Lucky Strikes and a Three Martini Lunch: Thinking about Television’s Mad Men

Lucky Strikes and a Three Martini Lunch: Thinking About Television’s Mad Men explores the attributes of the AMC series that allow it to be such a popular and vital contribution to contemporary cultural discourse. Set in the 1960s in New York, the Emmy and Peabody-winning series Mad Men follows the competitive, seductive, and oftentimes ruthless lives of the men and women of Madison Avenue’s advertising agencies. Many alluring and captivating qualities constitute the Mad Men experience: the way it evokes nostalgia, even from those who did not live in the era being portrayed; its interrogations into identities, and how these interrogations of the past illuminate viewers’ concepts of the present; the compelling (and often heartbreaking) relationships between characters who are trying to make their way in an ever changing and increasingly complex world; the titillation of the characters’ discovery of the powers of mass mediated communication and its abilities to allow learning, information sharing, manipulation, and connection; and, of course, the striking differences in sex roles and sexuality in the workplace that simultaneously celebrates and challenges views of gendered progress in contemporary times. Twenty-six authors - most coming from academic posts but others from practitioner, administrator, or cultural critic positions - come together to explore these themes through eighteen engaging and thoughtful essays and an illuminating introduction, each unique to this collection and exploring a particular aspect of the series through a different academic lens.