Comments on: Sex and the Single (or Married) “Mad” Man

By: Random thoughts on Mad Men, season 4 (so far) : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:29:18 +0000

[...] Well, now that I have an i-pod and i-tunes, there’s a way to get Mad Men without subscribing to some expensive, crappy cable TV package I neither want nor need. i-tunes sells a season pass for $20 ($30 for HD), which seems like a total bargain. The only downside is that I have to watch the show on my computer, so Fratguy and I snuggle up in bed and balance it on our laps together. (Too bad it’s such a completely un-sexy show!) [...]

By: Mad Men: still aggressively anti-sexy : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:01:26 +0000

[...] that we’re so cheap, we squeak? It’s true.) I stand by my claim of last month that Mad Men goes out of its way to ensure that no one enjoys any sexual pleasure whatsoever. In this episode, Don and Sal are on a business trip to Baltimore, and both of them hook [...]

By: Must be swell being a steer : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:33:39 +0000

[...] on the state of heterosexuality and the pill in the early 1960s, which she wrote in response to my post about what a grim, joyless undertaking is heterosex on Mad Men. This is just an open thread, for anyone who wants to “share.” Consider it a [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:53:38 +0000

Thanks, KC–I’ll come over and take a look.

By: Knitting Clio

Knitting Clio — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:15:22 +0000

Just posted some longer comments on my blog but for some reason they're not tracking back.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:02:30 +0000

Historiann, re the littering query: I really think there *has* been a sea change on that over the period you mention, perhaps comparable to the way we would view a tobacco smoke filled public enclosed space today if we entered one that mirrored America even ten years ago.
The “Highway Beautification” movement was largely about persuading people not to be “litterbugs,” although Lady Bird Johnson also added commercial billboards to that category. And it’s amazing to think that the iconic “First Earth Day” in April, 1970 was largely, in the provinces at least, a community turn out event to scour unsightly debris from roadsides and streamsides. Later notions of ecological interaction as defining of “the environment” were scarcely on the ideological radar screen much less anything about “sustainability.” There are certainly noisome city neighborhoods today filled with urban detritus–ironically, seldom moreso than right after the refuse trucks go by to pick up, and scatter, the leavings. But that we even notice their noisomeness is somewhat a measure of how far the threshhold of perception has moved on that question.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:03:27 +0000

LOAF–thanks for the intel on Hildy/Notorious. (I didn’t know that secretary’s name.) No, not the actress who plays Joan. I just thought the sarcasm of her first major line was a lot like Notorious, so it was a kind of looks & personality meld. (Until she bonked Harold Crane, that is. Our Notorious has much higher standards, I am sure!)

By: life_of_a_fool

life_of_a_fool — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:59:49 +0000

I had never thought about how depressing the sex is, but that’s an interesting observation. I never really thought of it separately from the general miserableness of everyone.

I don’t take it as a “we’re so superior today,” though I can see how it could be read that way. And I definitely agree that it’s the 1960′s filtered through the 2000′s.

On the birth control issue, I took Peggy’s trip to the doctor to mean that all the secretaries (and so all the female employees) were on the pill (because the women are meant as a “perk” of the male employees).

Oh, I think you mean that Notorious PhD looks like Hildy, not Joan (the portrayer of whom was in Firefly).

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:02:53 +0000

HistoryMaven–I don’t feel virtuous, I feel a little overwhelmed and intimidated by the washer, which seemed to me in the store to have the simplest dials and options, but which now (as Fratguy put it) disturbs me because it seems “self aware.”

By: HistoryMaven

HistoryMaven — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:33:40 +0000

To heck with Mad Men, Historian, is that an LG washer? I just bought one, too. Is it so wrong to feel so virtuous?