Mad Men: character profiles

• Don Draper;

- Successful in career, powerful, smart, intelligent, attractive, respected leader.
- Men want to be him, women want to be with him.
- Hegemonic male category, offers the idea of the perfect male.
- 'perfect beautiful US family'
- 'he offers the world of power in a world where men arguably men have become increasingly emasculated post-industrialisation, or at least, the role of the female has altered over time.'
- Hegemonic: a notion of maintaining or re-establishing patriarchal authority; a social structure where this male is at the top of the hierarchy  and every other is ordered below him.
- Threats to hegemonic male; shifts in gender norms, the sexually confidant woman. The male has sexual prowess and who determines when the woman is attractive/ can satisfy his needs.
- women characters challenging masculinity

Mad Men;

- Set in the 1960s and very popular, coming up to series 5. Reasons for its popularity? who might the target audience be?
- what are your observations of Don and the other male characters? what tare the representations
- what forms don/ other male characters ideology?
- would you argue that this is any evidence of masculinity crisis?