Basketcase (long-time reader, first time poster) kcspang posted this comment:
What will you be reading/watching to get ready for Season 3? I have been brushing up on some biographies of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and ordered a book from the library about her collaborations with Oleg Cassini.
It’s hard to find histories and novels about the early 1960′s, because it really doesn’t register yet as “the Sixties” in people’s minds, so it’s kind of ignored.
Any suggestions?
I thought this would make for a fun ‘throw-it-to-the-crowd discussion. Me, I don’t read much and I don’t study. And one of the fascinations about Mad Men from the very beginning was that this is a much-ignored moment in history, for the very reasons kcspang cited.
So folks? Whatdya got?
20 Responses to “Study up for Season Three”
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Grace and Power is about the Kennedy years in the White House, and focuses more on their social lives and less on political aspects. From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor is about advertising in the mid 1960s. The Feminine Mystique is about the what middle class women were told would make them happy, versus the reality for many. It explains Betty Drapper.
As for fiction, James Bond novels are reccommended, because it's a male ideal/fantasy. On the Beach is about the world after a war, in which the only country untouched by nuclear fallout is Australia. The Ugly American is about Americans in a country in Southeast Asia, trying to promote Democracy and stop Communism. Fail-Safe is about a miscommunication that almost leads to nuclear war. It was released shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis-life sometimes imitates art. The Quiet American by Graham Greene is about Vietnam in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It shows how naivee and idealistic Americans were when it came to foreign policy.
I know you asked for books, but here are some movies. Some were made in the early 1960s, and others were set in the early 1960s:
The Best of Everything
The Apartment
Catch Me If You Can
That Thing You Do
American Graffiti
Hope this helps.
Happy reading/viewing.
There's a divide in the 1960s between pre and post-Vietnam but the early part of the 60s is well defined in literature. J.D. Sallinger was at his peak, with books like Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.
Mary McCarthy's The Group came out in 1963. Even though it's about women in the 1930s, everyone read it. I'm betting one of the girls in the office, maybe even Peggy, will have a copy of it.
I cannot imagine The Beatles not figuring into the season in some interesting way. We've already seen the tension that the increasing emphasis pop-culture has brought into the office and storyline (MM death, John Glenn, even the PJ Clark 'Twist" scene), so I'd be surprised if Beatlemania didn't come into play somehow. Plus, NYC was ground-zero for the phonomenon.
I think a significant plot-factor could include The New York World's Fair which opened in Queens in April and ran through October. It was considered at the time a very optimistic, forward-looking exhibition of what life for the post-War generation would truly look like. American industry was a central focus of the exhibits. IBM, Pepsi, Disney, Ford, GE, and many others had prominent installations.
If form holds, most, if not all, of S3 will take place post-JFK's assassination, so the rollercoaster will start picking up speed toward the coming social revolutions later in the decade.
Chief among those, chronologically if not otherwise, will be the blossoming of the Civil Rights Movement. MLK's "I Have a Dream Speech" was in August 1963 and I can imagine that that event brought the issues surrounding the Movement to the fore nationally … all the way to Madison Ave. And President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in July of 1964. These are things that just skimmed the periphery of the action in S1&2.
Also, 1964 was an election year, although not one with the monumental societal implications of 1960. The impact of Goldwater's campaign would take another 16 years or so to be truly felt, and Johnson was running on JFK's legacy.
On a smaller, but interesting, note, an incident in March 1964 in Queens, NY involved Kitty Genovese, who was brutally murdered near her home … it was reported that dozens of neighbors heard her screaming but no one called the police. Not a major incident (well, except for poor Kitty), but interesting from the standpoint of Mr. Weiner's "coarsening of the culture" theme.
We may hear the word "Vietnam" for the first time in S3.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that this will be the first season of MM that began production knowing it would be doing at least two more seasons … so I would expect that the crack team would take advantage of that by unveiling some plot/theme/mood elements more slowly than ever. Using weapons loaded in S3 that don't fire until S4.
This was going to be a post until I saw the topic come up independently … sorry for the long, hot wind.
I don't know that we are guaranteed two more seasons–just that if there is a fourth season, it's Weiner's.
I've been reading the biography of Helen Gurley Brown and will be reviewing it here soon.
LIFE Magazine put out a special issue on Jackie Kennedy that's pretty great, full of pics and stories. I have the one they did on Grace Kelly too, a retrospective 25 years later.
Almost anything by John Cheever, including The Wapshot Scandal (1964), would be particularly apt. Also good, John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), Sylvia Plath's Ariel (1965), and all of the fantastic nonfiction from that period: In Cold Blood (1966), Silent Spring (1962), The Feminine Mystic (1963), etc.
Err, that should read The Feminine Mystique. Unless there's also a New Age version floating around.
The Women's Room by Marilyn French sets up the sixties. I saw, but haven't read, Revolutionary Road which reminded me of The Women's Room AND Mad Men.
I wanna say Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz too. There is a good sense of the pre-hippie times in the U.S.
Last year I read The Death and Life of the Great American City before watching any of Mad Men. Then I saw season 1 and thought it would be great if season 2 broached any of the topics in it. The closest it came was Pete and Bud discussing their father's donation to Lincoln Center. While I would still love have a scene with characters discussing Robert Moses, I don't feel like setting myself up by deciding something that should be addressed as essential to the 1960s.
Though I will read Betty Freidan someday
Two books that I think are relevant and interesting for this period:
Nixonland (2008) from Rick Perlstein does a great job of dissecting political and social history going very deep into the 60's with some new angles. For example, I don't think it's widely known that Nixon basically reinvented himself mid-decade with major help from young ad agency talent who helped him win in '68 and later became key staffers (Haldeman, Erhlichman and the like). You can see the potential for folks like Pete and Ken being enamored of that opportunity and the pitfalls ahead. This is definitely not a light beach read but very well done for history buffs.
A Big Life (2002) by Mary Wells Lawrence chronicles her rise to fame in the mid 60's through her firm Wells Rich Greene which created some of the most memorable and innovative TV/print campaigns of the era. I've often thought a strong, attractive female foil who outsmarts Don on the creative front would be fun to watch. The book again isn't a page turner but does reveal how Ms. Lawrence's agency broke a lot of traditional cultural barriers in advertising – not to mention her being a female agency head which was pretty revolutionary for the times.
I'd like to second the recommendation for Nixonland, and add a recommendation for Rick Perlstein's first book, Before the Storm. It's a bit closer to season three, since it covers the Barry Goldwater campaign, and the birth of the modern conservative movement. Combined, they function as an excellent history of the shift in American politics from 1964 to 1972. I found them both really engaging as well, although I'm a history buff and like that sort of thing.
The Women's Room really is amazing about who someone like Betty or Francine is and how she got that way.
Thanks, S. Tarzan – that sounds worth picking up. I wonder if we'll see the "Daisy Girl" commercial somewhere in Season 3?
I didn't know the British business culture nor school system from WWII thru 1960 so I ordered and read the following two books:
A Domestic History of the Bank of England, 1930-1960
and
The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System
Don may have thought Pete was privileged, but the Brits will show him what serious class privilege is about!
[note: The Bank of England set the tone for business and was the training ground for a large number of future CEO's]
I decided to read all the books mentioned or shown during Season 1 & 2 of Mad Men. I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. Well, technically I didn’t read it; I listened to the 10 CDs driving to and from Virginia. But I digress. I had just pulled into the rest stop when the last lines were read; I sat there thinking “That’s it. What a bore.†I just didn’t get it. Anyway, in an attempt to understand the philosophy of Objectivism I found the Atlasphere web site and the first thing I saw was…
“Washington, D.C., June 29, 2009 – Shortly after Independence Day, new free-standing floor displays of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, first published 52 years ago, will be placed in more than 850 bookstores across the United States. Borders will display the novel’s trade edition at 520 of its stores and Waldenbooks will feature the mass market paperback edition at 336 of its stores. Thousands of copies of Atlas Shrugged will be on display.
Barnes & Noble also had copies of Atlas Shrugged for sale in special floor displays in most of its bookstores from late
May into early June.â€
According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “This is the most prominent and widespread display for this novel in all of its publishing history. It is particularly remarkable because it comes more than a half century after its initial publication. “The fact that the largest bookstore chains in America have chosen to make such a prominent display of Atlas Shrugged is a testimony to the current and growing interest in Ayn Rand’s novels and ideas, and an encouraging sign for America’s future."
Hmm, I wonder why the sudden interest in Atlas Shrugged? Could there be are a lot of Man Men fans also reading this book? Maybe one of them could explain it to me.
seagirl:
That's an interesting question. I could see that being something that they don't pay much attention to, just like they had Roger offhandedly referring to the Nixon-Kennedy debate in season one; as I understand it, its influence is overstated, and given the stellar income growth in the past couple years Johnson would have won in a landslide no matter what.
Comment 7 reminded me of a John Cheever short story that I read in high school titled "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut". It was about a stay-at-home mom who hadn't married her first true love.
I read every Rona Jaffe book available on amazon this year as I wanted to gain knowledge of the time period. None of Jaffe's books equalled her first book, "The Best of Everything".
The Women's Room was excellently written but dealt in extremes; the miserable housewives of the 1950's and the extremely angry feminists of the late 1960's. I still loved this book on every level as it is because of these extremes described that gave women of my generation more opportunities and to matter in society after the age of thirty!
Thank you, this is a great site. I really love the show.
Charlene, "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" is by J.D. Salinger.
I just watched Hitchcock's The Birds. Not a great movie, but an interesting exercise in ""classy horror" for lack of a better term. Apparently the special effects were state of the art for the time. He went a little light on the oedipal themes this time.
@#3 B. Cooper
Excellent research. I don't know if you're from the NYC area but Kitty Genovese was a major incident as part of urban lore. I could see Peggy's mom and sister or the secretaries discussing the case and worry about single girls living or going out at night alone.
from wikipedia:
Many saw the story of Genovese's murder as an example of the callousness or apathy supposedly prevalent in New York City, urban United States, or humanity in general. Much of this framing of the event came in reaction to an investigative article[11] in The New York Times written by Martin Gansberg and published on March 27, two weeks after the murder. The article bore the headline "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police." The public view of the story crystallized around a quote from the article, from an unidentified neighbor who saw part of the attack but deliberated, before finally getting another neighbor to call the police, saying "I didn't want to get involved."
The lack of reaction of numerous neighbors watching the scene prompted research into diffusion of responsibility and the bystander effect. Social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané started this line of research, showing that contrary to common expectations, larger numbers of bystanders decrease the likelihood that someone will step forward and help a victim. The reasons include the fact that onlookers see that others are not helping either, that onlookers believe others will know better how to help, and that onlookers feel uncertain about helping while others are watching. The Kitty Genovese case thus became a classic feature of social psychology textbooks.