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michaelfunderburk reblogged this from mshedden
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mshedden posted this
After I wrote “The Falling Man” in 2003, I got a call from a friend of mine, who said, “Well, now you have a book.” I asked him what he meant, and he told me that anyone I wanted to write about could be written about for a book called “The Falling Man,” because, in his words, “We’re all falling men now.” I never wrote the book, but I remember what my friend said every time I look at Richard Drew’s photograph or, for that matter, the credit sequence for Mad Men. We’re all falling men now. Drew’s photograph became a symbol both specific and universal because it dared to tell us that 9/11 was not the beginning of something but rather the end, that it didn’t constitute the “victory of the American spirit,” as presidents and pundits tried so hard to tell us, but rather a loss, final and decisive, with which we’d always have to reckon. The “controversial” Mad Men poster has some of the same resonance, because it reminds us that the reckoning goes on — who could not imagine the figure of Barack Obama silhouetted against that limitless white background? — and started before most of us were even born.
— Mad Men Season 5 Poster Controversy - Falling (Mad) Man, by Tom Junod - Esquire
