Mad Men

Watching Mad Men is like watching a social/cultural history lesson from the early Sixties – specifically high society New York at that time (I actually initially thought the timeframe for the show was the Fifties, but an article I read in NYT Magazine today said it’s the early Sixties).

Examples:

• The way that the men treat the women entirely as objects
• The immense amount of smoking and drinking
• The dawn of the era of American consumption
  

49. Was the objectification of women more common/prevalent in urban areas or rural areas? What about nowadays – where are women treated more as equals? Based on everything I learned in school, I’d have guessed that women in the cities gained (a measure of) equality prior to their rural counterparts, but watching the interactions on this show is making me rethink that assumption.

50. Are lung cancer rates incredibly high right now, given that the people who were in their 30s and 40s (during the Sixties) smoked so much (I am thinking of Grandma Richmond)? Or has a wave of lung cancer already passed?

51. Do economists like the advertising industry? It seems like an industry that does not really produce anything, but would its defenders argue that it stimulates all the other economic growth? Do advertisers have a code of ethics similar to attorneys? If so, what sorts of ethical guidelines/requirements do they have?