The London flat hunt. Is there any other business which is so tiresome, so frustrating, so soul-rending? Firstly, you come prolonged contact with the most dreaded of modern day archetypes: the realtor. To be fair, they’ve not all been bad. But trying to make small talk when you’re being shown around dreadful (and expensive!) apartments by some young geezer in an ill-fitting suit, bryled hair and a souped up car… honestly, I’d rather be at home wading through my receipts and invoices and sorting out my accounts.
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Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know: Mad Men, AMC, 2007/2008
The opening sequence of Mad Men floats across the screen like a slick, successful Everyman executive’s nightmare: the silhouetted man reaches his expansive office, which slowly crumbles as he freefalls, past giant advertising billboards towards what end, we are unsure. His doom? Utopia? Only the final episode will tell.
By referencing indelible images of the past (9/11, Hitchcock’s Vertigo) and soundtracked by David Carbonara’s haunting instrumental theme, the scene is set. Madison Avenue. New York. The 1960s. Nixon is in power and a young Senator by the name of John F. Kennedy is making his mark. A time when men are men – and on Madison Avenue, they are the masters of the universe – and rarely seen without a cigarette or a drink in hand. A time when women are housewives, mothers, daughters, secretaries, mistresses and shopgirls and occasionally, artists or divorcées – but never equals. When children are seen but rarely heard. When hippy beatniks and their ‘art’ are irrelevant and peripheral. The Beatles have yet to hit America, the Summer of Love is almost a decade away and Vietnam was simply an exotic destination in East Asia.
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Tagged 1960s, design, film, literature, mad men, media, new york, society, television