Comparing The Television Series Mad Men

How often do you hear your friends, family, or acquaintances say they would like to go back to simpler times such as the 1950s - the era where you could wear fancy poodle skirts, drive big cars, eat at your favorite diner, or catch a movie at the drive in. Americans tend to think of the positive aspects of the 1950’s. Unfortunately during that era women were treated unfairly. Even though women had rights, they were still unequal to men. Fortunately feminism has progressed since then. Today, women comprise over 50% of the workforce. Nonetheless, men still cling to stereotypes that should have been destroyed long ago, whether in the workplace, at home, or in society.

Without this cultural and social change to society in the 1950’s and 60’s, a woman’s world today would be very different than what we currently know it as.

The woman’s role in society had many changes during the era of WWII to the baby boom era. It went from the strong independent woman that can work in a factory to a house wife that takes care of the family to the final slightly dominant, but still dependent female. All of these different feminine mystiques were changed because of society and through indirect propaganda in TV shows and

In this satirical article, Brady expresses the difference between the roles of women and men in the 1970’s by stating men’s point of view on women and women’s roles in society. Throughout her article, Brady emphasizes the roles of women. For example, women could now “work and...takes care of the children when they are sick”. Comparing the 1880’s to the 1970’s, there has been a big improvement. Many women had jobs outside their home, but still were responsible for most housework and childcare while their husband’s only responsibility in a marriage was to go to work and earn money to support the family. Society’s expectations allowed women to work outside the home to support college education for husbands; however,women had to know how to balance their time between their children and their jobs, making sure that their husbands “cannot miss classes at school.” During the 1970’s, women were still oppressed in many ways and had to follow society's expectations in order to live up to the men’s view of women’s roles in society. Even though society’s expectations of women had improved since The Awakening, most of women’s roles had stayed the same. In the article, Brady specifies how once a husband is “through with school and has a job, [he expects the] wife to quit working and remain at home so that [she] can more fully and completely take

In the 1960’s, women had been placed in stereotypical roles for years. But women were tired of these roles and were done with being complacent. They felt like something was missing in their lives, and they desired something more. The typical American

After world war two majority of women were forced to leave their jobs and return back to the home. However the war set a foundation for women’s rights while feminism was slowly approaching its way into society. The hard work woman put into the war effort was about to be seen by society. Furthermore during the 1950s women were still viewed as full time mothers but the women’s movement would take place in later years.

As you know many things have changed since the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, women’s rights. Women rights have come a long way in education, work, family life, politics, and sports. But I am writing to remind you the importance in women’s work force. Women have always in a general manner…been under appreciated. It seemed however that sometimes needs made men realize or potential. You see during world war 2, nearly all women worked…this was directly related to the fact that men where away at war. Women worked both hard labor, and intelligent jobs. After they returned; women gave up their jobs and let men take over. Most women enjoyed the thought of a house life, but I don’t think most knew exactly what they were getting themselves into. Women

The women’s rights movement was a huge turning point for women because they had succeeded in the altering of their status as a group and changing their lives of countless men and women. Gender, Ideology, and Historical Change: Explaining the Women’s Movement was a great chapter because it explained and analyzed the change and causes of the women’s movement. Elaine Tyler May’s essay, Cold War Ideology and the Rise of Feminism and Women’s Liberation and Sixties Radicalism by Alice Echols both gave important but different opinions and ideas about the women’s movement. Also, the primary sources reflect a number of economic, cultural, political, and demographic influences on the women’s movement. This chapter

Society is accustomed to having men play the role as “breadwinners,” while women stay at home, cook, clean, and raise the children. Mad Men portrayed men with high office jobs, while females had the lower end jobs. Nannies and secretaries were played as women in the show, which is a stereotypical job for a female. One of the women in Mad Men, Betty, was going to do the dishes, but her husband told her to “leave the dishes for the girl.” This represents the role of females taking care of the household.

Gender roles are socially constructed rules that dictate the types of acceptable behaviors based on sex. In modern society, gender roles continue to hinder the progress of equality between a man and a woman. A man and woman’s acceptable role in a 1960s American society is clearly portrayed in the episode of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2007), written by Matthew Wieners, of the series Mad Men. The episode illustrates the concepts of the glass ceiling and glass escalator, and how these concepts affect home and work life for two women: Peggy Olson, one who plays by her gender role, and Rachel Menken, one who breaks free of her gender role.

During the 18th and 19th century, patriarchy has been responsible for designing women’s role in society. Throughout history, men have been deemed as superior while women have been regarded as inferior. Society has this ideology that women are the sole laborers of a household; they were not granted the same privileges as men. In addition, women have been negatively affected by stereotyping. Women have been portrayed on television as being submissive to men. The depiction of women on television portrays the implications of a societal view of women. From a man's perspective, an ideal woman is a housewife who does all the household duties herself. However, over the years, studies have shown that gender roles have slowly advanced. Women began

One of my friends, Dylan, watched the show on the first week it aired on Netflix and has ever since been trying to persuade all his friends, including me, to watch it. Now at first, I was reluctant because I already had my hands full with school and had my eyes already glued to three other TV shows, them being Mad Men, Daredevil, and The Wire, so adding another to my to-watch list just didn’t make much sense. In addition, Mad Men and The Wire both had seven and five seasons respectively, was already a heavy

First, the late nineteen sixties was a big turning point for feminism in television. American sitcoms began to change a bit during this era. The way females were portrayed was one of these changes. Most sitcoms up to this point all women were characterized the same, which was the American homemaker better known as the housewife. The husband was in control and in charge. In the book, “Signs Of Life In The USA” the report titled “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” by Aaron Devor states that “These two clusters of attributes are most commonly seen as mirror images of on another with masculinity usually characterized by dominance and aggression, and femininity by passivity and submission”(505). These are the thing that the feminism movement

Gender roles, the public image of being a particular gender that a person presents to others (gender roles, n.d.), have seen many changes through the years, especially in families. The changes can be seen in many aspects, including television shows, from the traditional family in the I Love Lucy sitcom of the 1950s to the plethora of shows about women and men who balance working and family life of the 2000s. A traditional family can be defined as “… the ‘natural reproductive unit’ of mom, pop, and the children all living under one roof… (Ball, 2002).” The 1940s, a period dominated by this type of family, were primarily a time of single-income families where the father was the ‘breadwinner’ and the mother the ‘homemaker (Hayghe, H.V., 1990).’

The American periodic drama series, Mad Men (2007-2015), written by Mathew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television premiered on the 19th of July and ran until 2015. The series used a range of refined cinematic techniques to emphasise a theme of genre hybridity, morphing drama with periodic cinema. Relationships between characters, add clarity to the theme of drama through camera movement and lighting. This dramatic framing, is also accentuated in the drama series House of Cards (Beau Willimon, 2013-). Where shots are used to visually depict relationships, emphasising power divides between characters. The periodic genre is presented through iconography which situates audiences in the 60’s to 70’s timeframe. The periodic costume drama series Downton Abbey, underlines this motif in a similar fashion using backdrops and costumes to immerse audience members. These two genres have been seamlessly intertwined in Mad Men through, classical Hollywood natation. There is no conflict between themes in the series, allowing fictional characters to be involved in factual events. In comparison, The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013), has similar genres, situated within a fictions narrative. Through iconography and costuming Mad Men (2007-2015), has developed a sophisticated genre hybrid series that has used a classical canonical Hollywood narration. Audiences are carried through this narrative with fictional characters whilst real-life events happen, separating the series from other