Mad Men: Stillbirth of the American Dream (Questions #1-4)

1.) Havilesky’s main insight through the Mad Men series is to provide a clear view of how we’ve set the American Dream to be less attainable as we further our standards of wanting more material things. She emphasizes this on several occasions throughout her paragraphs saying “…until we couldn’t distinguish our own desires ascribed to us by professional manipulators, suggesting antidotes for every real or imagined malady, supplying escapist fantasies to circumvent the supposedly unbearable tedium of ordinary life.” (pg. 175) Describing how incredibly difficult we’ve made the American Dream as time, and media twist the nature of what that goal is supposed to encompass- a simple moment of pure joy, and content of life.

2.) Havilesky establishes her authority by clearing defining her point of view in precise detail, and it also mentions the fact that she is a television critic on page 170.

3.) Right away she appealed to my emotions because her target was specially an American audience. She uses the Mad Men series, and several of her passages to convey how we’ve derailed from the American Dream into more disappointment. This comes clear in the end of the very first paragraph saying “slowly we come to view our lives as inconsequential, grubby, even intolerable.” Havilesky furthers her striking stand point for the readers through relating the Mad Men series by saying “...underscoring the disconnect between the American and reality by distilling our deep-seated frustrations as a nation into painfully palpable vignettes.” (pg. 171) Therefore painting a clear picture that we Americans have forgotten how to enjoy the chase in living in reality instead remembering that somethings are just agonizingly wishful thinking.

          She also appeals to the readers emotions by  relating the characters off the stage of Mad Men “we see the longing in Pete Campbell’s (Vincest Kartheiser) tired face, we see the fear in Betty’s eyes as she sits down…,” and “the confused humans who straighten their shoulders and dry their eyes and take the stage day after day, dutifully mouthing lines about the thrills of work and family, all of it the invented, peppy rhetoric of laundry detergent jingles.” (pg. 174) The author gives the infamous truth that the modern American Dream today isn’t all that special as it used to be to us. Striking the reader into astonishment of the high standards society has created within ourselves.       

4.) In the past I’ve heard of the show Mad Men, but I didn’t much about it till now. I have a basic understanding of what the show encompasses now from the author’s perspective, and ideas of the “American Dream”.  Does that make me want to watch it? Yes as well as no. The entire passage especially on page 175 got me hooked, and interested on the plot this series revolves around, but the part around the “… embodied most gruesomely in the lawn mower accident,” kind of led me astray a bit, but that’s my point of view saying I’m not a fan of tragedy.  Otherwise I believe I would watch it.