Russell Moore on how Abraham Kuyper predicted the era of Madison Avenue’s culture of art and mammon:
[James Bratt] writes that Kuyper saw the dangerous combination of “Art as captured by Mammon.” Here the two combined to a “commercialized, lowered, prostituted, feeding the mass compulsion for excitement, excess, and the erotic.” In this, Bratt contends that Kuyper was hitting close to explaining the contemporary rise of Madison Avenue as a cultural force, “the marriage of Art and Mammon that is commercial advertising.”
Here’s where Abraham Kuyper has something to say to Don Draper.
Mad Men is successful for many reasons, the first of them being that it features compelling human stories compellingly told. But, behind that, there’s a captivation with something that explains our predicament. Don Draper doesn’t just sell illusions; he is one. He is living with a stolen identity, and a secret past. He is driven to success, Mammon, and he does so by his vast creativity, Art.
