Open Letter To Matthew Weiner & The Staff Of Mad Men
You should never use anachronistic music.
You’re better than that.
Using modern music takes us out of the show. Mad Men excels at demonstrating the perverseness of the culture using real artifacts from the time. No later indie rock or punk song will ever be as subversive or weird as ACTUAL MUSIC FROM 1962 which sounds so weird and alien and uncool to us.
Couldn’t agree more. The choice to go anachro lent itself to what I’m feeling is the ‘Sopranoization’ of Mad Men. Inherently, not a bad thing. Season two of any show will start to capitalize on our familiarity with its characters, to where we can take psychological leaps with them and remain enchanted despite their peccadillos.
The effect of introducing anachronistic ‘future music’ to the palette of the show is one of being submerged in the psyche of a character rather than the ambience of an era. And I don’t like it any more than you do, Molly, for its dispensing with the diegetic elements which have made up the style guide to which our show rigorously adheres. But I think its course is the natural one.
Semi-related, I wrote a little bit at the end of Season 1 about the music of Mad Men. Is it douchey for me to link to it here? I’ve been told it is. And I quote:
But to completely round out the sense of time travel, the music of ‘Mad Men’ has what its composer, David Carbonara calls on his site ‘period elements’. Typically, this could be understood as strictly musical elements: instrumentation and arrangment specific to the era. But in this case, to maintain period aesthetic, it crosses the line into the subtle and obscure territory of post-production, which is the part that fascinates me.
Almost wholly unrelated, I really REALLY like This Recording. If pressed to select a new favorite blog, I would say it’s my new favorite blog. This Recording really likes Mad Men.
