Supercuts are old and busted; splice cuts are all the rage now. Witness that Jay-Z video from a few weeks ago and yesterday’s Eminem/Mitt Romney combo. Now comes an example that uses the women of Mad Men to recite The Supremes’ classic “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” But, like that Romney clip, there’s more to the video than just showing off whiz-bang tech skills. Elisa Kresinger created the video with help from mash-up guru Marc Faletti and posted it to her website, Pop Culture Pirate, where she added this bit of social context to the video.
By framing the female characters from Mad Men in a series of boxes, we wanted to illustrate how the show, and by extension, society, isolates and marginalizes womens’ voices within pop-culture narratives. As a result, it’s important for women to tell their own stories. For me as a remix artist, making mash ups is the best way to tell these stories. I call it writing with TV for TV.
And how about a bonus video? Kresinger also used Mad Men to explore another social theme—homosexuality—via a supercut that creates a slash-fic writer’s dream romance between Roger Sterling and Don Draper. Said Kresinger:
The goal was to tell a story about two men who once preserved concepts of manhood and masculinity but then found relief and happiness in each other, becoming a threat to the very same patriarchal system on which their power and privilege was based. QueerMen: Don Loves Roger is a story about Don subverting rather than selling traditional masculinity.
Oh, hey, did you know the fifth season of Mad Men premieres Sunday? Now you do. [via Daily Dot]