WK8

 My TV habits have made many shifts throughout the years I every possible direction. I don’t think there is a genre I haven’t seen, attempted to enjoy, or fount at least a bit fascinating. When I was a kid cartoons dominated what I was watching and they’re still some of the most important media I’ve ever consumed. Shows like Naruto and Shaman King had me exploring the world of anime as it’s own massive bubble and cartoons like Courage the Cowardly Dog had me fall in love with weird, artistic, and experimental content that would later grow into a love for the overtly bizarre (see Twin Peaks, True Detective, The X files and so on). One notable show that I re-watch to this day is Avatar: The Last Airbender that made me very selective with the quality of storytelling in the media I consume from day one. Live-action TV shows and movies were a much different story growing up though. I had my Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana fazes but they didn’t influence my taste as much as animation has in both the animated and live-action category. I knew animation allowed for much more freedom even if I wasn’t aware of that at the time. I also understood that it was this specific space at that specific point in time that didn’t really care for social standards. For my generation, it set them (the popularity of say goth and geek subcultures for example). I never watched TV together with my family even as a kid, so I grew up with everything that I consume being deeply personal. The only time I ever discussed the shows I watched was with friends, and even then I felt a need to go against the grain of what everyone was watching going back as early as kindergarten to even my late teens.

 

Mad Men

 

The 60s were a turbulent time of social change – a change that some still grapple with decades after. We moved from a single dominating force into an individualist culture that forever shaped our lives as consumers. But as women, we understand that whether we stand in a single dominating ideology or many self-indulgent types of programming our individuality has to fit into a pre-established hierarchy and perception of gender. Mad Men explores (and quite often meanders) on the main issues that shaped that pivotal time of American (and world) history. The 50s archetype of the ideal man is probably the most stereotypical - masculine, strong, and most importantly powerful, something which is denied to women from the beginning of their life. Advertisements have always been the biggest proponents of the gender divide even today when they masquerade as progressive and Mad Men’s image of manly individuals being ones contributing to one of the most sexist aspects of media is not lost on any viewer. We need to understand how breaking gendered standards is impossible in a capitalist consumer system where your identity revolves around what they sell you. And even as women come into advertising, they have to get there on the pre-established rules of what makes someone powerful which are all very masculine traits, so in the process they contribute to the very struggle they faced in getting to the position they strived for. Intense cultural shifts beyond what the sixties offered are necessary to happen for a long time in order to undo a social problem propagated even by media like Mad Men itself, only then can we even a resemblance of freedom in the identity we inhabit.