Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 is the work that captured my attention most in high school. It was passed among and discussed with great fervor by the Royal-tron Intelligensia. It is, among other things, howlingly funny at times, paranoic and cynical, and it captured the insanity of America after the assassination of Kennedy.
Mad Men mines the same historical territory, reminding us now how utterly deluded America has been about itself in the past. Mad Men also reminds us that we're being advertised to. At all times. By Energy, by Chemical, by pharemecutical, by Frito-Lay, by Coke or Pepsi, by Democrats and Repulicans.
How to talk about the subject of mass delusions without sending the listener scurrying off to hide under a rock? (or a bed?) Humor doesn't hurt. I think a good starting point is Marshall McLuhan. The Medium is the Message. Throw in some humorless Chomsky. Then consider the preposterous limits of consumerism tethered to this advertising/public relations industrial complex and you start to see how prescient Man Men really is.
There is something downright Cartesean about this media study. "I consume. Therefore, I am."
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This week's episode of Mad Men took an unprecedented step. It showed how our fears and collective hysteria could be packaged and sold back to us. Remember Ginsburg's second pitch?
