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1. Ben Painter
AS MEDIA: Assessment 2: MAP 1. Mad Men
For this assignment I watched the TV drama ‘Mad Men’ and I looked
at the camera and mise en scene and how they contribute to the
representation of gender.
The opening sequence starts with an establishing shot of the bar; to
tell the audience were the action is going to take place. The scene
pans round to see Draper in the bar.
In the opening sequence you see the character Don Draper in a bar,
the lighting is low and he is smoking a cigarette, around the bar there
are people stood up, whilst he has a booth to himself. This shows that
he as a male is a wealthy powerful man. Also in this scene you see the
character Sam, an African American man. He lights Drapers cigarette,
this also shows that he has a lot of power as he is making this man
light. There is a POV shot when you see Draper writing down some
notes in the bar, this makes you feel apart of the scene, and see what
the character sees and therefore feel what he feels.
Shortly after you see a pan POV shot of Draper looking around the
bar, and he sees men and women smoking around the bar. But the
majority of them were men. This is because women, read more in
those days, women were just starting to get into work. As we found
out in the scene previous, that in readers’ digest it says that smoking
is bad for your health.
In the next scene an over the shoulder medium close up shot was
used over the shoulder of Midge, looking on at Draper. This was used
to show that Midge has the power over him. This isn’t typically what
happens in a relationship, as it is normally the men that have the
power. But as this relationship is very loose and open, she has the
power and she seduces him, this isn’t very stereotypical. A pull focus
is used in the scene to focus on draper talking, and then when he gets
up it turns into a deep focus shot.
In the next scene there was a bird’s eye view pan shot from the top or
middle of the building looking down on the busy streets of New York.
This was effective because it showed how hectic live was and still is
in New York, and how it would be hard to work there. The scene

2. showed both men and women, so I can infer from this that were just
as many women going to work back then as there was men.
The next scene was a medium shot of 3 men and one woman in an
elevator, the three men behind the woman. This showed the
stereotypical power men have over women because you could see all
of the faces and for the majority of the scene the men were looking
down on the woman, in a very sexist manner. A deep focus shot is
used in this scene as seeing both the men and women in the scene
was vital to the point they were proving.
In the next scene a track shot was used to follow two women around
the office, this was effective because it showed that one women, who
was showing her around and telling her what to do, has power over
the other. This is shown as she is following her, taking notes and
listening to what she says. The track shot is useful because we can
see the office floor very well and the women in the office don’t have
their own personal space, like the men do. This shows us there is still
a priority over the men in the workspace in those days.
After the track shot, we see the two women talking there is an over
the shoulder shot using a low angle. This again shows that Joan has
power over the new girl. Also in this scene there is bird’s eye view
POV shot looking down on the typewriter. The fact it was revealed
like this it shows that women weren’t used to these new
technologies, which fit with the stereotype, that men are the ones
who work.
In the office scene, we see four men in the office discussing a stag do,
when he is on the phone to his fiancé we see a shallow focus of the a
stripper card, this fits with the stereotype that men are liars because
he said to his wife that he didn’t know what was going on when he
clearly did.