How authentic is the language used in AMC’s Mad Men? The show’s research staff is tasked with making sure that every word could have ostensibly been uttered during the time period. However, with fans who obsess over the period details in every single frame, there are sure to be a few language inaccuracies that slip by. Here are a few instances where they failed, culled from all six seasons.
1) “I need to.” Historian Benjamin Schmidt says the biggest error in the show is neediness. He writes, “to say ‘I need to’ so much is a surprisingly modern practice: books, television shows, and movies from the 1960s use it at least ten times less often, and many never use it all.” Schmidt used Google Books’ Ngram viewer to analyze a handful of movies and TV shows that aired from 1960 to 1965. The results show that “ought to” would have been more historically accurate.
2) “The medium is the message.” (Season 1, episode 6, “Babylon”) Joan said this line this four years before Marshall McLuhan introduced the phrase, in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
3) “1960, I am so over you.” (Season 1, episode 10, “Long Weekend”) The intonation of so is what sounds out of place. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner cites the 1948 Cole Porter song “So in Love” when defending the historical accuracy of the line. However, the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation for the use of so as an intensifier comes from the 1979 film Manhattan, when Mary says, “God, you’re so the opposite!”
4) “I’m in a very good place right now.” (Season 3, episode 3, “My Old Kentucky Home”) According to John McWhorter of the New Republic, this term is actually in a bad place. McWhorter says that when the phrase refers to spirituality and personal development, the idiom comes from the nineties — not the sixties.
Speakers of Mad Men-ese: Which anachronisms did we miss?
(via The Atlantic & Vulture)
