Mad Men - Episode 11, Season 5 'The Other Woman'

'Discuss the audiences appeal of your three main texts' - B1 [30 MARKS] 

Man Med is a programme which was created by AMC for a niche audience, an audience which pays to view the programmes in which they show. the programmes shown are targeted for a specific audience, for example usually people who are middle aged working people who can afford to pay for extra channels.  

The audience appeal to Mad Men could be that the range of gender and how they are represented throughout episode 11, we see that throughout this episode that a male audience would feel more dominant, this is due to all of the power that males had in the 1960's. We recognise the idea of male power as the main boss of the company is the man who owns Jaguar, male audiences may like this episode to to the male male power in the workforce in the 1960's. 

Another audience type that would watch Mad Men would be people who have fascinations with the 1960's. These people like the idea of looking back at the past, so by presenting Mad Men with typical clothing with suits and hats for males and floral dresses for women do have an appeal for people who like to look back at certain decades. Another reason is that the set is all made up to look like it is the 60's, we see this by the colour schemes that are used around Joan's home and the colour schemes of the beige colours that are around the work office. 

The character casting is also a reason that may attract an audience to watch Mad Men, we see that throughout the seasons the director tends to stick with the same people throughout all of the series. the idea that an audience can become familiarised with characters and allows people to connect and familiarise with the as the series progresses. The character casting also fits in with the idea of the 1960's - we see that in the 1960's all women aspired to look like Marylin Monroe, so the casting of Joan being a bigger, curvier lady shows that the 1960's figure is present within the era that it is set in. The casting of fewer multi-racial people is also present within Mad Men, as business was mainly full of white males, the idea of not casting many black people gives the idea of the text fitting in with the era that Mad Men is set in. 

The editing in Mad Men in this particular is very intelligent n the way that it is done. we see the idea of parallel editing between the scene when Don goes to talk to the big boss of Jaguar in the board room, and we also see the boss with Joan in his apartment, so we soon realise what joan has done the night before. We then realise that she had made a mistake as Don had told her not to go through with it, but the editing shows that she already had. this style of editing may attract an audience as its lows them to think and work out what has happened for themselves. 



RESEARCH; 

In a recent interview with the creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner he's admits that the programme is 'not for everybody' this would be because of the niche audience that it is broadcasted to. The creator of the programme didn't want it to 'work to a formula', so by doing this it will please an audience that is driven to watch it by characters. He stated 'By operating on a human scale, it is his job to entertain by creating interesting story lines', he works on things within the episodes that create moods and what people are able to relate too through the characters and situations that occur. 

A fan forum 'The orange couch' the review the episode 'The Other Woman'. The dicuss that in the first scene 'it gives women an option to be objects or humans' this then appeals to a female audience as it suggest that women have the choice to escape the idea as being seen as sex objects, relating to Laura Mulvey's theory. The forum suggest that men in the 1960's are seen as the main people, and think that women should not have as much rights in the industry.