Mad Men as Health Communication: Health-Related Themes in the Hit AMC Television Series

Abstract

As a popular contemporary text, the appeal of cable television’s Mad Men (AMC) lies in its capacity to highlight the differences between 1960s sensibilities and 21st-century assumptions. Viewers can enjoy a sense of superiority by recognizing the “folly” of the beliefs and actions of the characters with the benefit of historic hindsight, as well as noting the evolution of technology, philosophy, and human rights. Health-related scenes and themes in the series are a particularly interesting focus for analysis. We employ Burke’s four master tropes as an analytical lens and argue that the dominant dramatic technique of irony, particularly in the form that we call strategic anachronism—derived from an audience’s enjoyment of historical hindsight—highlights the racism, sexism, homophobia, and overall conservatism of the early 1960s while simultaneously serving to obfuscate the ways in which we still have much to critique in the delivery of contemporary health care and other body politics.

Notes

¹ Several characters mentioned in this essay must be introduced: The lead is the creative director, Don Draper. His wife is Betty Draper. Roger Sterling is one of the principals of Sterling-Cooper. Joan Holloway is the office manager. Freddy Rumsen is a copywriter. Peggy Olson is a copywriter. Peter Campbell is an account executive. Trudy Campbell is Peter’s wife.

² The Western and the police drama are obvious exceptions.

³ Mad Men has been the subject of at least three volumes of scholarly analysis, and yet, in our search, we found only one chapter that focuses specifically on health (Reagan, 2013).

⁴ What makes Gottdiener’s (1985) three-pronged framework for semiotic analysis particularly intriguing in Mad Men, however, is the fact the advertising industry is the subject from which much of the text is generated. The producers of the text are also, in many ways, the subject of the text if we are to accept that the work of television is not drama (or comedy or sport or late night television) but, rather, a delivery system for advertising. For it is first and foremost the product of Mad Men’s Sterling-Cooper (the featured advertising agency), and secondarily gender relations, race relations, and politics (sexual and otherwise) that are the intrigue for the 21st-century viewer.

⁵ This example from Mad Men reveals Roland Barthes’s (1975) view of intertextuality: that the meaning of an artistic work does not reside in that work, but in the interpretation of that work by the audience. John Fiske (2010) differentiates between horizontal intertextuality and vertical intertextuality. Horizontal intertextuality, according to Fiske, refers to similar media forms echoing each other, as is the case in the Dire Straits’ song “Romeo and Juliet” pointing to the song “Somewhere” from West Side Story (which is itself, of course, a reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy). Different media channels pointing to a different type of media channel is referred to as vertical intertextuality, as in the Mad Men example, with a modern television show referring to a popular magazine article.

⁶ See Vandekieft (2004) for a description of the ways the producers of M*A*S*H went to great lengths to maintain a separation between the representation of the show’s Korean landscape of the early 1950s and the contemporary and politically charged Vietnam War that was still in progress when the show debuted.

⁷ Betty Draper utters this phrase to her psychologist in “The Ladies’ Room” (Season 1, Episode 2).

⁸ In “The Fog” (Season 3, Episode 5), Betty encounters her deceased father in a dream and he reminds her that she’s “a house cat—very important, with little to do.” Friedan (1963) discusses this aspect of suburban femininity in The Feminine Mystique as the lack of satisfaction stemming from the bogus bubble of homebound bliss.

⁹ Peter Campbell delivers this line to his wife, Trudy, as they contemplate infertility in “The New Girl” (Season 2, Episode 5).

¹⁰ With slightly different foci, both Ciasullo (2012) and Reagan (2013) analyze this same scene.

¹¹ Compare the etymological definition of synecdoche shared earlier in this essay as “a receiving together.”

¹² Peter Campbell makes this pronouncement to his wife, Trudy in “The Grown Ups” (Season 3, Episode 13).

¹³ This is Don Draper’s reply to his physician when asked about his sabbatical from doctor’s office visits in “For Those Who Think Young” (Season 2, Episode 1).