Letters to the Editor
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Mad Men - Sane Women
This is an excellent existential analysis of the most interesting television drama to come along in - I don't know - maybe my entire life. Anyone raised on reruns of "I Love Lucy" - granted, still one of the funniest series of all time - can't help but embrace the realities of Mad Men.
Ms. Havrilesky's fine piece on Mad Men reminded me of rereading "The Women's Room" by Marilyn French this past summer. I was assigned to write a retrospective of the novel as part of a multi-author essay for BITCH Magazine. Coincidentally, this was TWR's 30th anniversary. The novel didn't have the same punch it had when I read it in 1978. But Mad Men does.
I was a child in the years that Mad Men portrays. Anything that reminds us of the realities of our corrupt society, including male domination through the subordination of women (using any means available - lifestyle and psychoanalysis being the two that come immediately to mind) while pointing out the underlying mediocrity of our 'dream', is important television - television being the medium that pushes the most messages to the most people. This as we watch sociocultural movements that took us part of the way forward turn tail or simply fall apart from lack of attention.
Well done.
Evelyn Sharenov