“Mad Men” Poster Madly Dissected

By on Mar 1, 2012 in Inanities |

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If I were a student at a small liberal arts school in rural Massachusetts, and my Media Studies professor asked me to analyze the newest Mad Men poster (in no fewer than 3 pages, double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman), here’s how I would totally bullshit that paper. (Disclaimer: all of the papers I wrote in college involved hours of research, much soul-searching,and extensive meta-analysis.) Here’s the poster, and below is the pretension.

Enough! Uncle! Now that I’ve been a blowhard, let’s get real: this poster is brilliant. Don is not only pausing to look at a fellow advertiser’s work, but the display has been subverted with a simple act of physics, and the result is that Don is looking at his own life being reflected back at him. Nice work, AMC (or AMC’s advertising firm, rather). I’d imagine even Don would be impressed with this advertisement.