Don Draper heads Most Influential Men list
Askmen.com in the US has named fictional Mad Men character Don Draper as #1 on their 2009 Top 49 Most Influential Men list.
Nominating Draper, Askmen.com says: Don Draper may be a fictional character on AMC’s Mad Men, but he’s just as real as any other public personality you can think of. Celebrities are brands, with carefully constructed images, and most of us are just as likely to have a beer with Don Draper as with anybody else on this list. What matters is that Draper’s hardass 1960s persona represents something about male identity that is enduringly captivating but has nonetheless vanished.
The man that Don Draper is — value-driven and thoroughly masculine — is the product of a bygone era; without him, there would be no contemporary figure to represent it. Yet, as removed as his persona may be, it is also contemporary and familiar. He’s a postwar archetype, both a brilliant career man and a temptation-swayed philanderer who sincerely wants to be a family man. Like most men, us and our fathers both, Draper is permanently conflicted over how to reconcile his morals and his desires.
Draper illustrates old-school values even though he often fails to meet them himself. His human flaws are what make him so relevant to men today. He is by turns a chain-smoking, drinking-in-the-office emblem of a bygone age, and an unusually real, earnest human being who illustrates the struggles modern men know all too well.
6 Comments
Back in the day you got to smoke all day, wear a suit in creative department, screw the secretaries, go to lunch and get pissed.
I remember Marlboro gave us a free carton of cigarettes every week for working on the account!
And the best game of all was to tells the suits to piss off.
Ahhh, the good old days.
Where’s anonymous sniper on the list? Snipey? You there?
Ahhhh… just kidding ya little c.
You mean they couldn’t find a real person…..might as well have said James Bond…..how lame.
Are these people watching the same show as me????????? Draper is a miserable misfit who’s identitiy does not have a place in post-modern America.
Speaking of influential ad men (and forgive my use of this blog to segue slightly) – I hear on Aussie adman has just done an ad campaign on behalf of the coal industry, to put the fear of god into the public that an ETS will cost jobs. Here are the facts:
Figures published in the Newcastle Herald show that coal production in the Hunter Valley rose by 53 per cent between 1991 and 2000. During the same period, jobs declined by 29 per cent. The Department of Primary Industries tells us how “productivity based on saleable tonnes per employee has increased from 6920 tonnes per annum in 1996-97 to 10,120 tonnes per annum in 2006-07”. Which basically means that the real threat to coal jobs is automation.
The coal industry and the big fat cats who feed off it are desperate to use lies and false statistics to convince people that we need coal to keep jobs. It’s bollocks, plain and simple. there are THOUSANDS more jobs to be had if we move to carbon-neutral energy supplies. But then, there’s no money in that story yet, is there?
10:38 – conversely, as long lunches and excessive salaries have dropped, working hours have become longer and the budgets have become tighter.
But in my opinion, the work is a fuckload better these days than back then.
Discuss?