"look at the succesful white folks and their problems solved by more money" is what Mad Men was about.

I really don't think that's what Mad Men was about.

That's like saying Sopranos was about "all the rich gangsters and how they use violence to solve all their problems." Just an extremely shallow read.

Though I'll admit, I haven't seen Mad Men in its entirety.

it goes nowhere. don;t worry about it. Mad Men was CANDY. a horrible man in a horrible marriage, with a horrible wife, and a shit job that only exists to lie to the public to make them buy the shit they don't want or need. Fucking horrible, aimless, pointless show. poor whoreson steals identity after his CO is blown up, ruins the lives of his fake identity's family in the process, lies his way to a job selling shit to idiots, destroys a marriage, fucks random women in front of his duaghter cuz he just dont give a fuck, ignores his son for 7 seasons, marries a french girl, ruins her life, goes to a zen retreat and makes the single most saccharine and successful (because americans are stupid AF ad want corporate trolls to feed them their happiness and comraderie) ad campaign of all time. wow . horrible horrible.

sopranos never forgot that every single mob guy was a FUCKING HORRIBLE MONSTER PSEUDO-HUMAN PREDATOR. Mad Men never gave a fuck either way, even though it's protagonist was just as much a shithole empty sell of a human.

Is that summary really accurate? Because now I don't want to watch it through to the end.

And you're right. Sopranos never forgot that it was dealing with absolute fucking subhuman monsters, but it allowed the audience to forget from time to time, making it all the more horrifying when things snapped back into focus.

Not a show I'll ever likely watch again.

great summary exept for the "fucking horrible, aimless pointless show."

fucking horrible, aimless, pointless life maybe? sure. but the show? no fucking way.

the whole point of it was precisely that after all his millions and his sturggles and success he got exactly nowhere

when he finally has a breakdown and is able to embrace another human being in a moment of compassion... turns around and sells it to coca-cola. ha! ha ha ha ha!

how did more money "solve all his problems"? by your own summary above--it clearly didn't

you looked down the scope, aimed, had the target in your sights, then flipped the gun 180 degrees and blew your own head off.

how did you read the show as praise instead of condemnation?

if you missed it altogether, i'd like to refer you to the show's opening credits-- which is the silhouette of a man falling, falling, falling, falling into some endless abyss while he passes by a number of life's luxuries and marks of "success"

THE FALLING IS THE POINT

i did not read it as that. the US audience did. Just like the idiots that have Great Gatsby parties who completely misread the novel as a glorification of wanton excess.

watch the whole intro to Mad Men. the fall bullshit means NOTHING. he "lands" on a fancy couch, chillin, relaxed. come on.

well man the audience isn't a single block and there's always gonna be idiots who are going to misread everything from the old testament to tomorrow's news, but i think neither you nor us are such idiots--- so why do we have to make the idiot's point of view the center of our conversation?

I disagree on Sopranos. "Human, all to human", a couple of great story lines, Paulie's Ma in the nursing home, and the one with Bobby Bacalla's dad, who goes out on a blaze of glory. The best TV show ever, IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu39qrsuBRk

we don;t, but the idiot's point of view is what shapes what gets made by hollywood, and HOW it is made. you know this.

no way. sopranos had way too many filler episodes to be considered all time greatest. each season, which had very few eps to begin with, had at least 3-4 episodes that were just fucking BORING. I think as a whole it was great, but it was also highly flawed.

no way, no. that's a paranoid/conspiracy version. like "the illuminati control everything." i don't buy that vision at all.

the reality is artists have their dreams and tastes, the MANY PUBLICS have their tastes, producers want their money, etc., you shake that in a cocktail shaker and it gets done. it's ultimately a chaotic/random process. the perfect is the enemy of the good.

commercial pressures have always been present in art, and great art still gets made. you mentioned gatsby-- fitzgerald too had to eat. so you have to balance what you reeeeeeeally want to write (e.g., finnegan's wake, which nobody understands) to what the mass public wants to buy (e.g. romance paperbacks).

too many artists are invoved in hollywood for it to be mere brainwash. LA may be a sick town but it's also *stuffed* with talent.

part of the reason good writing migrated to cable TV was because it was cheap to produce and so there is much less risk and you can have "boutique" shows made for smaller audiences, not for mass consumption.

the opposite occurs in film where you need dumb trilogies of everything because it costs so much to make you have to *try* to guarantee massive revenues.

but funny thing-- good writing begets success, and blam, small things become massive (you were just talking about nirvana elsewhere, for example).

educated adults have flocked to sopranos and mad men partly in a way because there are no more godfathers or deer hunters at the movies. ok, we still had no country for old men but those things are rare now. so fargo is on tv too.

"hollywood" is specifically the old money studios that dominate 90% of films distributed in USA and with the deepest pockets to fund the big blockbusters.

I think TV in USA is finally catching up to TV in Europe. Better writing stories for the sake of story and not for commercial tie ins. It is for the best. the old film system required everyone to enjoy films at a theater and all the costs and hassles that come with it.

That mentality is largely changed in USA now (since people watch more shit at home on fancy ass home theaters or just on their computers), but in China, India, Latin America, etc. the filmgoing experience is still very much in play, so Hollywood studio films are created to suit them first, and american tastes second. That is how it seems to me.

i think us tv has surpassed europe for a while now. though you realize many productions are international these days. maybe it's more like us tv has absorbed european tv and shot it with steroids and added some great stuff. smart AND fun.

and yes hollywood films are after a global audience now. i forget what movie recently had chinese "inserts" so that i could be successful in china. but yeah it's all about the exports.

who said that america doesn't manufacture things anymore? movies are massive industrial pursuits. MASSIVE.

anyway i wrote a longer version of this later but the browser cacked out. i'll follow up tomorrow...

See, eve I get that the falling is the point, and I didn't watch the whole series. People love that show, and plenty probably love it for stupid reasons, but I do not think that the point of the actual show was to glamorize the... err... glamor.

Only if you think of us tv solely in terms of long form dramas.

watched Reprise the other night. Trier, I gotta get more of his movies. It was really good. Just added Louder Than Bombs and Oslo, August 31st to the ntflx

Mad Men is about America. a loser liar con-artist can make himself rich and powerful over and over again by the power of his bullshit