Hi Greg!

We had huge maps in all of my classrooms in the 60s. Geography was a very important subject.

I think globes (like in Don's office) were decorative as well as functional. There were no GPS systems, no google earth etc.
Just a guess...

Agreed. I had a small globe at home. And some of those office "globes" open up into mini-bars, holding booze and bottles. Largely there were part of the standard office decor of the time.

Hi Auburn Annie!
Some globes opened into mini-bars? That's too funny! I haven't seen Don open his yet...mabe that's yet to come!

I too have noticed an emphasis on globes. Especially when William was disparaging Don's globe in his home office.

My guess is that the globes symbolize a "bigger world view" somehow. In the 60's, the typical American citizen's world view was opening up and expanding so much and so quickly due to the massive changes going on in the world.

Maybe in the example above, it was a way of showing William as more narrow-minded compared to Don. The Hoffstadts have certainly had much more insular, sheltered lives.

My dad, being a single father of four most of my childhood, except for stepmothers, “decorated “our dining room by thumb tacking a world map and a US map on the wall. And I remember globes being everywhere and maps in every classroom. Also globes that were a bar inside.
“Africa isn’t a country ?”

Sab, that's so funny! But looking at a globe, you see how close Alaska is to Russia? ;-)

I agree with globes representing a larger world view, Bluegirl. Especially after the Cuban Missile crisis, everyone thought more about Russia and the Soviet bloc.

I do agree there probably is a symbolic meaning representing a larger world out there, but what about a more pragmatic reason that there are a lot of old maps and globes available to the prop dept to use on screen? But that takes all the fun out of it......

[settling into a large armchair and lighting up a special "cigarette" procured for me from an old college buddy of Paul's...]

Well, Greg...sometimes a globe is just a globe. ;-D

Actually, good call on seeing them around. One of the marvelous things about MadMen is that they can take something historically accurate and turn it into a symbol to reinforce a theme on the show. It's very cool. Globes were one of those middle-class decorations everyone seemed to have in the 60's. Decorative, as maps and globes can always be, but they also told your guests that you were educated. Like having books on the shelf.

But this season's theme, we've been told, is all about liberation and I think all those globes speak to that. It seems like everyone in the show would rather be anywhere else but where they are. We meet the airline stewardess in the first episode, a symbol of travel, leaving behind her wings. Roger returns from Greece, etc. Those globes remind out characters that they could escape to somewhere else.

However, they also point out the fact that there's no escaping yourself. Flying off to Greece doesn't mean that you're going to find freedom, as Roger, still tied to ex-wife and family, realizes. There's also a reminder that the world is going to keep on turning. We've gotten that in a few episodes now. Empires rise and fall. The world keeps turning.