It is simple to say that you can’t understand Don Draper without understanding the culture from which he comes. It is, perhaps, more complicated to say that you can’t understand how audiences react to Don Draper without understanding the culture in which we live now.
I often find myself defending Don. “Yes, he cheats, but…” “What he does is wrong, I agree, but…”
Women are raised to believe that a man is the goal. Boys want to be astronauts and policemen and doctors, girls want to be brides. Thirty years after feminism’s second wave, we have better job and pay opportunities, legal rights to our own bank accounts, and a lot more freedom to move about in the world, but this is still the truth. Check a Toys R Us catalogue if you don’t believe me.
There are lots of repercussions to that. There are lots of ways that we don’t even realize we are shaped by that.
It’s easy to look at Betty and her lawyer and see that “Does he beat you?” thing is kinda old school. Don’t leave a provider unless you have to, because the whole point in life is to get a provider. In 2010, women are able to provide for ourselves, and we are much more likely to leave a man, and yet, I think a part of us is still very much geared to holding on. To defending him. To saying “but…”
I have lately been observing my own dating behavior. I’m a very strong woman. Brash. Overwhelming, even. And yet what I find is how my entire mind is geared towards adapting to the man. I’m not thinking about whether or not I would choose him nearly as much as I’m thinking about, can I adapt to him? As if all that’s necessary is for him to choose me.
This is the training the world gives a woman. It trains us to accept and defend the Dons of the world: To understand, forgive, adapt. We don’t have to. But in order to stop, we first have to notice that we’re doing it at all.
14 Responses to “Defending Don”
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I am a daily reader of this site, and wanted to comment. I find myself defending Don Draper many times. He does things that are terribly selfish, unkind and cold. But because we know his past, it helps me to be more forgiving. He was never loved, abandoned emotionally, beaten by his father, and had no positive role models growing up in his life. And yet, he is a good father, has a moral fiber, and intermittently has shown traces of being a good husband. To hear Bets tell him she doesn't love him anymore and wants a divorce was a reminder of his sad past. And yet to show such clarity at the newly formed company was a telling sign that Don is a man who in spite of his past, found a family where he can work hard, with people that he wants to be with. He is the perfect combination of a man you don't want to defend, but can so easily be defended. I hope I made sense.
I used to adopt that same mindset . . . making excuses or brushing aside Don's mistakes and flaws. I realize that he is not an orge and do possess some character virtues. It's just that as the series progresses, I find myself less inclined to defend him or make excuses for him. It's a feeling I cannot control.
Almost anyone can be defended. I just felt that it was important to look at our defense of him within a cultural context; a context I've been learning more about within myself lately.
I totally agree on these points, though, if I may add something: Don is also the typical sympathetic protagonist: flawed, but we care about him. I found myself reacting to Pete Campbell the same way after the first season (though in the first few episodes I found him to be pretty flat and obnoxious).
Great post, Deb. Does this mean I'm more enlightened as a feminist because I see Don as a rat bastard most of the time?
Almost anyone can be defended. I just felt that it was important to look at our defense of him within a cultural context; a context I’ve been learning more about within myself lately.
I don't know about that. I believe that everyone has faults and flaws. But I don't know if I agree that almost anyone can be defended.
Call me shallow, maybe, but I've found that as the sheer force of my physical attraction to Don/Jon has come down to more earthly levels, I can see him more clearly for the flawed human being that he is. Maybe that physical attraction is overpowering for us in real life as well.
Great topic. I agree that "almost anyone can be defended." But only to a point.
I know some cringe when Mad Men and The Sopranos are compared (but I’ll do it anyway).
I find Don Draper defendable where Tony Soprano isn’t. Both men are products of their culture and a dysfunctional upbringing. Interestingly, I’d add that Don is the more amoral of the two in that Tony exhibits evidence of an internalized moral code whereas the ad man doesn’t. By that, I mean Don’s sense of morality is, at best, unclear to me. On the other hand, Tony is often shown reacting when circumstances strike him as "unfair" or "wrong.†For instance, he was clearly sympathetic to the outed Vito Spatafore’s plight. Whereas, Don wasn’t so much so with Sal. Of course, Soprano is more likely than not to honor his convictions in the breach (sympathies aside, he ultimately decided killing Vito was the right business move). Furthermore, Tony, his protestations about getting stuck running the "family business" aside, revels in the fruits of his criminal behavior. Whereas, Don, a much more damaged person, never seems able to fully enjoy anything. So, perhaps, to pity Don is to defend him. Just a thought.
Switching gears and FWIW, as far as women “adapting†to men. I’d argue anecdotally that I’ve seen many examples of men adapting to women.
Did anyone else see that Robert Culp died? Thoughts out to our Archie!
I did, acdavis.
It's breaking my heart.
ac, in all the stuff I've been doing tonight, I failed to make the Robert Culp/Mad Men connection. You are so right.
Matt, everyone adapts to everyone sometimes, that's why I talked about the cultural context. Women adapting to men versus men adapting to women is different in a culture in which women STILL have limited power.
In the early Spring of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King had been preparing for a demonstration in Washington DC, to call attention to the plight of poor people in America.
The goal was to bring together Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics from diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds, but who all shared economic disadvantage, in a call for change.
During the planning period, Dr. King was called to Memphis Tennessee to support Black sanitation workers there, after one of them had been killed in the back of one of the garbage trucks, after seeking shelter from the rain in the back of it.
The man wasn't allowed inside the Sanitation Department building. He just wanted to get in out of the rain – when the trash compacting mechanism of the truck engaged – crushing him.
Dr. King was assassinated that April, while there to protest against the poor pay and working conditions of the workers.
In the wake of the tragedy, Robert Culp and Bill Cosby traveled to Memphis to show solidarity with the striking sanitation workers.
A few months later, in June, Robert Culp was among the entertainers and celebrities at a concert at the Washington Monument, just prior to the Poor People's March at the Lincoln Memorial.
We know him best, for his on-screen work and for bringing us Joseph Culp (Archie), but he was also a champion for the cause of social justice.
Great post, Deb. There’s a lot to think about here.
First thing: I notice the stronger women in my life (okay … that’d be all of them
) actively working to prepare others, especially men, for the forces of nature that they see as their own personalities.
Why? Isn’t strength an asset? And moreover, isn’t it the very thing life teaches us, year after year, as we grow? Life doesn’t make us more like one another as we get older. Quite the opposite. Women or men, our idiosyncracies and opinions get stronger, not weaker, as we age. Particularly if we’re single.
Second thing: Why do we defend, when we do? No one does anything unless there’s something in it for her.
Think of Betty in “Indian Summer”: the air-conditioner salesman, Don’s reaction to her story of the salesman’s visit (but to nothing else she did that we saw), and Betty’s retelling of the incident to Francine: “He’s very protective.”
What that told me about what Betty was defending: Not Don’s home. Not his place, his role in her life. She was defending hers, in his.
When any woman defends the man she’s telling herself she loves, she is reaffirming that man’s value to herself — and at the same time, confirming her value to him. And her place in his world, and in The World.
This is why the specter of adults using words like “unconditional” to describe their love for each other gives me the willies. The moment love between us loses its clarity, its edge of real-world, I’m-as-present-as-you-are momentum — what Hamlet called “the name of action” — it loses. Unconditional love is parent-to-child stuff, not the at-will, partner business we’ve all fought so hard to win.
It still happens, though: The defending thing. Rielle Hunter’s entire life is based on it:
“When you’re in love with someone who takes actions that go against your belief system, it’s extremely challenging to continue loving, instead of becoming righteous and judgmental. But see, I believed, and believe, that what I see in him is there and correct. He’s a good man and he will figure it out. And he has and is figuring it out …”
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201004/rielle-hunter-john-edwards-exclusive-interview?currentPage=1
Smiler, thank you.