Signs of the times

Although the show is set in the 1960s, you will not see anyone playing with an Etch A Sketch on Mad Men. In a making-of documentary on the first-season DVD set of the daring, stylish and multiple Emmy-nominated show about a Madison Avenue ad agency, prop master Scott Buckwald describes a near mishap. In one scene, the young son of Don Draper the series slick yet internally conflicted protagonist was supposed to be playing with the popular toy. But someone on the production team noticed that the Etch A Sketch, though invented in the late 1950s by a French electrician, wasnt introduced to American consumers until the summer of 1960 several months after when the scene was set. And so Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner declared the toy verboten.

Already a treasured piece of lore among Mad Men devotees, this anecdote illustrates the obsessive attention to detail displayed by those responsible for the shows production design. Whether its the packaging for a Sara Lee frozen cake, the Studebakers and VW Beetles sitting in a parking lot or the date on the New York Times being read by an extra in a diner, everything is just right. As producer Scott Hornbacher says, "If its [chronologically] wrong, its embarrassing."

Mad Mens painstaking recreation of Manhattan circa 1960 is one of the shows most seductive attributes. And there have been plenty of opportunities to savour it, with the recent release of the eye-catching first season DVD in another perfect touch, its packaged in what looks like an oversized Zippo lighter. On July 27, AMC and CTV will begin airing the shows eagerly awaited second season. Deploying a tactic favoured by Lost and 24, the new season will jump forward in time. Now that itll be 1962, there wont be any more issues regarding that Etch A Sketch. But dont expect to see Don Drapers daughter making cupcakes in an Easy-Bake Oven that wasnt released until 63.

Mad Mens devotion to historical accuracy is easy to admire, but that level of fussiness can also be a detriment. A common problem for period pieces is that elements of decor can seem too neat or too perfect. Everyone drives brand-new cars or wears perfectly tailored clothes without any indication of wear and tear. Also missing is the suggestion that each period also contains signifiers of the eras that preceded it just think of the jumble of architectural styles visible on any downtown city street. Movies and TV shows tend to give the past the sort of uniform aesthetic it seldom has in real life.

Indeed, Mad Men can seem too flawless in its rendering of 1960. Yet the allure of surfaces indeed, the idea that image is all that really matters is one of the shows core themes. It is, after all, about ad men. What Draper and his colleagues at the fictional firm Sterling Cooper do is not so much sell products as create desires that hadnt existed before. The real-life agencies on which the show was based were just beginning to perfect the dark art of immersing consumers in fantasy worlds or, as Thomas Frank argues in The Conquest of Cool, convincing people that their buying choices expressed their individuality. In turn, the agencies had to cast the same spell on their own clients. As one Mad Men producer says in the DVD doc, a job in advertising was just about the most glamorous career a person could have in 1960.

But as is usually the case, what lurks underneath the surface is more troubling. Unsurprisingly, the two focal points in the shows first season are two people who maintain perfect facades but are nevertheless coming unravelled. While Don Draper fails to square up the person he projects with the self he keeps secret his wife, Betty (January Jones), discovers a void at the heart of her seemingly ideal suburban lifestyle.

Another thread in the first season is Sterling Coopers involvement in Richard Nixons presidential campaign. Its no small irony that the ad men initially throw their support behind the Republican candidate, when its his opponent, then-senator John F. Kennedy, who truly understands the power of the image. JFK became so successful at selling his own image that the carefully crafted Camelot myth would survive every subsequent assault on his legacy. And even though Kennedys assassination in 1963 would be popularly appraised as the end of American innocence, Mad Mensuggests such a state never existed, at least not for the characters who struggle so hard to disguise their hurts and vulnerabilities behind those false facades.

The coherence that Mad Men achieves between form and content is even easier to admire when the show is stacked up next to this summers other noteworthy new period piece. Swingtown stars Jack Davenport and Canadas own Molly Parker as a married Chicago couple who come to emulate the more licentious lifestyles of their new neighbours. The year is 1976, a time when the sexual revolution had filtered down from Americas cultural vanguard to reverberate among more typical middle-class folks in the suburbs. Audiences who dont remember the era of key parties and hot-tubbing firsthand got a memorable view in Ang Lees austere 1997 film adaptation of Rick Moodys novel The Ice Storm.

What they wont get from Swingtown is an authentic feel for the period, even if the show is loaded with such 70s signifiers as muscle cars, bad sideburns and fondue sets. While Mad Mens sheen of newness adds a sense of verisimilitude, it can seem ridiculous in Swingtown. Did 1976 look this spotless? Surely, the shag carpeting could use a few more wine stains. Whereas the cool world of Mad Men matches what we see in many key movies from 1960 (like Billy Wilders The Apartment, referenced in one episode), Swingtowns squeaky-clean, perfectly composed version of 1976 has none of the grottiness we associate with films of the time (e.g., Rocky, Taxi Driver, even The Bad News Bears).

Though Swingtown focuses on the eras changing sexual mores, its curiously unsexy. The shows placement on CBS inevitably means it has a far lower sleaze factor than it would have had on, say, HBO. But its air of timidity and prurience is mystifying considering the preponderance of wood paneling, an element of decor that connoted smut even before it became the backdrop for Calvin Klein models in a controversial series of ads in the 90s.

Its hard to imagine any of Sterling Coopers campaigns ever being so brazen. One of the most amusing subplots in the first season of Mad Men is the discovery that an electrical device that a client ostensibly designed to help women lose weight was more effective at inducing pleasurable sensations. The challenge for Drapers team is finding the right language to explain this benefit to consumers without being explicit. Mad Mens makers are fascinated by the gulf that exists between how things were packaged be they products, ideas or even people and what they really contain. The realization that the same gulfs exist in our time means that the 1960 of Mad Men is not so long ago at all. As for the 1976 of Swingtown it might as well be an exhibit in the Smithsonian.

Season 2 of Mad Men begins July 27 on CTV and AMC.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.