Telling

[missroserose]

I'm struck by how many people who watch Mad Men tell me they hate Betty; they can't stand her; they wish Don would just up and leave. To the modern viewer, Betty's sins (being a bad mom) far outweigh Don's (being an absent dad, cheating on his wife, stealing a man's identity, driving his brother to suicide, lying to his wife and nearly everyone he knows about who he actually is). We let the charming man get away with murder, but we wish the cranky wife would just know her place? Sort of makes you wonder how far we've come.

--Julia Turner, writing about Season 3 of Mad Men

Comments

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. The charming man has a great theme song by Papa Roach.

I think the root may lie in the idea that the charming/likable/central figure of an entertainment has some justification for whatever actions taken. An "end justifies the means", but carte blanche instead of quantified.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the show's fairly sympathetic towards both Betty and Don. Which is part of what makes the fan reaction so surprising - and so telling.

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

Eh, maybe I wasn't direct enough there.

Haven't seen the show yet. Do understand what you're saying. Question, though, how central is Betty to the show?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Fairly central, certainly one of the main characters. Her marriage to Don (and the combination of her fashion-plate looks with her isolation and inability to mature) is one of the main venues where the writers explore the "aspirational lifestyle lived by repressed dysfunctional people" theme. They look like a wealthy "everything's swell" nuclear family right out of the 1950s, but as the show moves on we see the compromises and lies and stress points that are hidden in order to maintain that facade.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I've never seen Mad Men. Well, okay, I watched about ten minutes of the first episode and was just like, "Ugh, seriously?" and couldn't watch any more. But my impression was that "suave nostalgic style trumps absolutely everything" was actually a rough encapsulation of the entire show, not just that one character.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I know it's probably very well done and excellently acted and brilliantly scripted, but I've spent entirely too much time among ad people and 60s fetishists to want to saturate myself in both.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I can certainly understand that. I'm not sure I'd call the show 'brilliant', but I rarely find it unentertaining. But then, I don't know many ad men or 60s fetishists. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Ad people may be the worst. Actors and would-be Great Writers saturated in pretentiousness are actually pretty tolerable compared to ad people. Zero stars, would not recommend.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

The Slate writers actually often argue about exactly that idea, actually. Matthew Weiner (the creator) tries very hard to make the show be About Something More than just a stylish period soap, and to his credit, he often succeeds. But sometimes his attempts fall flat, which often makes his work seem self-aggrandizing ("See? See what I did there? This is an Important Cultural Phenomenon!"). Still, I'm willing to forgive a lot for the combination of retro style and sharp examination of gender politics - I seem to recall reading that it actually has one of the highest percentage of female writers of any popular show on television.

Out of curiousity, what was it that so strongly rubbed you the wrong way in the bit you saw?