Mad Men - the advertising world

Set in New York in the 1960s and created by Matthew Weiner, Mad Men is a story of a group of individuals focusing on their hopes, dreams, hardships and survival in the advertising world.  The political and social changes happening in that era are shown through the lives of the main characters and also through their work.  The themes depicted in Mad Men, such as adultery, smoking, drinking, racism, alienation, feminism, are a part of the American society and culture.

Don Draper, the creative director of the ad agency and the best ad man in town, is shown to be a womanizer, who cheats on his wife, Betty, and is mostly attracted by and sleeps with independent and bold women. His real name is Dick Whitman and he belongs to a poor family and an unhappy childhood but he takes the identity of Lieutenant Donald Draper, who is killed during the Korean War. He hides his real name and history from everyone around him including his wife but eventually Pete and then his wife Betty come to know about his true self.

Peggy Olsen, a confident, independent, ambitious, young woman joins Sterling Cooper as a secretary but is then promoted to the first female copywriter at the firm. She struggles to gain acceptance in the male dominated workplace and makes numerous attempts to attain equality in the office through her hard work and by giving opinions. Don values Peggy’s ideas and talent and also tells her that he sees himself in her.

Each and every character in the series has a very interesting past and present. I have been addicted to the series since the day we were asked to watch it for a course and have completed watching all four seasons and I am now following the fifth season diligently.

Mad Men is a show about how stories are constructed and how the viewer finds himself involved in the narrative. It all started with the simple life of Don and his wife Betty and their two children. But as the seasons passed by, it became more and more complex. The details of each characters life, especially Dons are so intricate that this fiction makes the viewer wait impatiently for the next episode to know what’s going to happen subsequently. This narrative doesn’t have a clear or predictable endpoint and this is the reason why everyone gets hooked up to the series.