Set Me Free, A Remix Music Video Features the Women of Mad Men

Mad Men: Set Me Free is a remix music video where Mad Men characters Peggy, Joan and Betty are shown singing 1960s hit song, You Keep Me Hangin’ On (originally by The Supremes). Season 5 of Mad Men premieres Sunday, March 25, 2012.

Set Me Free was created by Elisa Kreisinger and Marc Faletti, who state on Kreisinger’s site, Pop Culture Pirate:

“We love that feeling when two familiar pieces of pop culture blend to make something entirely new, especially when it’s punctuated by the perfect song” says Faletti. “Mad Men: Set Me Free shows us that the remix format — and the joy it creates — isn’t just limited to music. It can create new and interesting stories.”

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…

“When you’re culturally “poor” for representation, both queer and feminist, you have to reuse the things you have access to, whether it be for subtext, your own entertainment or for critique. My hope was that I could turn the mixed feelings I had about the retro-sexual roles of women in Mad Men into something practical: product that my feminist theory addressed in theory only.”