Introduction / Through the Looking Glass, and What We Found There: Ourselves

As an epitome of postmodern television, Mad Men engages in narrative breaks, non-linear storytelling, open symbolism, and self-reflexivity. Such a model of memory-shifting and creative historical presentation is hard to relate to scripted television, seemingly conflicting with the standard model of television production as seen in sitcoms, occupational dramas and crime or detective series. It’s also a far cry from the agenda-bearing television of the postwar era—if Mad Men is promoting a particular politics or family model, it’s certainly not the promotion of the nuclear family. Yet, as an hour-long weekly drama, Mad Men has clear narrative structures, and a team of writers, directors, actors, and creative staff to produce a series, one with defined plot lines, season-long character arcs, a sequence and chronology, even if one of the trademarks of the show is its non-linear narrative gaps. Set in the world of postwar Manhattan advertising executives, Mad Men, ironically, airs on the cable network with the fewest commercials per hour. A self-reflexive show, creator and show runner Matthew Weiner makes reference to the medium of television, and Mad Men’s viewers frequently see Don, Betty, Sally, and Bobby, Joan, Roger, and Jane, Pete and Trudy, watching television. In the words of television scholar Horace Newcomb, “As it appears in the series, television is emblematic of and deeply embedded in the construction of the America created in the series.” What does it mean to watch television characters watch their worlds constructed via television? Referencing Marshall McLuhan, Weiner noted, the medium is the message