00:00:03:26 - 00:00:23:22 Unknown This is actually going to be a combination of letters 21 and 22. The family and the family sitcom. So it's going to be a bit longer than listening to one, but about the same length as if you listened to two of them back to back. So, so far in the course, we've been looking at representations of the American nuclear family in television of the 1950s. 00:00:23:22 - 00:00:48:27 Unknown And also we've been looking at family melodrama as a preeminent gene in both film and television. In these episodes, we're going to explore this a little further with respect to the ways in which the traditional representation of the American nuclear family as a primary social structure and institution, and as the basis for much of American culture from the 1950s onward, undergoes a decisive shift in the later decades of the 20th century, and particularly in the second and third golden Age of TV. 00:00:49:04 - 00:01:06:14 Unknown But we can also extend this to representations of the family in all kinds of media, in those in those second and third golden ages. We have to remember that in the postwar period, television was the most popular medium in America. By the end of that decade, the number of households with TV sets had increased from 9% to 86%. 00:01:06:16 - 00:01:28:07 Unknown As we've also discussed earlier in the course, this made television an ideal vehicle through which to propagate essential ideas and values that bolstered, supported the American way of life and also to reinforce certain cultural traditions. At the center of all of this was the American family, which at this time modeled these American values and ideals and also underscored the country's mood of social and political conservatism and a desire for normalcy. 00:01:28:08 - 00:01:48:27 Unknown After six long years of war and a ten year depression before that. For these reasons, television programs about the American family were enormously popular because their representation of American families reflected back to viewers an ideal image of something they remembered or aspired to, and therefore a model to follow as well in establishing for viewers the key roles to be played by each member of the family. 00:01:48:28 - 00:02:14:10 Unknown These family programs also reinforced the dominant political ideology underpinning American society at that time. Marxism. Feminists both agree that capitalism was a significant source of women's socioeconomic oppression and their consequent devaluation within American society, and it also privileged men under capitalism, the reproductive role of women within privileged families, such as we see in these TV programs about families, is tied up with property and money. 00:02:14:10 - 00:02:33:01 Unknown Women are bred to produce heirs, and that becomes their form of labor or their contribution to society. And this goes back at least as far as the Industrial revolution, when the ruling classes agreed to certain reforms which resulted in keeping men who were bigger and stronger and more fit in the labor force while returning the children, the elderly and the weaker sex women back to the home. 00:02:33:01 - 00:03:04:07 Unknown And so this led to a rise of patriarchal ideologies, social structures, and gender roles, by means of which women were kept at home and men were sent out into the world to work. Hence the stay at home wife and mother. It also provided additional justification for the devaluation of women within patriarchal capitalist societies. The importance of, or the importance of their social contributions as homemakers and child producers who severely undermined by the fact that these roles didn't earn a wage and so they began, became economic dependance over and above their physical dependance upon their partners for survival. 00:03:04:09 - 00:03:40:16 Unknown Similarly, women were devalued within Hollywood cinema and American television, which were also part of this capitalist patriarchal system, and through which such ideas continued to be disseminated and reinforced. As pointed out by Ian Kaplan in her essay entitled mothering, Feminism and Representation The Transition of Women into the role of middle class consumers in the post-industrial bourgeois home led to the development of the New Mother ideology, or also known as the Good Mother ideology or Master Mother ideology, and Kaplan traces this ideology back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau novel Emile, written in 1761, which in his time was very radical for its discourse on child rearing. 00:03:40:19 - 00:04:00:16 Unknown We so believe that the way in which one is raised could determine the kind of man or citizen one becomes. And so he recommended that the utmost attention be paid to the physical health and emotional and intellectual development of child. So that necessitated a very different role for the mother, who should be more involved at a much more personal level, rather than relegating the task almost entirely to servants such as nurses or nannies or tutors. 00:04:00:16 - 00:04:29:03 Unknown And furthermore, it was Rousseau's position that the survival of the human race depended on the woman's function in cementing the family through her skills in emotions and relationships. In this way, USO not only inscribed into cultural and social discourse the division of labor necessary to capitalism, but he also articulated the split between public or male and private or female spheres that would become the cornerstone of bourgeois gender roles under capitalism and patriarchy, but also representations of the American nuclear family in postwar Hollywood cinema and television. 00:04:29:06 - 00:04:50:00 Unknown Through this good mother or master mother ideology, women were praised and rewarded for being good mothers, dedicating their lives to the rearing and the well-being of their children, and also punished for being bad mothers. These were women who abandoned their families, or whose attention was diverted away from their children, or who hurt their children emotionally or physically. We, even women who choose, chose not to be mothers at all. 00:04:50:02 - 00:05:13:27 Unknown Accordingly, family melodramas and comedies or situation comedies in 1950s film and television presented an image of the ideal American family, which consisted primarily of the strong, wise, all knowing patriarch breadwinner at the head who was supported by his wife, and the mother, whose main role was to look after the home and offspring, which was typically 2.5 children. But also, and perhaps most important, was that television presented this fantasy of American life and the American family. 00:05:14:00 - 00:05:33:02 Unknown Family dramas and sitcoms were especially popular amongst viewers in the postwar era. One they did because they were so easy and so cheap to film. It was basically one set the family home, but also white middle class families were taken to be the social norm, as were their problems, which are of course not the problems experienced by other less privileged demographic groups. 00:05:33:07 - 00:06:05:02 Unknown It was a sanitized view of American life, which promoted an ideal that didn't really exist, and that made it all the more appealing. Everything in the sitcom family was neat and clean, the decor was homey but silage, and everyone understood their place and their responsibilities. The female characters in 1950 sitcoms were almost always housewives, and there were two main types of housewife stereotypes the wholesome, gracious wife and mother, who was efficient and nurturing, good natured and uncomplaining, such as we see in the Dawn of starring Donna Reed, Hollywood actress who then became a TV star, and also Leave It to Beaver. 00:06:05:06 - 00:06:20:22 Unknown The mother is June Cleaver, who is the epitome of this stereotype. And actually we see her in this image up here, and we also see it in Harriet Nelson in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. These women are defined by their families, their identities as wives and mothers, rather than their identities as individuals, and they are rarely shown outside the home. 00:06:20:25 - 00:06:38:16 Unknown The other type is the wacky and ditzy but well-meaning housewife, such as we see in I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dike Show. This stereotype has other ambitions beyond their domestic role. Maybe they want to be show business, maybe they want to dance. But these ambitions inevitably lead to chaos when their plans go awry and they are rescued from the mess they created and restored to patriarchy. 00:06:38:22 - 00:06:55:21 Unknown That is, until the next time. So this stereotype is actually a kind of ticking time bomb, or a canary in the coal mine, warning of the inevitable explosion of the fantasy, along with the idealized television family in the counterculture era of the 60s and 70s and beyond. With the emergence of feminism and the women's liberation movement. What about 1950s deaths? 00:06:55:22 - 00:07:08:10 Unknown I mentioned that they were portrayed as wise, all knowing patriarchs, the breadwinners, the guys in charge, and they seem, on the surface to have it made. They come home from a hard day at work and a good job that pays a good living wage. They're greeted ecstatically by their wives and children and dog. They put up their feet for a few minutes. 00:07:08:10 - 00:07:25:28 Unknown They light a pipe, they read the paper, and then they come to the table where dinner is prepared for them. No cleanup required. But there's something missing in that picture, which many who grew up in that era can attest to the 1950s. Fathers are rarely around. They're going all day, and this is why they're present. Their presence is represented as such a special occasion and treat. 00:07:26:01 - 00:07:46:20 Unknown There's little participation or active participation in child wearing, no feeding, no bathing or putting to bed, no meetings with teachers or arrangements with babysitters. Maybe they're required to give an opinion, hand out cash a little discipline, teach their kids to ride bikes or play baseball. Though the fathers are more highly valued economically and socially because they earn a wage in comparison to women whose work is on salaried. 00:07:46:21 - 00:08:08:27 Unknown They're not really entrenched in the day to day activities of family life. It kind of carries on without them while they work. This lack of participation is glossed over by the myth of the wise paternal father figure, which goes hand in hand with the myth of the American family. As noted by anthropologist Bradshaw in his book Culture and Mind Cognition, culture, and the Problem of Meaning, the myth is not necessarily a total lie, it's just not the truth. 00:08:08:28 - 00:08:29:16 Unknown He points out that myths are special kinds of stories, which always frame something that is arguably true, alongside something that's arguably not true. It's a particular and special mix of fact and fiction. It furnishes the ideal in television representations of the American family. This myth comes smack up against the prevailing social reality, especially in the counterculture era. What happens in the 60s and 70s? 00:08:29:18 - 00:08:50:00 Unknown This is the era of social protest and liberation movements, when minority groups, as they were then called, rise up to push back against the dominant culture which has propagated those myths to retain its own power and privilege. This was the air of civil rights, women's rights, gay rights and the student movement. It was also the era of the antiwar movement, when protesters fought against conscription and exposed the government's lies about the conflict in Vietnam. 00:08:50:01 - 00:09:10:28 Unknown What American troops were actually doing over there, and about the mounting casualties that were never truthfully reported in this era also would be revealed the corruption of the American President, Richard Nixon, and his administration. These revelations cracked open the door to ever more disclosures about the real American society and its values and ideals, and the social structures and institutions of authority which upheld and reinforce them. 00:09:11:01 - 00:09:34:06 Unknown And one of these structures and institutions was the American family, one of the TV programs that cracked open the myth of the 50s and 60s American TV family was the documentary The American Family, produced by Craig Gilbert for PBS, which was filmed over six months and aired in 1971. The series was intended as a chronicle of an upper middle class family living in Santa Barbara, California, but it became groundbreaking for its realistic documentation of the family. 00:09:34:07 - 00:09:58:22 Unknown The family's breakup, for example, including the separation and divorce of the parents Bill and Pat, and the coming out of their son Lance, who becomes a gay activist. The series drew a huge audience, but it was also considered highly controversial in its representation of the American family as a broken family. But it opened the floodgates to other similar documentaries of marriage and family life, as well as to the production of popular TV sitcoms and family dramas, which similarly represented the American family as it was in real life. 00:09:58:25 - 00:10:16:19 Unknown Were these closer to that, and not as it was idealized in its nuclear form? Whereas previously single mothers could only be widowed in this era, they could be divorced. With the plot revolving around their attempts at self liberation, and we see this in sitcoms previously mentioned, such as Alice, which you see in the center here, One Day at a Time, and Maude. 00:10:16:20 - 00:10:41:13 Unknown And in this era, also, television began to produce more programs based on characters of other races and ethnicities, including African Americans and The Jeffersons and The Good Times, Sanford and Son, and much later, Cosby, as well as Latino characters in Chico and the man, and children's educational programs such as Sesame Street and TV portrayed generational conflicts within families, with series episodes based on intense debates between parents and children about important issues of the day. 00:10:41:14 - 00:11:03:18 Unknown No longer was the patriarch, the boss who had the final word. His children could counter his arguments, and very often his children were had a more formal education than he having gone to college rather than straight into the workforce. One such example is all in the family, considered one of the most groundbreaking sitcoms in television, based on a British sitcom of the era, Until Death Do Us Part, which you hear before the American adaptation, which you see in the image above. 00:11:03:19 - 00:11:32:08 Unknown Produced by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, features The Bunkers, a working class family living in Queens. Archie is a loading dock worker, and he lives with his stay at home wife Edith, and their daughter Gloria, who marries Michael, an activist hippie university student. The show was considered pioneering for its depiction of issues. The previously had been considered inappropriate for prime time television, including racism, anti-Semitism, women's liberation, miscarriage, abortion, cancer, menopause, male impotence, politics, religion, and the Vietnam War. 00:11:32:10 - 00:12:01:08 Unknown Yes, all of these issues and topics were written on television, but they were addressed and debated in the show by the characters in a humorous but also critical and sometimes satirical fashion. As well. The series was considered groundbreaking and highly influential in the way that blended sitcom formulas with drama and injected some highly realistic moments. So when you have a bit of time, watch the segment from all in the family that have posted on the website in which Michael and Archie getting to a heated argument about the Vietnam War, and watch how Archie responds and Michael's will structured argument. 00:12:01:09 - 00:12:22:06 Unknown It's interesting how resonant and relevant this conflict and the attitudes still are, even in today's social climate. Some 50 years later, now on the family, numerous spin offs, some of which are just mentioned, including Maude, which is based around Edith Bunkers liberal cousin Maude Findlay, played by Idris Arthur. And there was the spinoff The Jeffersons, based on the bunkers next door neighbors who are an African American family. 00:12:22:07 - 00:12:48:19 Unknown Jorge Luis and their son Lionel. When George's dry cleaning business become successful, he moves the family to the East side and at this time is mostly white, so there's a number of interesting conflicts with their white middle class neighbors. Maude also had to spin off The Good Times, which featured her African American housekeeper, Florida, played by Esther Roll, who lives with her husband James and their children in a public housing project in a poor black neighborhood in the inner city. 00:12:48:21 - 00:13:08:12 Unknown Such shows also made possible the hot button topic topic shows featuring racially and ethnically diverse characters, some of which I just mentioned, including Sanford and Son, also based on a British series entitled Steptoe and Son. Sanford and Son was adapted from that by Norman Lear. In this series, comedian Redd Foxx stars as a widower and a junk dealer living with his son Lamont in South Central LA. 00:13:08:13 - 00:13:29:25 Unknown The program was touted by the critics as the answer to Archie Bunker, and we can include here Chico and the man starring. Excuse me, comedic actor. Take a sip of water. So what happens when you keep talking? Starring comedic actor Jack Albertson, the grumpy owner of a rundown garage in the East L.A. burial, and Freddie Prinze, a young, optimistic Chicano or Mexican-American who works for him. 00:13:29:26 - 00:13:47:28 Unknown This was the first American TV series set in the Mexican-American neighborhood, and there was different strokes about two African American boys whose mother had worked as a housekeeper for a rich white family in Manhattan. When the boy's mother dies, they were taken in by her boss, now widowed and living with his daughter, and together with a new housekeeper, they form a blended family. 00:13:48:01 - 00:14:05:10 Unknown So it starts to happen. In television, representations of the American family is the inclusion of social realities and hot topics of the day previously considered inappropriate. But also what you get is this decisive shift in the types of families we see families of other races, ethnicities, and social classes who represent the real rather than the idealized American norm. 00:14:05:18 - 00:14:26:26 Unknown In the 90s, we see television move another step away from the tropes and conventions of the first olden era into Paradise, with new sitcoms that openly satirize themselves as sitcoms while at the same time parodying sitcoms. This is growing. This shows a growing cynicism and mistrust of television and all the values and ideals of propagates, as well as the archetypes it presents, such as the ideal TV family with a perfect mother and father. 00:14:26:27 - 00:14:45:00 Unknown So these shows come from a place of cynicism and profound suspicion of ideology, and the promises and platitudes delivered by leaders in the country. What makes these series work is not only their satire of the tropes and clichés, but also the constant tension between belief and skepticism with which viewers could readily identify. It's all about sticking it to the men. 00:14:45:02 - 00:15:00:21 Unknown So on the one hand, for example, we have The Simpsons, which we've also just briefly discussed, which is one on the classic television family sitcom. But the setting and characters are as far from ideal as they can get, and the values and beliefs completely twisted. Homer is not wise and all knowing, nor is he can control of anything, including his appetite and his own kids. 00:15:00:22 - 00:15:23:14 Unknown How many times do we see him strangling his own son, Bart, in anger and frustration? The sitcom, rather than presenting a suburban world to which we can escape and feel safe, instead becomes a repository for our feelings about society and the culture, but dealt with in a humorous way that enables us to laugh about it. We can also point to the television series Twin Peaks, directed by filmmaker David Lynch, which is a dramatic suspense and horror series but also based in creepy satire of American small town life. 00:15:23:15 - 00:15:41:03 Unknown It also makes effective use of camp. Camp is an esthetic style and sensibility that finds its appeal in bad taste and irony. It disrupts prevailing notions of high culture by inverting esthetic attributes like beauty and value and taste, so far from the idealized small town and safe community where everyone knows and trust each other and leave their doors unlocked at night. 00:15:41:04 - 00:16:08:02 Unknown Here we have the sense that no one has any idea what's going on behind those doors, or who their neighbors and friends actually are. This trend epitomizes the new TV era within which we see a reexamination and reformulation of traditional sitcoms and family dramas, which sustain that myth of the All-American family we see embedded in these new series a heightened critical consciousness of the social, historical, and political conditions that helped to produce the idealized American family entrenched within popular culture in the media. 00:16:08:04 - 00:16:29:02 Unknown We also see the further development and expansion of the kind of meta television series that became popular in the 21st, the late 20th, and early 21st centuries series, which reflectively drew attention to the tropes and conventions through satire, parody, homage, intertextuality, and other postmodern devices. On that note, let's turn to Mad Men, which is the subject for this. 00:16:29:04 - 00:16:48:02 Unknown One of the subjects for this episode, and which exposed many of those television tropes, as well as the troops from white middle class privilege and patriarchy, out of which were created the ideal American family during television's first Golden Age. The series exposes them by pulling back the veil to reveal them for what they were racist, sexist, homophobic, and highly toxic. 00:16:48:06 - 00:17:20:07 Unknown In these new television series, such depictions of the ideal family in those early years of TV are also revealed to be a sham, or the very least, utterly ridiculous. Hence the numerous new TV series to which they are ruthlessly deconstructed. The series showrunner or producer David Chase, who had also created The Sopranos, read the spec script written by creator Matthew Weiner, who you see below here, and saw immediately that it was about a character, Don Draper, who was not only extremely charismatic, but also a prism for examinations of American history and society spanning the the culture and the counterculture from the early 60s to the 70s. 00:17:20:08 - 00:17:39:02 Unknown And according to Wiener, the series as a whole was meant to offer a touchstone for that conflict in American culture in that era. But at the same time, it serves to remind people of their misconceptions about the past. It engages with all manner of subjects and issues that many living in that era were either weren't aware of, or refuse to acknowledge, or just accept it and conform to. 00:17:39:04 - 00:17:55:25 Unknown This includes the aftermath of personal traumas or events which were sublimated and never properly doubled. Chiefly because no one talked about those things, certainly not on television. And so there's a sensibility running throughout the series that nothing is as it seems that what we're seeing for the most part, and what characters are presented to one another, is a facade. 00:17:55:28 - 00:18:16:17 Unknown No one is actually who they appear to be. And there are all kinds of backstories for the characters that are gradually shared throughout the series. In one sense, this is in keeping with the setting for the series, which is what all the characters have in common, and that is the advertising business. Don Draper, the central character, is an advertising executive in the fictional firm Serling Cooper, located on Madison Avenue, the center of all the big ad agencies in New York. 00:18:16:19 - 00:18:43:04 Unknown Kind of like Wall Street for financiers and stockbrokers. That's where you get the title of the series Mad Men, Mad Eyes and Crazy, but also Madison Avenue Men and Admin. So there is what? So let's think a bit about what the business of advertising is. It's selling and promoting, as discussed in our episode on commercial TV and the advertising model, the job of the advertising agency was to sell, and perhaps still is, to sell and promote the products of their customers by creating a recognizable and popular brand. 00:18:43:08 - 00:19:08:29 Unknown So there is one area in which the series comments reflexively on itself as television, as well as upon the ideal image of the American family, which is advertised to the public and the world at large. And Don Draper is the master of facade. He appears to be the ideal for that era handsome, charming, authoritative, successful, with a great position and a very tough, competitive business, and living in a well-appointed suburban home with his perfect family, his beautiful wife Betty, and the requisite two children, a girl and a boy. 00:19:09:00 - 00:19:24:28 Unknown But there's something else going on which we gradually discover that the murky facts of his past history, which are used to hide the murky facts of his past history, are hidden beneath this venue of smooth sophistication and polish. His wife and children have never met anyone from his class or his childhood or his family, and he seems to have no friends. 00:19:25:02 - 00:19:42:12 Unknown They have no idea where he even grew up. The only a few generalized elements shared from time to time with his kids, which don't reveal all that much. Betty's father, Jean, dislikes him distrust on because, as he says, he has no people. What he means is that Don has no roots to ground him, no connections who are familiar with social structure, such as family or community or religion. 00:19:42:13 - 00:20:02:10 Unknown But what he is also sensing is that Don is all facade. Now mentioned the word facade several times. A facade, as we know, is just the face of a building. The front that we see from the street that gives us a certain impression. Once again, that brings us back to the concept of construction, social and historical constructions, the idealized family and American values, and indeed that whole era in American history and culture, which the series is commenting upon. 00:20:02:12 - 00:20:19:26 Unknown John's marriage to Betty is also a facade, or at least has become one as they've settled into the suburban dream of the 50s, living in this beautiful house in Austin, a suburb of New York from which Don departs every day by train to head into the city, and to which he returns late every evening after work, long after the kids have been fed and put to bed. 00:20:19:28 - 00:20:37:15 Unknown Besides the usual issues that can affect marriage, boredom over familiarity, infidelity growing apart, the biggest threat is the separation of spheres, which keeps Betty in a gilded cage. And in fact, Jones nickname for her, significantly, is birdie, but she has a huge load on her plate, charged with the care of the children, whom she's raising virtually on her own, though she does have help from the maid, Carla. 00:20:37:18 - 00:20:55:09 Unknown Betty is fiercely intelligent and shrewd, with a tremendous sense of her own identity and a desire for recognition, which Don often does not provide. Why does she say? Because she has no real training or skills, no useful education or practical means of making a living or her own way in the world as a woman, at least not according to the patriarchal standards of that time. 00:20:55:13 - 00:21:29:15 Unknown Divorce also carried a social stigma. She tries desperately to avoid, and so we see her outwardly conform to her prescribed gender role the perfect, beautiful wife and mother, while inwardly seething, resentful of her limited options. And this was the reality for many wives and mothers under patriarchy in that era. And indeed, we point out that most of the characters in the show are hiding behind facades, including Peggy, who begins as an executive assistant only to become an advertising executive later in the in the TV series In Her Own Right, Pete, who's a junior executive and very ambitious, and Joan, who is the manager of all the executive assistants. 00:21:29:18 - 00:21:49:12 Unknown They are also hiding behind their own secrets, which permits them access to this glamorous business and by extension, the American dream, that facade. It's not that the series is set in the early 1960s at that crucial nexus between culture and counterculture. As America began to come to grips with its past and the many social injustices built into its foundations, which are now beginning to show the cracks. 00:21:49:14 - 00:22:08:13 Unknown Interestingly, the series came under fire for his writing. It was criticized as being weak, though the series taps into the screen persona and types of characters played by big stars of that era. The ordinary guy on the edge of disaster that just as that disaster is never exploited as fully as you think it might be in this series, you don't have the same sense of a dramatic arc or like changing experience, which proves transformative for the characters. 00:22:08:13 - 00:22:32:08 Unknown That's not how real life works. You'll people experience several key events, not all of which are totally life changing for the most part. Like chips await us piece by piece, and any transformation tends to be more gradual and subtle. So that's a way of disrupting that typical dramatic arc. What we see in this series, and also part of its deconstruction of the television dramatic model, is the way in which made the problems must be fully resolved within the 30 or 60 minutes duration of the episode. 00:22:32:09 - 00:22:54:07 Unknown That doesn't happen in real life. Another target of criticism was the dialog, which seemed to be missing many of the conventional rhythms and cadences of conversations between characters that we see in films the rise and fall in tone, the verbal punctuation marks, exclamation marks and ellipses. This is another hallmark of the series meta commentary on traditional film and television dialog, and its deliberate tactical disruption of the troops of that era. 00:22:54:12 - 00:23:09:15 Unknown Here we have a dialog which is syncopated, causing the emphasis to fall not on the beach, but the offbeat. And that's where the full significance of the character statements come out. It's not what they say, but what they don't say. That's important. What falls between the cracks? You have to listen for the gap. You have to pay attention. 00:23:09:18 - 00:23:28:12 Unknown From an esthetic standpoint, there's incredible attention paid to period detail to costume decor, set design and props, resulting in an authentic visual style that makes you feel as though you have stepped into one of those ads or feature in life magazine. It's fitting the Dons last name is Draper. First, there's the association with drapery or drapes, a kind of loose, flowing curtain that prevents one from seeing inside. 00:23:28:15 - 00:23:45:22 Unknown But Draper also was once a term for a retailer or a wholesaler of cloth used for clothing, and nowadays Draper is a highly skilled professional within the fashion industry, whose job it is to create the garments, first by draping the fabric over a dress form and then physically moving the cloth around into the desired pattern so that they can see what the finished product would look like on the person. 00:23:45:22 - 00:24:07:24 Unknown So again, the reference to illusions creating facades or images, and that idea of illusions of facades also ties into the style of cinematography used throughout the series, which renders a classic look that is more cinematic than televisual, and often channels Hitchcock, by whom Weiner claims to have been inspired. So there's a very stylized camerawork which sometimes obscures Draper or shoots him from the side or behind to lend him that air of mystery. 00:24:07:26 - 00:24:32:02 Unknown Sometimes, also, it shoots below the eyeline so that we can take in the whole architecture of the room and are aware of that environment and the ambiance that the characters carry with them. No hand-held camera to disrupt the smooth, polished, seamless choreography, and that illusion of the past is being recreated so effectively. The facade is part of the series central strategy, which is to critique, examine the idealized American family and the social norm to which it was attached. 00:24:32:05 - 00:25:00:06 Unknown Like, first of all, reflecting back to us in a context when social era in which such norms and indeed the whole notion of norms have been soundly rejected, and secondly, by continually reminding us of its artificially artificiality and its constructivist. And third, reminding us also that this is a remembrance, not an actual reality of the past, it evokes a nostalgia for the way we think things work or believe things were, but it all comes from our own personal truths and recollections and longings, and not actual historical fact. 00:25:00:08 - 00:25:18:28 Unknown Don reveals to his assistant Peggy a certain secret to effective advertising. He says, you can't tell people what they want. It has to be what you want. In other words, it's the desire of the storyteller, the artist, the writer, the filmmaker, the creator conveyed to the listener or viewer to images of words that then becomes part of the popular imaginary and what we remember. 00:25:19:06 - 00:25:42:13 Unknown What's so effective about the meta commentary in the series is that it continually presents to us the facade of the American family, while at the same time questioning its existence. Even at this moment in the series set in the early 60s. That family and that vision of America have ceased to exist, if in fact, they ever did. And in a truly reflexive postmodern sense, this is a vision, a paradox of facade, an illusion of American life that the characters are also aware of even as they're living it. 00:25:42:15 - 00:25:59:19 Unknown So here are some things for you to think about while you're watching. How do the Drapers conform to the All-American family? Did you have seen represented on television? What aspects of American culture are conveyed through Mad Men's representation of this family? And and to all the characters, how might we see them as an example of the new televisions unfamiliar? 00:25:59:21 - 00:26:17:24 Unknown How can we tell that this was meant to be revealed as a facade or an illusion, and not the reality? Which aspects of the series narrative, character development, and production techniques reveal that? For example, is Betty? Is Betty Draper the perfect wife and mother in real life or TV? Why or why not? What's missing from the picture of family life as we have imagined it? 00:26:17:27 - 00:26:25:08 Unknown And is there another series that you've been watching which you're, in your opinion, affectively and realistically portrays family life? Enjoy the series.