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  • Essay / Mad Men - 1379

    The weekly television series Mad Men, which captures millions of attention, is the naughty story of a major advertising agency operating in New York in the 1960s. Don Draper, director the most successful publicist of the Sterling Cooper agency, is surprisingly handsome and charismatic. Not only is he a master operator of cigarette manufacturers, but he is also exceptionally popular with women. Given that this series was set in the early 1960s, the focus seems to be on the reality of the brutal conditions of the corporate world of money and the idea of ​​what white male privilege looks like in a period of social change. My hope for this article is to examine how unspoken traits of masculinity are present and how men and women are expected to interact. Mad Men reveals the existence of American masculine identity through the mirror of independence and individuality. In Episode 4 of Season 1, a series of events caused Draper to feel as if the authority of his status was being undermined. Cambell's role at the agency was to wine, dine, and kiss potential clients, while Draper's responsibility was to pitch and close the deal. When Cambell went behind Draper's back and successfully pitched the idea of ​​"Bethlehem, the Backbone of America" ​​to the steel company owner, Draper got the impression that Cambell was trying to become the object of attention and achieve dominance. Apparent from the very first episode, Draper wants to be heroic and the ideal self-made man. The way Campell begins to threaten how others perceive him, he aggressively asks him to get a cardboard box and put his things in it. This particular situation arose only because Cambell believed that he had great standards written down and promoted as a fantastic idea for men in the corporate world. For most, being a “man” means being strong, aggressive, capable, and having an objectifying view of sex. Even through these unspoken traits, we identify masculinity in a time of social change where women are beginning to desire independence and strive for equality. As mentioned in this article, in the corporate world, men begin to feel threatened when their power is undermined by another man. However, I think the most important topic to acknowledge in this series is the inferiority and powerlessness that men feel when women begin to take on more dominant roles. Clearly, Mad Men paints an accurate picture of the early stages of reinvention and shows that male dominance in the workforce is being minimized and that women will be seen as something other than a sexualized object..