Google Books Data Mining Reveals Mad Men's Big Historical Flaw: Business Lingo

from the keep-a-low-profile dept

The TV show Mad Men has quite a reputation for going to great lengths to be as authentic as possible. The clothes, the props, the scenarios are all supposedly thought out in great detail. While some who were actually in the business at the time quibble with certain aspects of the show, it cannot be denied that the show's producers certainly go way beyond other period pieces to try to make keep everything accurate for the time period. However, it turns out that there's one area where it appears the writers have completely flopped: period-specific language. On The Media ran an absolutely fascinating clip about a researcher who has shown how frequently Mad Men uses words or phrases that were not in popular usage at the time, but only came into the lexicon at a later date:
This is actually a cross-broadcast of another podcast, Lexicon Valley, and it's covering the work of Ben Schmidt, who has produced a software algorithm that compares the Mad Men scripts... to a searchable database of language from Google's book scanning project. Schmidt's algorithm compares the language from the show with scanned books from the same period. Schmidt has a website, Prochronism, which covers his findings. I can't quite explain why, but it's really quite fascinating.

Schmidt has found that the show is pretty good about getting language about technology right (with one exception). It knows that there aren't fax machines and computers and stuff. The one area where it gets things wrong, is with the phone. For example, using the phrase "on hold." He notes that phones had hold buttons, but there wasn't yet a concept of the state of being "on hold." That showed up in the 70s.

What Schmidt has also found is that the show is absolutely terrible about getting "business" terms correct in a period specific way. That same post about "on hold" also chides the show for using "defining moment," another phrase that showed up in the 70s, but was basically stuck in academia until the late 80s or early 90s when it became a popular phrase.


Honestly, Ben's site is really fascinating. I could spend hours on it (and actually had to stop going through it post by post to finish this post). There are also discussions on phrases like "focus groups" and "leverage." But one more awesome chart from Ben, discussing the use of both "moral high ground" and "consumerism," both of which were barely in use until much later:


On the podcast, they discuss how part of the reason that the show gets the language about technology right, but not business, is because we know that technology rapidly evolves and we're more attuned to it. But people don't pay nearly as much attention to how business changes and especially how the language of business changes over time. I guess that's true, though it doesn't surprise me that "consumerism" and "moral high ground" are both more recent phenomena. "Defining moment" and "on hold" are a bit more surprising to me.

Either way, I also wanted to highlight something else about all of this that I find fascinating. For all the talk by some about just how evil Google's book scanning project is, this kind of effort and research wouldn't be possible without large scale scanning of books. While this particular example may appear (on its face) to be a frivolous (even if it's fascinating) area of research, it does highlight just how collection of certain data can open up vast arrays of data that can be mined in useful ways. When people freak out about new technologies and services, they almost always focus on how it impacts the old offerings. So most of the talk was about book scanning and its impact on book sales. But what almost no one talks about is how it enables new things that simply weren't possible before -- such as being able to build an algorithm like the one Ben built. Those kinds of innovations -- the unexpected "externalities" of projects like the Google book scanning project -- shouldn't be ignored, because there's tremendous value that can come out of them.

Filed Under: ben schmidt, data mining, google books, history, language, mad men, television

The Ridiculous Hoops Mad Men Had To Jump Through To Use Part Of A Beatles Song

from the or-how-we-kill-culture dept

This story has been making the rounds about how Lionsgate, the studio behind the hit TV series Mad Men, paid somewhere close to $250,000 to license a Beatles song to use in a recent episode of the show. While the money is the part that everyone focuses on, the article talks about how involved the process was to actually get the approval of the Beatles to use the song:

Weiner, who says he once met Paul McCartney at a party but didn’t broach the subject of licensing, zeroed in on “Tomorrow Never Knows” last summer, when he got the idea for a story about “how people think they know what the Beatles are. Of course the Beatles are one step ahead of you at least.” That started a process he’d been through before, of sending “impassioned letters” to the band’s representatives, including primary gatekeeper Jeff Jones, head of Apple Corps.

This time, as Weiner cleared that initial hurdle, he continued to make his case for placing the Beatles “in a new context” by sharing story outlines and script pages with the team—“things I don’t usually do,” he says. Permission was finally granted based on the merit of the show and his plan for the song, not the amount of money on the table, he says. “The idea is that this is a financial arrangement, there is nothing further from the truth. This is completely an artistic collaboration.”

But, here's the thing, as the article notes elsewhere, part of the appeal of the show is the very, very, very thorough attention to detail to make everything about the show accurate to the time. In fact, we noted a story (that not everyone agreed was true) that suggested that copyright had gotten in the way of historical realism on the show in the past. But here, as the show's producers noted, the Beatles are such a huge part of the 60s, it's a little crazy that they can't have the music on the show without jumping through this series of hoops. It basically means nobody can accurately depict an important period of cultural history without permission from the band.

If anything, it seems like (once again) copyright is being used to stifle culture, rather than to enable and encourage it. It also highlights one of the more ridiculous parts of copyright law: the vast differences in the way different rights and licenses work. If this were merely being performed live in a venue, the venue could get typical ASCAP/BMI licenses and play whatever music they wanted (with a few limitations). But, since it goes on TV, you're suddenly dealing with new issues like sync licenses. That seems silly. If we're going to allow public venues to play whatever they want with a blanket license, why shouldn't that apply equally to a TV show like Mad Men, which is using the music to accurately portray a time?

Filed Under: jeff jones, licensing, mad men, paul mccartney, the beatles
Companies: apple corps, lionsgate

Copyright Getting In The Way Of Historical Realism On Mad Men [Updated]

from the and-this-helps-who-now? dept

A reader going by the name Known Coward points us to a short NY Post piece on how NB news anchor has joined the crowd of folks who watch the show Mad Men, but get upset about historical inaccuracies in the show, which is supposed to take place in 1964. I'm not quite sure how interesting a story that really is, but there was one part of it that might be interesting to folks around here. One of the inaccuracies that upset Williams was the fact that the character of Don Draper was seen watching an NFL football game on a Saturday night. Indeed, the NY Post notes that prime-time NFL football didn't begin until 1970. Where it gets interesting is the reason given by the producers of the show:

Turns out the producers originally wanted to show Don viewing a hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but couldn't get rights, according to a report yesterday in the Los Angeles Times.

Instead, producers substituted audio of a football game, thinking it would blend into the background.

And, of course, this raises the question of what harm is done to the NHL if the show had actually used the more accurate hockey footage, rather than the football broadcast? How does this, in any way, fit into the realm of "promoting the progress"?

Update: In response to this article, the NHL is calling an offside penalty, saying that it received no such request to use the footage of the Rangers/Leafs game. So... perhaps this isn't a copyright issue at all, but Mad Men producers trying to hide a mistake in historical reality?

Filed Under: brian williams, copyright, historical accuracy, history, mad men

Was The Mad Men Twitter Takedown Part Of An Advertising Strategy?

from the reverse-streisand? dept

We've talked about the concept of a reverse Streisand Effect, where a company purposely pretends to be outraged and demands to take something down in order to generate more attention for it, and now there's some evidence suggesting that last week's DMCA takedown notices for the "fake" Mad Men Twitter accounts may have been part of AMC's own marketing strategy. Buried at the bottom of a NY Times article about what happened, there's a hint that the whole thing was planned out, as following a request from the Times reporter, Brian Stelter, to one of the "fake" users for an interview, that character "referred all questions to Deep Focus, a Web marketing agency that works for AMC."

Filed Under: commercials, mad men, reverse streisand effect, streisand effect, takedowns
Companies: amc, twitter

AMC Upset That Fans Are Making Mad Men More Fun; Sends DMCA Notices To Twitter

from the damn-those-fans dept

It's really amazing how many times we see companies using the DMCA to shut down and stamp out fan efforts to help promote some content. Take, for example, the latest situation pointed out by MG Siegler over at VentureBeat. Apparently, cable TV network AMC has been sending DMCA takedown notices to Twitter because some fans of its popular show Mad Men have created Twitter accounts for the main characters in the show. The fans are staying in character and adding to other fans' appreciation of the show. In some ways, this is similar to the situation we described recently where a fake representative of Exxon showed up on Twitter, even though she did a good job representing the company. Yes, the show wants to be able to control its own promotions -- and perhaps it's planning to create Twitter accounts itself, but it seems that there would be better ways to deal with this than shutting down fan-created accounts that people were enjoying. Update: Looks like someone came to their senses thanks to the widespread outrage, and has agreed to put the feeds back.

Filed Under: dmca, fans, mad men, takedown, twitter
Companies: amc, twitter