Los iconos populares como instrumentos de violencia simbólicael caso de Mad Men

Abstract

The TV series Mad Men (AMC 2007- ) has become a prestigious product, widely praised for its historical and aesthetic faithfulness, as well as for its smart scripts. Focused on the 1960s world of advertising, it is a dialogic collage which combines references to "high" and "popular" culture. Built on the premises of cultural and gender studies, this paper analyzes the use of female icons in the show to try and prove that it instrumentalizes the popular to launch a conservative message that contributes to the perpetuation of symbolic violence against women. This is done mainly through the implementation of an intra- and extra-diegetic male gaze which turns Mad Men into a text that objectifies the female and celebrates the male in their most traditional sense.