got to be creatively prepared. Don kicking out the Jantzen folk was a failure, not just because they lost the account, but of his own creative resourcefulness. That's the worry.
                    Two different issues here, though. Don *did* know how to get to his clients' audience; he just didn't bother to figure out how to wheedle around his clients (who were idiots) to his point of view.

                    Maybe the problem is that cultural change is increasing the difference between businesses and their customers. The reatives' job isn't just to reach an audience - it's about bridging that gap. They aren't getting worse - their job is getting harder.

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                      #60
                      Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                      Two different issues here, though. Don *did* know how to get to his clients' audience; he just didn't bother to figure out how to wheedle around his clients (who were idiots) to his point of view.

                      No, they're both part of his job. You don't get to approach the audience until you've convinced the client.

                      In this case I don't agree that the clients were idiots. They had particular criteria which they wanted addressed. That isn't unreasonable. In fact if Don had done his job properly he might have created an innovative concept for swimwear which didn't depend on women being treated as sex objects. As it was, his arrogance and laziness produced a mediocre idea that merely followed the industry mainstream. He was coasting, and he knew it. Which is why he blew up.

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                        #61
                        Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                        Amor de Cosmos wrote:
                        No, they're both part of his job. You don't get to approach the audience until you've convinced the client.
                        Oh, of course they're both part of his job. But you seemed two posts ago to be using that incident as an example of how they were losing their ability to connect not with their clients but with their clients' audience, and I don't think that was the case.

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                          #62
                          Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                          I thought his bathing suit idea was pretty good, although I'm sure I don't really understand the audience at that time.

                          Maybe the clients weren't idiots, but they seemed to be holding two completely irreconcilable positions. a) we want to sell bathing suits to women b) we want to hold a Amish attitude toward the display of women's bodies. Maybe he could have come up with something that would bridge that, but it would appeal to a small and shrinking audience.

                          By the way, that scene reminded me of something...How long has "family" been used as a euphemistic adjective for "sexless?" That's always bothered me. It implies, among other bits of right-wing bullshit, that people with kids suddenly cease to be normally functioning adults.

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                            #63
                            Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                            Did they use "family" that way? I don't remember. If they did I'm pretty sure it's wrong. The whole "family values" thing I associate with the immediate pre-Reagan era, not before.

                            But you seemed two posts ago to be using that incident as an example of how they were losing their ability to connect not with their clients but with their clients' audience, and I don't think that was the case.

                            Ah, OK my fault. I tend to see them as part and parcel of the same thing, which in practical terms they are.

                            Maybe the clients weren't idiots, but they seemed to be holding two completely irreconcilable positions. a) we want to sell bathing suits to women b) we want to hold a Amish attitude toward the display of women's bodies. Maybe he could have come up with something that would bridge that, but it would appeal to a small and shrinking audience.

                            Actually the problem might be being too far ahead of the curve. Ten years later with the growth of feminism it would have been fairly easy to position a bathing suit that way. I'd have to look at the scene again but I think the issue was that client's product didn't match their moral aspirations ie: it's a two piece swimsuit not a bikini? Don should have first explained that clearly, then maybe suggested building a campaign built around the dilemma/question as one solution. It could have been done. It always can.

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                              #64
                              Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                              I saw a scene involving Joan from the next episode that's very interesting.

                              Back to my caged-bird theory: It's not really fleshed out, and that's probably not the dominant theme but one that comes up quite a bit. The obvious manifestations were the present of a bird from Roger to Joan, Trudy's last name of Vogel, the name Sterling-Cooper (like a gilded cage, but silver), but a lot of the characters are somehow limited by expectations of gender roles, religion, family obligations, and the like. That's probably way too obvious, but someone commenting on a blog post about Mad Men thinks people are overanalyzing it, and that's how I felt about Lost.

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                                #65
                                Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                Also Don's floor wax commercial, with the child under a table behind the bars of a chair.

                                I think Mad Men invites analysis. It's part of the fun, because the show's so tightly and cleverly constructed. Lost OTOH, usually looked as if it was scripted half-an-hour before filming. It was so opened-ended any and all interpretations were possible.

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                                  #66
                                  Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                  Yeah, I gave up on Lost. It seemed like plot just for the sake of plot. It wasn't really about anything. I guess I was not as impressed, as so many people were, with its wild complexity and unpredictability because I spent a good deal of my adolescence reading monthly comic books. No doubt JJ Abrams did too. But I grew weary of the "and then we'll bring this character back from the dead, and then this deus ex machina, and then we'll introduce this alien character out of nowhere, and then..." Now I try to just read comics in trade-paperback collections or complete books where there's a specific story with a beginning, middle, and end. If I need to catch up on the absurd backstory, I can just look it up online.

                                  Mad Men isn't like that. If anything, it moves too deliberately and subtlety and often lacks distinct plot road markers. It helps, I think, to watch the episodes repeatedly, if one has the time which, let's be honest, I do.

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                                    #67
                                    Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                    The obvious difference between Lost and Mad Men is that in the former the star is the plot, and in the latter the star is the characters. So in Lost we'd analyse plotlines rather than the often two-dimensional characters, while in Mad Men plot is very much secondary to character development. That's why the series can jump ahead several months as the seasons change, with plotlines left unresolved or glossed over.

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                                      #68
                                      Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                      OK, fuck this Rubicon nonsense and get to the main event. I've got my scotch poured and I'm ready for a new episode - chop, chop, I;m not waiting another ten minutes.

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                                        #69
                                        Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                        If he sleeps with this Stephanie chica, Mad Men will have officially have turned into 90210.

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                                          #70
                                          Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                          Nice re-direct.

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                                            #71
                                            Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                            I know there's already spoiler warnings in the thread title, but several spoilers here for episode three for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

                                            The opening episode of the first series was reshown in the UK last night, which is the only reason I noticed that the doctor who Joan saw in the latest episode was the same one she sent Peggy to back in 1960. Nice touch.

                                            Another good episode anyway, sad and funny - I bet Jared Harris enjoyed filming it. Is that the first ever episode without Betty? Still no Aaron Staton though, despite his name being in the opening titles.

                                            And is it just me or have they ratcheted up the humour value a bit so far in this series? It wouldn't necessarily have been what I wanted of them, if you'd asked me beforehand, but it's not just cheap laughs and it's done without taking anything away from the character-driven nature of the show. (Indeed, lines such as "Campbell's friendly, albeit I believe unintentionally" are only funny in that context.)

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                                              #72
                                              Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                              Has anyone else noticed how the colour balance shifts when the show moves to California? It's not just that everything is brighter and more saturated, the base is warmer too. More red/orange Kodachrome, less cool blue/green Agfacolor than NY. It's that very slight exaggerated look again that's been evident since the very first show.

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                                                #73
                                                Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                                Is it in all the scenes, or just the outdoor ones? It's more noticeable in the outdoor ones, for sure.

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                                                  #74
                                                  Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                                  It is more noticeable in exteriors — the freeway shots could almost have been second-unit work from 77 Sunset Strip — but it's true across the board. Don is given a much healthier looking complexion just by adjusting the gamma curve a touch.

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                                                    #75
                                                    Mad Men Season 4 - Spoilers Everywhere

                                                    Amor, could you recommend a starting place for someone who doesn't 'get' colour? I've had cool/warm tones explained to me before to do with clothes but specifically, I'd like to know more about it in images, both moving and still. How to spot it and more particularly how to describe it so I can remember where I've seen an effect before?

                                                    I've reread the previous paragraph and even I'm not sure what I'm asking but I'd be grateful if you could possibly decipher.

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