I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men recently. This is a still from last week’s episode, where Peggy Olson (my tv hero of the moment) walks into her new office with a new resolve to not change herself in order to make men comfortable.
I’ve loved Mad Men for a long time because although Don Draper is the main character, he’s got all these problems and he treats women horribly and he isn’t really likeable, but all the women around him are amazing and outshine him in every possible way.
This is literally him in every episode: http://dondraperstaringblankly.tumblr.com/
Don takes you on a journey though. At first, as an audience member, you’re completely smitten with this handsome guy, and you forgive some of his mistakes because hes a product of his time and he’s just doing what all the guys are doing, but time goes on, and he doesn’t improve, he just gets worse and worse. I find the decline pretty impressive, because I still keep watching, but not because I want to see him drink himself to death, but because while he sinks, the women around him are rising.
Peggy though, Peggy takes the cake. So does Betty and Joan and Sally and Dawn. It’s great to see feminism at work in a television show, depicted over the seasons that span a time of huge change. The show deals with unplanned pregnancy, divorce, single motherhood, women fighting for equal pay, civil rights, growing up as a teenage girl, finding a career apart from your family.
I don’t feel any television guilt at all when I watch Mad Men. It’s thought-provoking and artistic and very very cool.
