Mad Men - Episode 11, Season 5

Discuss the audience appeal of the text

Mad Men is aimed at a niche audience so its appeal is very different to a mainstream text. Its appeal is based around the idea of retrophilia, the love of things from the past. The text represents the 1960s through things such as the miss en scene of old clothing, the men wear suits and the women wear floral dresses which are representative of the fashion at the time. The text also represents the difference in power between men and women at the time. In the scene where Don visits Joan, there is a low camera angle that looks up at him from Joan's perspective. This makes Don look more powerful than her and this represents the power that men had over women in the 1960s. 

The style of the text may also appeal to the niche audience. There is a lot of attention to detail in the film, for example when the scene is set in the office there is a lot of diegetic sound such as type writers in the background and sirens and sounds from the streets. These details give the film authenticity and give a good representation of what it would have been like at the time working in an office environment in a big city. 


Research 

Reviews:
New York magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz said "the shows main draw is behaviour, observed with such exactness that one can imagine the shows being transposed to the forties or eighties, with different clothes, slang and inebriates, but still delivering the same basic satisfactions". 

Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men said in a recent interview that "the programme is not for everyone" because of the niche audience that its aimed at. He says that he "doesn't work to a formula" to create the show, he does this so that the show pleases an audience that is character driven. 

A fan forum, The Orange Couch reviewed the episode 'the other woman' and said that in the opening scene of the episode women are given the option to either be "humans or objects". This suggests that women have the choice to escape the idea of being 'sex objects' and relates to Laura Mulveys theory of the female gaze.