Mad Men--tv show

Tedfordshire · 2022-09-14T11:04:04+00:00

I noticed something similar in the show Peaky Blinders.

There's an episode in the last series in which several female characters lament about how brutish, dumb, and violent their husbands are, with one of the characters insinuating that she would rather be with a woman because of this.

However, the show is actually a perfect example of how men are absolutely fucked by the provider role. The male characters had to take charge, work their way up from the bottom, to get the power they have. Their wives enjoy exactly the same power and status, but they never had to get their hands dirty to earn it. Whenever someone needed killing, or there was a dangerous situation, the men were the ones sent to deal with it.

These women are just as malevolent and callous as the men, but they exercise their power sexually, rather than physically. They are completely complicit in the men's violence, and actively support it since it is in their own interests as well. Yet they have the audacity to complain about male violence while directly owing their way of life to it.

I think this was a tone-deaf way to shoehorn some antimaleness into the show.

RhinoNomad · 2022-09-14T11:13:34+00:00

I think it's sadly because we kinda sheepishly expect men to play those roles.

One of the other commenters mentioned Peaky Blinders, and I think it's an apt comparison since it's always men who have to fight/kill each other in order to gain some semblance of personal agency/power and I think in a lot of ways, that's kinda the aim of the show.

ShelSilverstain · 2022-09-14T13:33:20+00:00

What I liked is that it made a working class person, Peggy, a real, fleshed out, person. The working class usually gets ignored or parodied

lingdingwhoopy · 2022-09-14T15:31:59+00:00

I don't think it's fair to say the show only examines sexism towards women. It examines how that period of time boxed people into certain roles and how those roles break people.

Just look at how Lane ended up for example.

And the female characters are hardly depicted as purely victims of "the patriarchy." Betty, Joan, Peggy...all do and believe and say pretty shitty things during the show. Betty goes from being very sympathetic to one of the most rotten people on the show. We understand why, but the show doesn't go soft on depicting how much she fails as a mother. Joan especially can be vicious as fuck. You could argue the show makes excuses for it by blaming "patriarchal standards" or whatever, but I don't think it's that cut and dry.

Pretty much everyone was a philandering mess too, not just the dudes.

hottake_toothache · 2022-09-14T14:46:35+00:00

That show is pure gold!

another-cosplaytriot · 2022-09-18T04:40:09+00:00

The show was interesting and popular enough that everybody felt the urge to hang their agendas on it. In this instance, as in virtually every other instance where feminism intersects with pop culture, they were trying to ride on the coattails of more imaginative thinkers.

If you look at the current pop culture offerings, none present a more complex narrative than: woman good, man bad. The last 5 years clearly illustrate what happens when feminists try to write stories artificially constructed to bludgeon the audience with their agenda's message. It's all mediocre.

So in short, an inferior talent can do one of two things: she can distort somebody's better idea to fit her agenda, or she can try to write her own narrative. (Or, more commonly, they can simply steal somebody else's idea whole-cloth and gender-swap the protagonist so the studio can say: Look how feministy we are.) Feminists have proven they're not particularly good at any of these tactics.

Title	Mad Men--tv show
Author	carverchile75
Upvotes	48
Comments	13
Date	September 14, 2022 3:21 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/xdr2ze/mad_mentv_show/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/mad-men-tv-show.1131102 https://theredarchive.com/post/1131102

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