We Are the Hollow Men: Mad Men and the Flatness of Representation
1In a recent article about Mad Men published in The New York Review of Books Daniel Mendelsohn settles the score with the show’s writers and creators.2 Startled by the unanimous global praise of the show, and horrified by what he sees as an uncritical mass following (exemplified not only by the audience ratings, but also by the commercial success of Mad Men-inspired commodities), he sets out to solve the mystery of the show’s popularity.3 Mendelsohn’s opinion about the show is best summed by this dense and jarring quote, which sets up the scene for the reviewers’ interpretation of the popularity of the show: “The writing is extremely weak, the plotting haphazard and often preposterous, the characterizations shallow and sometimes incoherent; its attitude toward the past is glib and its self-positioning in the present is unattractively smug; the acting is, almost without exception, bland and sometimes amateurish.” Since Mad Men, according to Mendelsohn, doesn’t fulfill any standards of a good TV show, standards, he as a critic is qualified to assess, there must be some other …