How do your chosen texts attract their audiences? - Mad Men response.

            Mad men targets a smaller audience as less of the viewers would be able to relate to the characters as many would take a more passive than preferred reading to this specific text. Mad men is set in the 1960s and shows strongly how different issues and situations were treated at the time. For instance, one of the main characters is Don Draper who is a very strong, wealthy and a respected man.  He would be the hero in Vladmir Propps theory. The villain may be seen as Pete Cambell who is portrayed as a wealthy, powerful man along with Don, however has a different way of getting ‘to the top’. Evidence of this is shown in the scene where Pete asks Joan Harris to sleep with a man that may go ahead with a large business deal with the company if she does. He’s shown as very sly and turns situations around in order for them to work in his favour. Some viewers could see Joan as the princess as the situation she’s put in makes the audience feel sorry for her and is almost as if she were crying out for help.        

            The audience can relate to these characters through age, personality qualities and occupations which would give them personal identity and may make them more engaged with the show. Others, such as younger viewers, may find no relations to the characters and therefore take a passive reading to the text but still be interested through the escapism the show gives as its nothing like the audiences’ day to day lives due to the sexist opinions which are shown over and over in Mad Men.       

            Mad men is structured in a linear way, telling the story in sequence and constantly leaving enigma codes at the end of each episode to keep the audience hooked. Other techniques used along with enigma codes are the wide range of camera shots and lighting methods used. At many points throughout the episode of ‘the other woman’ Pete’s face is half in the light and half shadowed. This gives the audience a sense he is half good and half evil. Although he is a good man and feels as though he is doing his job at getting the best contracts for the company, he is the villain as he’s given Joan a hard choice to make that is clearly wrong. Don on the other hand says no to the idea of Joan sleeping with a man just for business as soon as he is aware of it, building on the audience’s views on him as the hero.