Mad Men’s second overt challenge to its own glamour relies on the audience’s self-flattering sense of historical irony, on our consciousness of our social enlightenment relative to the 1960s. ‘How wonderful they look,’ we’re invited to think, ‘but how racist they are, how sexist, how homophobic, how reckless in their diet; what snobs!’
What if, with or against our will, we aren’t shocked by the darkness beneath the surface, but childishly delighted by the prettiness of the surface shimmering over the darkness? What if the vintage fashion-shoot perfection of the Christmas scene leaves a more powerful impression on us than our awareness of the suffering...
... over a whole series, these temporal markers of the American 1960s crowd the portrayal of chauvinism to create an effect where, rather than being a cause of shame, past racism and homophobia come to seem an organic and inherently temporary aspect of nostalgia, like puberty – as if civil rights for all races and sexual orientations have been won (to the limited extent they have been) not through protest, obstinacy and sacrifice, in the face of vicious opposition and popular derision, but because they were inevitable. It is as if the worst chauvinisms of straight white 1960s America were childish bad behaviour that the adult straight white America of the new millennium would probably rather not repeat, but permits itself to shake its head over with bemused affection for its impetuous younger self...
The shock of the pretty
