Slate Magazine has been running a blog series about Season 3 of Mad Men, a show I like very much. I was annoyed, however, by this comment:
"As we've discussed, this is a series that is almost comically committed to verisimilitude."
I understand the sentiment of the quote. The show demonstrates a relentless fidelity to the period, but it is a fidelity to surface and style, which ultimately strikes me as being something more aesthetic and formal than mere verisimilitude.
Not that style and verisimilitude have to be opposed to one another, but this quote comes in the context of a discussion of the dream sequence in last night's episode. To say that this move away from some kind of straight forward, realistic presentation of time and space is jarring, is to ignore the ways that the interior is already on the outside in this show. All of that surface and style is expressive of more than just dumb historical facts.
Another thing that mistaking fidelity to period details for blunt realism does is ignore the camera as mediator. There have been numerous instances where the camera has broken the frame of reality and shown us the unexpected or unusual. The camera does not present all of that detail unproblematically.
