"No wonder we longed for the problems of postwar mass society: Those were corporate sins we could actually comprehend, and that we found downright soothing to contemplate. As the economy buckled, Americans tuned in to 'Mad Men' in increasing numbers. The show’s loving indictment of an affluent society spoke to us in tones of libidinal fascination. Forget credit-default swaps or the misanthropic billionaires of Greenwich: Tell us again about man’s search for meaning or the sweet alienation people felt when they shopped at some suburban grocery store stocked with the cherished brand names of our childhood.
"Faced with incomprehensible disaster, we viewers chose to dream about a lost capitalist paradise in which individualism was something both brave and profitable. And while we did so, capitalism as it actually exists was melting everything solid and familiar into air—the way it does in the retro title sequence of 'Mad Men'—leaving us to tumble into an abyss of dubious and desperate memories."
In Salon, Thomas Frank reacts to binge-watching Mad Men.
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