Mad Men

Target Audience:

30+ mainly males

Ideologies:

Wealth, status, power and trophy women

In the TV show ‘Mad Men’ there is different representations of gender, the main masculinity is the macho/hegemonic type where the men are obsessed with money, power, sex and having women as objects, however under the obvious macho masculinity there is evidence that there is a masculinity crisis, where these men feel as though their power has been taken away [Marginalized] or they actually do have respect for having a family [new man/ complicated]. A good example of this is where Don is explaining to his fellow workers about a new pitch for a item given to them to advertise, he shows pictures of his family and you can just see from his facial expressions that he does have love and respect for his family, thus making him release his feelings and getting emotional, this goes against the macho/hegemonic type of masculinity where showing feelings is basically a capital ‘NO’.

The below clip shows where Don shows a different side of his masculinity:

Not only Don shows evidence of masculinity crisis, Duck, another character in ‘Mad Men’ , shows a more marginalized masculinity as he is seen drinking by himself and not talking about his feelings, he becomes detached from the world and his work friend, and even kicks his dog out of the building to be by himself, you find out that Duck is going through a divorce and might be losing his children , so this shows why he is acting like this; his power has been removed and the woman ( his wife ) is the one with the real power now.