Don Draper = America
Mad Men is a serious exploration of how we became who we are. How the generation that grew up in the Great Depression, fought two consecutive wars and gave birth to the baby boom, also transitioned our society from its rural, localized roots, into a global economic and cultural force mighty enough to sustain and win the Cold War.
But it’s also about how we went from simple to complicated, from contented citizens to ravenous acquirers. It’s about how we learned to sell. And consume.
In this context, we meet Don Draper. We meet him in medias res, which is Latin for “in the midst of affairs,” so that’s both a literal and figurative phrase. Fairly quickly we find out that he’s unfaithful yet strangely loyal. He’s inspiring yet he doesn’t always live up to his word. He’s dazzlingly attractive yet prone to letting people down. He appears rock solid, yet is constantly reinventing himself. He portrays brilliant confidence, yet is deeply scared inside. He looks like an insider, yet identifies with those on the outside. He’s constructed a veneer of high polish, yet possesses no real depth. He’s admired, but not really known. He’s foolish yet wise. He’s optimistic. He’s severely flawed. His life is based on a lie. He came from nothing. He’s learned to pass. He gets by on his looks. He deludes himself into a better existence.
These attributes aren’t just part of an interesting main character, but the arrowhead of the carefully constructed M.O. of the series. Don’s experience is our country’s experience. We’re such a mix of contradictions, agendas, conflicting feelings, cross-purposes, confusions and qualities … and yet somehow we’ve risen to a position of prominence in the world. We lie, cheat and steal, yet maintain the admiration of our friends. When people call us out we get defensive, and a little self-righteous. We contain greatness and smallness. We stand for the highest ideals, yet frequently need to reminding to live up to them ourselves. Other countries take their cue from us, which we sometimes resent. Some say we might be coasting on our greatness – that our best years are behind us. We’re getting by on our looks. We’ve deluded ourselves into a better life.
MM is all about these questions, and explores them primarily through its main character. How did we get here?
This is Don. Pure and simple. It’s the overarching metaphor of the show.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:25 am
I always think of Don as someone who is really living the American dream. He’s rich, intelligent and handsome, he is in a powerful glamorous proffession, he has a beautiful home, wife and family, he has other beautiful exciting women on the side. He really seems like the man who lives the dream and has everything, yet he still can’t make himself happy. In ‘Jet Set’ Don has the chance to escape into a life of pure hedonism and indulgence with Joy, but he still feels empty and out of place. Maybe it comes through living a lie. Or maybe it’s part of the human condition that we can never be completely happy, no matter how much we have.
June 8th, 2009 at 6:45 am
I enjoyed the Charlie Rose interview, particularly when Jon Hamm starting in with some America-isn’t-all-that stuff, and Weiner cut him off.
I think if Weiner’s ideas about America were as shallow and stale as these, we wouldn’t be watching the show much.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Purchasing the Caddy summed that up for me. “You deserve it.” And suddenly, he and Betty were laughing in that Caddy. My folks bought a Caddy in 1975 – my Dad had humble beginnings (very!) and became an orthodontist. I can see the very same sense of having “made it” in my parents at that time.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I love this blog, long time stalker, first time commenter. And I hope to comment more often, because I love this show and the writing on it that I find here.
But I think you should stick to show analyis and refrain from rhapodizing on international affairs. Because as a Canadian, currently in France, I am obligated to call your bluff. Name a friendly nation with undeniable respect for the USA. Name a nation that is genuinely taking its leads from the US-the EU is completely going in its own direction, Canada is basing its infrastructural development on Scandinavian nations, particularly where healthcare is concerned. When I grew up, we would start riddles with ‘Are you a dumb American or a smart Canadian?’ And I’m twenty!
However, there *is* a very interesting line of analysis to take with Mad Men if you take the view that America rose to prominence through its arms, and that the characters’ ages are revealed through their willingness to accept this truth. Pete exchanges the second chip n’ dip for a gun in a search for his machismo, and he turns to it whenever he needs or wants to summon masculine energy–he clings to that thing for life in the finale, but I think the role the rifle plays in “Red in the Face” is more telling as to how he feels about the gun.
On the other hand, in the face of the overwhelming firepower at the conference, Don caves–he was shown not to be a terrific soldier before, after all. Don believes in creativity, in hard work and willpower–not gunpowder, and he proceeds to be passive not only through the rest of the episode, but through most of ‘The Mountain King’. Don Draper is of the age that he was raised by people who remember the atrocities of WW1; the bomb probably gave him a few moments of quietly horrified contemplation, as he would’ve been a teen. Pete is completely on the other side of that divide.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Mari – there’s no question that globalization has taken a bite out of America’s influence. However my comments were meant in the broader context of the last 50 years or so, not as a statement of the current climate.
America’s story is that of reinvention, self-absorption, denial and renewal (to name a few) … this is what the show has chosen to focus on and I think Don is a symbol for much of that.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Mari, welcome. I think your age is telling; it is only in the past 15 years or so that America’s influence in the world has become so profoundly tainted. Although Canadians, I think, have always made fun of us.
Mockery is part of the package; you are, in the way, Jimmy Barrett to our Don Draper; calling us out, joking about our power and beauty (not that Canada is unpleasant the way Jimmy is).
Coop, I adore this essay.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I agree with the general theme of your argument. Don Draper is the best postmodern embodiment of the perils of pursuing the American dream–Gatsby is the best of the modern depictions, in my opinion–and of the traits most commonly ascribed to America as a nation throughout its storied history. I agree with the cultural dominance of American art, film, and music.
But I stand firm. If you can name a nation that has, even in the past fifty years, based its political and economic decisionmaking on the choices made by America and received America’s ire for doing so, then fire at will. Or, name a nation whose admiration for the USA hasn’t halted through Vietnam, Watergate, disco, the Iran-Contra Affair, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War. Otherwise, my claim of rhapsodizing seems unrefuted.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Deborah, thank you for your welcome. I really do love this site, I check it every day, but I’m always nervous writing on the internet. I’m in an unusual position here, I feel, as both a young person and a Canadian. Canada is in an unusual position in being profoundly British, with America’s culture swelling over the border. I didn’t want to be so bold as to make the Jimmy Barrett claim myself, but now that you’ve opened the can…Just remember that Canada’s ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ is ‘Peace, Order and Good Government’, and the lightbulb clicks on.
America is beautiful, America is powerful. But America seems to be Don Draper as much as Don Draper is America, if that makes any sense–falling as the work of the past collapses (god I love that opening sequence). And I’m not happy about that, but it does seem to be the way the cookie crumbles.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I do rhapsodize. It’s one of those things about me that my wife would say was fun and quirky when we met, but that she would now define as a “red flag” she should have heeded.
Without getting into the merits of equating disco with Vietnam, I’ll point to The Marshall Plan, The Berlin Airlift, and general pre-eminence in innovation that has made the US particularly admired over the last generation.
But of course it’s about how a country can do all that, and yet fail to recognize basic human rights, get mired in fiascos such as Vietnam, and lose it’s global edge in designing and manufacturing automobiles.
It’s the refusal to paint it all in black and white which makes the show interesting. John from Cincy above says this is shallow and stale, but I don’t think it is. It would be stale if Don were there to represent only one part of the argument, or if the show didn’t embrace the complexity of it all. But it’s the complexity that is new and, thusfar, completely unmined, which provides the depth of the series.
During the Sopranos run, David Chase said that when he pitched the show to Fox, they wanted Tony Soprano to, like, drive an ambulance in the evenings, to show what a big heart he had. I can just imagine what some nets would have Don Draper do to simplify the picture and clarify the message.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Well then, Mr. B. Cooper, here is where we shake hands and say ‘Then we’re agreed’. You don’t refute my claim, it stands, you respond with instances of American goodwill instead of the nations with the conditions I asked for, I’m still right, you don’t care…:D
As to whether I agree with John from Cincy, well, I couldn’t tell from his response to your post which part of that Charlie Rose moment he liked. Maybe he liked Jon Hamm’s opinions as compared to your post, or maybe he liked Matt Weiner cutting him off. Hamm’s opinions seemed a little more linear than your own, and that’s not a complaint.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Mari-I think what you are saying about loss of respect for America is very true today, but think about the examples you listed of when America lost the respect of the world ” Vietnam, Watergate, disco, the Iran-Contra Affair, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War.” In 1962, when we left our characters, it was rare for a news broadcast to even mention French-Indochina. The United States lost the respect of the world after the 1960s. In a way, Mad Men is about the end of the era. It’s like “Cabaret” in that respect-their world is about to come to an end, and no one knows it.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Mari-Also, welcome to the site. I hope you post more because what you have to say is very interesting and you present your ideas well.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
RetroGirl, I salute your comparison between Mad Men and Cabaret. I would go even further and make a Joan-Sally Bowles comparison as the female oversexualized stars of their settings with deep unhappiness behind their performative veneers.
My original beef with the original post was that the generalizations were unsupported, and then that they were unfocused and unsupported. Though I would be interested in considering when loss of American respect for America began to kick in–say, with the beatniks of S1, Catcher in the Rye, all that jazz–and feed that into my understanding of the show.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
And, RetroGirl, thank you for the welcome and the compliment.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Mari, your differences are welcome. We have at least one British Basketcase, and our youngest Basketcase is Noah, a teenager. So you’re not alone.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
As a fellow Canadian to Mari, I’ll say that I don’t agree with her on several points.
Mari, the only thing distinctly British about us as Canadians is our political system, and even that’s not entirely British in nature (we have an American-style Senate as our second chamber). We’re a composite of influences and cultures that outgrew the British influence as an overwhelming force decades ago. We have our pockets of Anglophiles and a historical legacy to the U.K., but I’d argue the U.S.-U.K. “Special Relationship” is more profound in terms of influencing each other in a wider variety of cultural and political ways than Canada has with the U.K. today. Just because we were the colonials for longer than the Americans doesn’t make us more British. We’ve evolved past that, just as America did. It’s an unqualified statement to say we’re any more British in character than American in character.
I’ll agree with you that American standing in the world community has never been worse than it is today. There’s a lot of work for America to do in rebuilding its global image. But let’s be fair: there’s much, much more to the American “image” than just politics or foreign military adventures. The world eats up American culture in ways no other nation on Earth can possibly approach. European music charts are loaded with American artists. Hollywood blockbusters make a considerable, if not the majority of their revenues, from overseas box office. The world’s people have this remarkable tendency to separate American politics from American culture.
I’m not saying this is good or bad (some might argue it’s impossible to intellectually separate aspects of a country in good faith). Fact remains that the world loves Brand America, even if they deeply resent and disrespect the notion of American imperialism. It’s just vastly more complicated than taking the Reign of Error known as George W. Bush as the main barometer of international perceptions (BTW, disco’s made a major comeback as the genre of Nu Disco and has had huge influences on the international development of house, trance and electroclash, so don’t knock it) or seeing every single foreign policy blunder in American history since 1945 as an indication of American’s inherent unworthiness. It’s just more complex than that.
The only big reason people come down on America is that it’s like the Biggest Kid on the Block — everyone wants to take down No.1 when they get a chance.
Finally, I really don’t agree with you that Mad Men is post-modern. By that logic, any show set in the past is inherently post-modern, because we’re essentially imprinting our own values and “reality” on that era through the mode of discourse available to us.
The thing about Mad Men is that it is inherently a show about 2009 as much as it is about 1962. The proof of this lies in the opening alone: it’s no coincidence that the opening is about a man falling from a collapsing office building, along with hallmarks of that era (sorry to make people uncomfortable on here, but it has very obvious echoes of The Falling Man/September 11th, 2001).
There’s no attempt to re-structure that era in ways that makes us long for the 1960s. That’s the essence of postmodernity: longing for a time and place that still exists in our current culture in some form. I don’t think anyone longs for 1962 — it’s about observing how change of a dramatic nature happens via forces beyond the control of the people in it. That’s the drama and effect of Mad Men. It’s not longing for that era, but it’s showing us a part of ourselves we have a hard time facing.
Just my .02 cents.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Crackin piece B-Coop. And good comment stir Mari. As a first timer myself – and a (lower case) brit to boot – I too find it fascinating how the metaphorical layers of the show work on so many levels but equally how the English-speaking nations interpret Weiner’s masterpiece (forgive me but I just don’t see how some of the subtleties can cross-translate into the non-Anglo tongues…it’s hard enough for me to hang-on to some of the conversational coat-tails and I know my El Morrocco from my White Horse Tavern).
The international affairs analysis is non-appropriately appropriate. How can you dissect an Octopus like MM and not study all its tentacles?
But c’mon, the current ambivalence towards the US in some parts of the West is just a blip in an otherwise smooth and long-running cultural continuum. It’s no more than Sally Draper banging her fork on the table. She’ll calm down later.
But as B-Coop says, the microcosm of Don represents so many layers whether realised or not. Here’s another, coming from a native of Liverpool in the UK: that whole Madison Ave vibe was as much about telling people what they didn’t previously know as reminding them about stuff they had actually known and somehow forgotten about. Take The Beatles. A large part of that music invasion that started in Feb 1964 was based on Ed Sullivan introducing the US to something new, something different, something happening from across the Atlantic. But as B-Coop says “other countries take their cue from us” and that’s exactly what the four lads who grew up a mile or two away from where I type actually did. They basically imported a US sound into the Liverpool docks. Re-interpreted it into something of their own and then sold it back from whence it came as something “new and unique” and the tv lounges across the US didn’t realise that it was basically an advert for a US-born sound with a peculiar English accent!
Anyway, here’s one MM-obsessed Scouser who will be looking with interest to see how – or whether – Weiner deals with the Fab Four. Because if he keeps to the 18-month gap between series then he’s bang on course to start season 3 with their arrival (the first Ed Sullivan Beatles show was Feb 9th 1964).
June 8th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I thought about Don and Mad Men when I was reading this fascinating article in the new Rollingstone yesterday about a girl who stole people’s identities and literally took over their lives. She didn’t do it for money, she did it for a new life. Her name was Esther Reed, some of you may have been familiar with case but it’s a real doozy to read.
It reminded me that if Dick pulled something like this in 2009 he would be put in prison and called a sociopath…
June 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Greg H. , I think you’ll find in my second reply in my conversation with B. Cooper that I completely agree with the *cultural* domination by America of the world at large. Continuing on that post, I think it should be clear that I challenged two particular statements of B. Cooper’s essay–one that America has felt resentment towards countries that imitate it, and two that there are countries whose admiration for the USA has not faltered.
I disagree that Canada has essentially surpassed the UK, as my participation in a mock Commonwealth forum has shown–heck, even the *existence* of a Mock Commonwealth forum has shown–that our Commonwealth status is something that young people still respect. When my fellow delegates and I debated in the House of Commons the necessity of considering Elizabeth Queen of Canada, most people respected our ties to that tradition. (I wasn’t one of them, but that’s not the point). I don’t know what side of the country you’re on, but as a Vancouverite, I know our connections on the Pacific Rim are more important in our daily lives than those with the UK, but I do not consider those connections to be as important to *my* inheritance as a Canadian, particularly one as mongreled as I am of nationalities in the UK.
You and I are using different definitions of post-modern. “A style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.” is the definition I was using, and I find that Mad Men’s unflinching look at contemporaneous schools of thought are just that, particularly when listening to Betty’s dialogue.
I personally love disco/dance music, I just put it in that list both tongue-in-cheek-ly and because of the huge backlash to it at the time. I understand very well how complicated history is, I graduate this December with an English Major, History Minor.
It really isn’t more complex than that, because apart from the brief period of isolationism in the nineteen twenties and thirties, if interventionism was a possible path to take it was taken. I can’t view Vietnam without an understanding of the Philippine-American War, personally. I’ll never say America is unworthy of anything–Americans are a kindhearted people, and the creativity astounds. I don’t know where you got that idea.
I don’t think there are big reasons to come down on a place. Lots of little ones usually suffice. I won’t say that many of them don’t hail from the ‘Reign of Error’, as you called it, but there are some that would come up over a beer that have nothing to do with Dubya Bush.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Mari, fair enough about what you said regarding America’s cultural dominance, but as a soon-to-be-graduate, you should also know that cultural dominance and cultural acceptance are two very different things. It’s a fallacy to assume one follows the other.
Moreover, while I appreciate your work in a mock Commonwealth forum — I did plenty in my student days — it’s also a fallacy to assume a specialized example like yours leads to a broader general conclusion about Canadian cultural identity. Considering that most university/college students are educated and informed enough to understand what an institution like The Commonwealth does and thus appreciates the historical legacies an institution like it offers, it’s not exactly a big surprise that you’d all appreciate it. I appreciate what you’re saying, but it’s a somewhat biased example and does not lead to a broader understanding of the topic.
Besides, the Commonwealth is not Britain by definition — it is a collection of nations bound by a common historical legacy and symbols. Using an institution like the Commonwealth to make a point about Canada’s relationship to the U.K. is like saying because Venezuela speaks the same language as Spain and both have membership in the Latin Union, Venezuela therefore is “profoundly Spanish.” Language alone isn’t a cultural denominator.
Re: Post-Modernity. It’s a highly disputed topic, and Mad Men may not be a perfect cultural example to use in terms of being explicitly post-modern. You may be correct when you use that definition, but I don’t think it’s entirely complete, especially when it comes to Mad Men.
For one, Mad Men is highly modernist insofar as the theme of alienation exists from and reference to dominant narratives throughout all of it. No one in the show openly rejects the system of modernity that was 1962. Even characters like Peggy and Sal don’t reject the quest for meaning and identity within the show. Peggy might be railing against the oppression of her Catholic experience, and Sal might be wrestling with him being gay in a homophobic world, but they buy into Sterling Cooper (and Don’s) vision of authenticity and meaning in advertising. Postmodernity is far more flippant and disconnected than what Mad Men presents.
More so, this line here: “A style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.”
First off, which theory/ideology is being distrusted in Mad Men? It’s not as if the show’s characters openly condemn the sexism or classism of the era — it’s accepted to an extent, which is part of the drama of it. They live in it. We don’t accept it because we’re viewing the era as social history, as change. We as the audience don’t long for the era — we see the conventions of the time as authentic and narrative-driven, which is not post-modern.
I think the show is more about the profound change the 1960s brought and transition *into* the capitalist, post-modern world beyond that era. Again, the show’s not about 1962 as it more about the cause-and-effect of mass scale change.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Excellent observations here. Part of why I’m so impressed, fascinated and baffled by MAD MEN is because it’s not clear to me what I think about it as a critic, nor to I even understand my reaction to it as a viewer. Don Draper is MAD MEN’s most interesting potential feature – using his identity and profession to inquire more broadly into the ethical or other commitments of American society more generally — yet so far it seems somewhat perfunctory. So I love reading other viewer’s insights such as these.
I second Greg H’s observation above that there is much more to America’s “image” than political power. As a young Australian, my nation is essentially the 51st sate of America, largely because we are so derivative of America’s ever-encroaching “soft power” – it’s popular culture, its values (or lack thereof) and especially its advertising.
So Don Draper as America is an especially curious proposition, because as was driven home last season, this character is far from profound. When we meet Don Draper is he is impressive and irresistible, but the more time we spend with this man, the more he becomes unconscionable and foolish. That says a lot about America right there. Yet much of the joy I derive from MAD MEN is its writers presenting their protagonist this way. Is Don Draper part of this growing trend of Tony Sopranos, Dexters and House MDs who we seem to like despite watching their heinous acts?
The Tony Soprano analogy especially is apt, because I do consider MAD MEN a direct descendent of THE SOPRANOS. Both shows share the social and political vision of television’s early days, when breakthrough dramatic television drew upon gifted playwrites whom had been blacklisted from the film industry. The mafia motif in THE SOPRANOS is widely regarded as a critique of capitalism that teems with the mindless commerce and consumption of modern America; it says much about rugged family values giving way to soft individualism, and friendship, loyalty, love not standing a chance against the icy incursions of economics, psychiatry and the law. MAD MEN depicts the rampant commercialization that took over in the early 1960s. It too shares the social and political vision of television’s early days, when breakthrough dramas drew upon gifted playwrites whom had been blacklisted from the film industry. MAD MEN’s form is also all ‘middle’ – there is no beginning in no men – which makes three things stand out: its realism; the narrative flow that keeps multiple plots and sub-plots humming; its abilitiy to raise larger issues — status-climbing, gender relations, race, family disintegration, suburban anxiety in the context of what on the surface is a workplace office soap opera.
In his scathing criticsm of MAD MEN in London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n20/grei01_.html), Mark Greif notes that THE SOPRANOS shows up all the possibilites of the medium that aren’t exploited in Matthew Weiner’s show: “Tony Soprano shows the kind of man Don Draper might have been: someone in whom strength and weakness, allure and cruel cunning, were held in balance, through an alternation of authority, neediness and physical violence.”
Criticsm aside, I think Don Draper and Tony Soprano are both American archetypes, embody all the contradictions of the male psyche: the Catch-22 of wanting to be in charge of control, but also desiring love from those around them. Traditional men unsure of their place in a changing world; alpha males struggling to gain respect from those who resent them for their domineering ways. Tony is hounded by a sense of belatedness, a sense that the old ways are not going to survive in the highly computerized world of late capitalist commerce that is his children’s to inherit. In the pilot episode of THE SOPRANOS, Tony tells his therapist, “I been thinking: It’s good to come in something from the ground floor. I came in too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” She responds: “Many Americans, I think, feel that way.”
Is Don Draper the ancestor of Tony Soprano? Is he yet to share Tony’s tragic conscience? As Don tells Roger early on in the first season, “Who could not be happy with all of this?”
June 8th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
#21: Mad Men’s form is also all ‘middle’ – there is no beggining and no * end*
June 9th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Greg H, in my first post I offered the possibility that American military supremacy was the girdle that helped American culture swell across the world. But I am confused as to your reasoning for insisting that I believe that cultural acceptance is the natural result of cultural domination. “Canada is the second largest landmass, the first nation of hockey, and the best part of North America,” anyone*?
I did not use the Commonwealth to make a point about our relationship to the US, I used it for the UK. I do not think it fallacious to think that a nation whose flag we flew until 1965 was our premium influence over the course of our development. It is not out of the question to think that the continued presence of Canadian youth in programs celebrating our still-strong connection to our colonial roots implies that these connections are still felt. We are our own plant, but the seeds that were planted were English. (Excepting Quebec). If you want to get into a debate over Lacan’s validity in ascribing the development of a society’s laws and structure to the language it uses, literally as its self-definition, that’s your call, but it’s a valid school of thought.
As for post-modernism, I will not say that S1 was explicitly so, but I will say that it seems to be the general direction of the show. Kurt’s brazen move of outing himself at the office is explicitly postmodern–he will not do what Sal does. There are no minor characters on this show.
Your disagreement with my defintion comes from your dismissal of key word ‘distrust’. The characters are suffering through their inability to reconcile themselves to their distrust of the systems they live with. Don *knows* he doesn’t trust the corporate culture he lives in–he works without a contract, he sought out women traditionally Other for his mistresses, he is willing to acknowledge even some validity in tarot which you would NOT find an ordinary mid-century businessman doing. It is growing in the others, though–Joan’s awareness that no, she really did love her work in the TV department, but her pride and inability to deviate from her setpath are leading her to marry her rapist. Pete doesn’t trust the conventions of the time, though he only voices these thoughts tenatively–but I have hopes for him. Peggy becomes the strongest character on the show when she speaks up against her Catholic upbringing to say that she cannot believe that her God is the unloving and vengeful kind. I essentially agree with you that the show is about the development of postmodernism, but I believe that the characters are pregnant with it.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Canadian
June 9th, 2009 at 8:45 am
WWII changed everything. Not only did it shoot the U.S. to superpower status, it made us more aware of, afraid of, and deperate to forget, just how horrible the world can be once the demons are out of the box. The world went through protracted, excruciating agony and was left with the specter of the bomb. It’s hard to blame anyone who lived through it – even as a child like Don – for wanting to focus on the here and now and not worry about the future. After WWII is when we first started to see a marked rise in the style of parenting that’s the norm today, where children are expected to do nothing more than enjoy themselves. People have always longed to hang on to their youth, but the second half of the twentieth century saw a seismic shift towards youth and childhood being the main focus of society and death and age being things to keep both out of sigh and mind.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Mari,
That’s cool. I know you wern’t ascribing the Commonwealth to describe Canada’s relationship to the U.S. No worries there. I actually agree with you about the importance of the institution in forging relationships between former British colonies. You’re right in the sense that the British had a big influence on English Canada for many years, but again, I’m not entirely in agreement with you about how influential or profoundly British we are today. It’s a tenuous link at best nowadays. I also suspect the French Canadian population might have something to say about that, as well as our First Nations communities.
I actually don’t see how Kurt outing himself at the office is postmodern. Who is to say that didn’t happen in 1962 in a corporate environment? We don’t know. That’s social evolution at work, not post-modernity. I mean, the vantage point of the audience is very telling — our shared knowledge with Sal in that we know the truth of his sexual orientation — but it’s not explicitly post-modern.
Also, Joan not staying in the TV department with Harry wasn’t about her ego or pride. It was because she was denied the chance to take the job full-time by Harry because Harry didn’t see her as anything more than an office manager. You could see how disappointed she was when Harry told her about her replacement for broadcast operations. She’s frozen out of any plum jobs at Sterling Cooper because the men see her as just an office manager — nothing more, nothing less.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time, honestly, I just appreciate a good debate.
No hard feelings, I trust.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Melissa, I totally agree. I think the best example of your point is Roger Sterling–he even cops to his shore leave mentality.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:45 am
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1513658671?bctid=22566376001
there is also a video with all the showrunners that includes Weiner… check it all out on the hollywood reported website.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Greg H., if you care how I feel, you could stand to apologize to me for telling me what I ’should also know’ a couple posts back, as that did hurt my feelings. I’m glad you picked up on that, as I would have felt uncomfortable speaking out about it otherwise, and I do want to feel like my opinions are as welcome here as anyone else’s.
I think I said earlier that my *personal* identity as a Canadian is connected to the country’s colonial roots, and I just want to underline that point.
As for your disagreement with my point on Joan, I attempted to apply her pride to the overarching path of her decisionmaking. If she wanted that job back, don’t you think that with her canny and her intimidation skills she could ‘office manage’ it?
If you want to know who’s to say that people didn’t out themselves in 1962, a possible answer is me. 1962 saw the FIRST removal of a state’s sodomy law, and that state was Illinois. 1971 saw Oregon, Colorado and Idaho remove theirs–only to have Idaho REinstate the sodomy law due to religious outrage. It was only removed from the APA’s (American Psychiatrics Association) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders list in 1973. So no, I don’t think that Kurt did something ordinary by coming out at Sterling Cooper seven years pre-Stonewall, especially considering Sal’s refusal of a sheer proposition two years earlier in ‘The Hobo Code’ , though I will grant how closeted he is. Still, his answer to ‘What are you afraid of?’ is ‘Are you serious!?’. And it’s a fair one.
I will return to this point again and again: Matt Weiner has said in interviews that Sterling Cooper is a *dinosaur* of a Madison Avenue ad-firm. The characters who will adapt and cope are the young ones like Kurt, Pete and Peggy, who distrust the conventional ideologies of the time.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
*correction–his response is actually ‘Are you joking?’, not ‘Are you serious?’. My bad!
June 9th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
A criticism that is based on the notion that Don could be Tony Soprano but isn’t doesn’t much impress me. Don Draper is Don Draper.
June 9th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
>Greg H., if you care how I feel, you could stand to apologize to me for >telling me what I ’should also know’ a couple posts back, as that did hurt >my feelings. I’m glad you picked up on that, as I would have felt >uncomfortable speaking out about it otherwise, and I do want to feel like >my opinions are as welcome here as anyone else’s.
Of course they are. I apologize if you have hurt feelings.
>I think I said earlier that my *personal* identity as a Canadian is >connected to the country’s colonial roots, and I just want to underline that >point.
That’s cool.
>As for your disagreement with my point on Joan, I attempted to apply her >pride to the overarching path of her decisionmaking. If she wanted that ?>job back, don’t you think that with her canny and her intimidation skills she >could ‘office manage’ it?
No. I don’t. Peggy’s made it into the upper echelons of SC because she has an ally and mentor in Don. Joan has only one real “ally” in Roger, whom is also selfish enough to passively punish Joan for abandoning him to that doctor Greg. Joan doesn’t have any real power at SC. She manages clients’ expectations and presents a well-ordered front office to clients. There’s no way Roger Sterling or Bert Cooper would have given that up for her to take up a role in Broadcast Ops. Personal moxie and interpersonal skills aside, Joan’s ultimately a tragic character because she’s incapable of moving up. More pointedly, she’s discovering that she can’t have it all because she’s ultimately at the mercy of what men say and do.
>If you want to know who’s to say that people didn’t out themselves in >1962, a possible answer is me.
Since Kurt is from Europe (where in Europe is a bit unclear) and almost every European nation had either no laws, decriminalized or lowered the age of consent for homosexuality by 1962, it makes sense Kurt would be cool with telling people about his sexuality. He’s a foreign national working illegally in America – what are those folks at SC going to do? Tell on him? Worst case is he gets deported, and quite frankly, the money that Smith & Smith brought in with the Martinson’s Coffee account would be bad for business. I’m willing to bet that exact same scenario happened in real life more than once. Kurt is a crafty man – he knows they can’t really touch him and he doesn’t care what they think.
Sure, people didn’t go out and broadcast their homosexuality in 1962. But the fact Sterling Cooper was working with a foreign national in America illegally shows that laws don’t mean that much when money’s involved. I’m willing to place bets that a lot of places practiced the same approach.
Again, though, SC may be a dinosaur, but the show’s showing how the transition into a post-modern ad agency is happening.
June 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Thank you for the apology.
As to Joan, I feel as though S3 will see changes for her–quite frankly, if life doesn’t cut her some slack my heart’s going to break for her, more than it already has. I feel as though she’ll have the most interesting relationship with the feminist movement, once it really starts to blossom.
The bravery of what Kurt did has nothing to do with Kurt’s bravery, in my opinion, and everything to do with the culture he said it to. The worst case is not that he gets deported. Kurt is the art side of the duo. He is the one that the others in creative can be compensated for–while Don might be able to look the other way out of sheer disregard for drama, Sterling cares more about appearances (a good example is his stance on Rumsen). If any of the bigwigs had been around for that conversation, Kurt wouldn’t still be. He’s working there illegally, after all, they don’t have to compensate him, give him severance. And if Smitty raises a stink, there was a whole list of people like him. Will Kurt get his ass kicked? No, probably not. But it’s not like Kurt can take back his stance if he does. That’s what gives him cojones.
It’s not as though Sterling Cooper’s upper-echelons hired him way back when. Some underling in HR probably let him slip through with a good interview, a bribe, heck, maybe even an office tryst. Who’s to say? But I hardly think that one instance is a good way to judge company policy on illegal immigrants, particularly when they’re still so hostile to legitimate ones!
Honestly, I think we agree more than we disagree. You think that postmodernism is the next stop on the train and I think that postmodernism is the seed in the soil. I think it’s innate, and you see it as inevitable.
June 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Ok, random note that I thought would apply to this conversation, but there is this great article about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last secretary, Frances Kroll Ring, in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-frances-ring8-2009jun08,0,3318381.story) which points out that in Fitzgerald’s last novel, The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald wrote “there are no second acts in American life”. While I know that Weiner used a short story by Fitzgerald as a back drop for Arthur’s character, I think in this case this quote from The Last Tycoon perfectly sums up Don’s approach to his life and where he is headed by the end of season 2. The change happening in Don between Season 1 and Season 2 I felt like Don did not accept until after his conversation with Anna – she gives him hope that there is the possibility of a second act. Anna would know one exists, since she has made a life for herself after the death of her husband. Perhaps Don can truly make a life for himself after the death of his created identity in Season 3. A Second Act in “American Life”
June 10th, 2009 at 5:16 am
#30 Absolutely, Deborah. Don Draper is Don Draper. I disagree with much of that London Review of Books article, but it does highlight that just as Don Draper wasn’t created in a vaccum, he isn’t seen in the vacuum either. I think Don Draper is a part of this growing tide of leading men whom we like despite their heinous acts. Tony Soprano, Dexter, House MD, to name a few. Does anyone else agree?
As a longtime fan of The Sopranos I do find parallels between both shows interesting, though. And I’m pleased Matthew Weiner acknowledges and talks about its influences all the time. In many ways, Don Draper IS a direct descendent of Tony Soprano, yet considering Mad Men’s timeline he is a predecessor to Tony as well. Food for thought.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I watched the first ep of “Nurse Jackie” on Showtime the other night. I had a strange feeling of deja vu when I realized that this ep reminded me of MM S1 ep SGINY… Either an homage to Mad Men, or a simple ripoff…Matt Weiner should be flattered, either way. But then, MM continues in the tradition of the Sopranos of giving us compelling, richly detailed TV. [edited for spoilers--reminder: We do not spoil other TV shows]
June 10th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
But it’s also about how we went from simple to complicated, from contented citizens to ravenous acquirers. It’s about how we learned to sell. And consume.
You just described the United States in the post-Civil War era. Even before the Depression, the U.S. had become a heavily consumerist society. In fact, you just described many countries throughout the world and throughout history that become affluent.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
As to Joan, I feel as though S3 will see changes for her–quite frankly, if life doesn’t cut her some slack my heart’s going to break for her, more than it already has. I feel as though she’ll have the most interesting relationship with the feminist movement, once it really starts to blossom.
What if that never happens? What if Joan never develops a relationship with the feminist movement?
June 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Excellent analysis. I love hearing people’s takes on Mad Men themes, especially that of Don Draper, and this is by far one of the best. I’ve always felt that Don Draper is a “modern” Jay Gatsby.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Well, Lee, I’ll cry harder than I did during Joan’s rape scene. And considering that came just over a week on the heels of my own assault, those were some very hardcore tears.
To stick to the point, Peggy’s ladder of corporate advancement is made with established rungs. It won’t be her, if any of the Sterling-Cooper women do hop on board. Though Jane intrigues me.
It’s Joan I want to see more of, though, because stars rise and fall in opposition.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I want to make you aware of a website dedicated to the discussion of Brand America – http://www.strengtheningbrandamerica.com and invite you to add your perspective.