Why I Wrote A Mad Men Episode With Negroes, by Erika Alexander
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
- Start date
Game of Thrones is set thousands of years in the future on another planet, that considering the erratic orbit around the sun, might not even be a planet... Winter could just be the time the biosphere spends inbetween solar systems... If it's real that is, and not VR. I was thinking that winter was about preserving power when the ship is too far away form a power supply (sun) but it might just be a method of thinning the human stock when they become too plentiful for the ships resources to maintain.
The only thing that kept black people back and white people white up to this point is racism. Now that it is LESS culturally offensive for people to stray from expectations, white people are going to get darker and Black people are going to get lighter until the white people are black and the black people are white and they all start again from opposite sides.
The only thing that kept black people back and white people white up to this point is racism. Now that it is LESS culturally offensive for people to stray from expectations, white people are going to get darker and Black people are going to get lighter until the white people are black and the black people are white and they all start again from opposite sides.
Funny as usual.
Maybe there's a basement office where all a host of negros do all the work for the agency, because between the alcoholism and constant sexual exploitating, our heroes don't have time to do their jobs, but the black kids down stairs need a believable front so all the kids of the old cotton barons will give their company all the money, so it's like a symbiotic relationship where everyone wins?
My first thought when reading this...if Mad Men had more "people of color" (what an obnoxious phrase) in it, wouldn't people just complain about the show portraying a way of thinking that we are supposedly beyond now?
And I've never understood how seeing your own ethnicity/race in a production somehow makes it better. But maybe that's just me?
And I've never understood how seeing your own ethnicity/race in a production somehow makes it better. But maybe that's just me?
In fact, at least one major U.S. corporation made a concerted effort to court black consumers and hired a black advertising executive and sales staff for that purpose -- not in the 1960s, but even earlier, in the 1940s.
Link
Link
Oh. Kind of like Dr. Seuss' Sneetches, I guess.
I 100% agree with her on all those shows except Mad Men. Mad Men is about the rich, entitled pricks in business at the time and those were largely white men along with a few white women thrown in.
Totally, or Blue Mink.
That's not my recollection of the period. There were plenty of minorities around, you just didn't see them in the mainstream media. Mad Men is supposed to partially be a portrayal of the era in which it is set, not a portrayal of the media of the era in which it is set.
Mostly just you, I expect. In addition to being more true to life, it certainly does make a difference to see people who look like you, or act like you, on screen.
Agreed.
Now, they could have created plot lines that would have placed the characters in more diverse situations, and they certainly could have covered the Civil Rights Movement in more depth, but I don't have much of a problem with the way they're depicting the era. Hell, I was born in the 80's and my high school was whiter than SCDP is.
That said, any other show taking place in NYC that goes weeks at a time showing only white people? Insane.
Mostly just you, I expect. In addition to being more true to life, it certainly does make a difference to see people who look like you, or act like you, on screen.
Agreed.
Now, they could have created plot lines that would have placed the characters in more diverse situations, and they certainly could have covered the Civil Rights Movement in more depth, but I don't have much of a problem with the way they're depicting the era. Hell, I was born in the 80's and my high school was whiter than SCDP is.
That said, any other show taking place in NYC that goes weeks at a time showing only white people? Insane.
Indeed.
Now, they need to start showing how ad agencies courted the Afro-American consumer in the 1960's (which did happen with the selling of a certain brand of malt liquor around 1966.) That, and the realization that other type of products need to be targeted to Afro-Americans as well.
I'm pretty sure that part of the appeal of Mad Men is going back to more manly times, as well as whiter times. Certainly, insofar as Mad Men is about Don Draper, rather than about advertising, much less the US in the Sixties, there is no excuse for the monochromatic society.
Darrin Stevens.
Larry Tate vs. Don Drapper in a misogynistoff?
Colleagues? I doubt it.
But what about customers?
Larry Tate vs. Don Drapper in a misogynistoff?
Colleagues? I doubt it.
But what about customers?
Seriously? Having lived during that time, I'm surprised to "learn" this.
I guess it didn't need to be said.
The "answer" is irrelevant even though I'm sure there were some blacks employed at ad agencies in positions other than secretaries and mail room employees even in 1960's New York.
Mad Men is about Don Draper and his life, his ad agency, advertising and ad agencys in the 1960's, and the 1960's. None of that precludes stories with black people in them. They don't have to show blacks in positions of power or in positions like Draper's in order to feature them in stories.
Don, who is cheating again, has an affair with a black woman--it turns into more than he expected. Roger has an affair with black woman... Pete has affair with black woman... More provacatively, Peggy has affair with black man... The agency gets into financial trouble, sees advertising to blacks as a way to quick bucks with no competition -- hires black person to culturalize creative staff. They could do a story featuring Don's secretary.
Hell, even I can come up with easy ways to include black people. I'm not advocating this, but thinking that Mad Men doesn't produce stories with blacks because they can't -- because the show is set in the 1960's -- is simply incorrect. It is because either AMC doesn't want it or Matthew Weiner doesn't or both.
But to be fair, in the first few seasons the show did have some stories with blacks. It has only been in the last couple of seasons that it has appeared that there are no blacks on Mad Men.
