‘The Catastrophe of My Personality’: Frank O’Hara, Don Draper and the Poetics of Mad Men

Mad Men ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lavery
Keyword(s):  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Mad Men

scholarly journals Mediations on Emergent Occasions: Mad Men, Donald Draper and Frank O’Hara

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Lilley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Mad Men ◽  
Serial Television ◽  
Poetry Collection

Frank O’Hara’s 1957 poetry collection, Meditations in an Emergency, features in Season Two of Mad Men (2008) as a talismanic phrase and object. Pressed into service as Matthew Weiner’s valentine to his returning viewers, the circulation and citation of the book across the season, through different diegetic and extradiegetic levels, aligns poetry, advertising and quality serial television drama as textual modes intent, above all, on creating attachment through feeling. O’Hara’s book is a crucial link in a series of metonymic relays, chain effects and affects, which underwrite Mad Men’s citational poetics to assert its own cultural authority, and the mediating power of television.

Jewish Mad Men

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerri P. Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Mad Men

Branding "Frenchness" in Mad Men

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-164
Author(s):  
Carole Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Mad Men

Babylon Berlin: Media, Spectacle, and History

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-854
Author(s):  
Veronika Fuechtner ◽  
Paul Lerner
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Television ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Mad Men ◽  
Media Spectacle ◽  
Streaming Service ◽  
Police Detective ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Tom Tykwer ◽  
Nazi Era

Babylon Berlin (henceforth BB) premiered in Germany on the pay channel Sky TV in October 2017 and in the United States on the streaming service Netflix in January 2018. It is based on Volker Kutscher's series of crime novels set in late Weimar Republic and early Nazi-era Berlin. At its center are the lives and investigations of the laconic and tormented police detective Gereon Rath and his charismatic and irrepressible assistant Charlotte (Lotte) Ritter. In anticipation of the series premiere on public television, marathon screenings took place in 150 cinemas across Germany, where audience members dressed up in 1920s fashion and enjoyed a Currywurst break. Its viewership in the Federal Republic was topped only by the global fantasy behemoth Game of Thrones. The series is clearly modeled on American series such as Mad Men (2007–2015) and The Wire (2002–2008) as it unfolds a complex web of characters and subplots with loving attention to the history and fashions of the time. Indeed, this collaboration of seasoned directors Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Henk Handloegten is the most expensive German TV series to date. The fact that BB premiered on pay TV while having been largely produced with public funds drew some ire. German reviewers questioned both the circumstances of its production and its creative ambition. While Der Spiegel called it “a masterpiece,” one much debated blog review went so far as to call it “pure crap,” which neither reflected historical truth nor carried artistic merit. Many critics faulted the series for trading in postcard clichés and creating a 1920s “Berlin Disneyland.” The weekly Die Zeit complained that there was a little too much cute dialect, such as “icke” and “kiek ma,” which made the critic sometimes feel like wiping the dirt makeup off the proletarian faces. (And indeed, one of the numerous intertexts of this series are Heinrich Zille's unflinching depictions of proletarian misery.)

An Implicit Theology of Mad Men

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-430
Author(s):  
Scott Hubbard
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
High Water ◽  
Symbolic Representation ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Mad Men ◽  
Secular World ◽  
High Water Mark

Abstract One of the most striking sites of secular-religious encounter in narrative fiction of the decade has been the baptismal imagery of the television serial drama Mad Men. Set in an era which may be said to be the high-water mark of the secularization of American culture, Mad Men’s encoding of meaning in symbolic representation in effect re-sacralizes the secular world into which those symbols are transplanted. The symbolism’s divergences from Christian doctrine and ritual that give Mad Men its distinct theological significance. This paper will explore the literary implications of Paul Ricoeur’s theory of religious symbolism. This paper conducts several close readings of key moments in the show’s use of baptismal symbolism, and offers thoughts about how Mad Men’s constellation of originally religious symbols to convey narrative significance empowers the show to perform a religious function for its audience.

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