(LBJ’s infamous “Daisy ad,” transcript here.)
GRAPHIC LANGUAGE WARNING ON THIS POST. I have put the gamy stuff under the cut.
Stan Rizzo. Yet another in a series of men who think they know Peggy, and would actually blush if they found out about everything she’s been through.
But this guy is especially dangerous, because as Art Director, he is technically Peggy’s superior, and Don has his back when Peggy complains about him. Not that Don would be of much help to her anyway; he is so pickled he doesn’t even remember that he ordered the two of them barricaded all weekend “in a room with a lock” until they came up with a campaign for Vick’s Cough Drops.
She is commanded to be sequestered in a hotel room all weekend with a man who can’t stop talking about how he wishes everyone would work in the nude, and about how unattractive and unappealing Peggy is in every possible way, and has been constantly sabotaging her work on top of it. A lot of women would quit rather than subject themselves to that; I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been one of them.
And once they are behind closed doors, his behavior only escalates. She’s doing all the work, as usual, while he flips through Playboy and tends to his wood, and taunts her with the idea that someone like Don would never sleep with her because she’s boring and straitlaced and ugly. Speaking of ugly, this could go that way in a hurry. He’s alone in a room with a woman he finds loathsome — not just unappealing, but actually inspiring of contempt — and a hard-on from pictures of naked girls who can’t see him. A woman who, compared to him, has little leverage. We saw it with Sal: It doesn’t matter how good your work is or how long you’ve been doing it; if you don’t capitulate to the people with real power, you’re toast.
He could rape Peggy and get away with it, of that much I am certain. If she ever dared speak up about it, he would justify it as giving her the cock she’s been desperately craving, because mousy girls like her have to take what they can get. His word against hers? She wouldn’t stand a chance. Even the people who have known her for years would write her off as hysterical. Guys like him act the way they do because they can, because the entire world lines up behind them.
Which is why Peggy has nothing to lose by standing up and defiantly taking her clothes off, then sitting back down to work as if nothing had happened.
The one thing Peggy has over Stan in this instance (besides the fact that he has mashed turnips where his brain should be, and she doesn’t) is his image-consciousness. He is obsessed with what other people think of him, with the idea that nobody has ever given him the props he deserves. He has just spent pretty much every second of their time together talking about the absurdity of any man who has his choice of women getting excited by her, but she knows he’s been dragging in secretaries to watch his demo reel, including an LBJ ad that was rejected for being even more inflammatory than the Daisy ad he admits he had nothing to do with. LOOK AT ME! ME! ME ME ME!
She gambles that it will embarrass him no end, after everything he’s said about how “natural” and “not dirty” nudity is, and that it’s “man’s natural state,” that not only will he not be able to admit that her naked body inspires any feeling in him at all, but that he will be so distracted by her throwing down the gauntlet, that his whining about how much more “inspired” he’d be if he was allowed to disrobe will evaporate like the hot gas it is. Therefore, she surmises, he will go out of his way to hide any evidence that his “pencil” hasn’t gone soft in her presence.
She hits the jackpot. He calls her the “world’s smuggest bitch,” and goes to take a shower, after stating falsely that he merely had to urinate. She smiles contentedly, and calls out casually to Ratso Rizzo that she’s hungry and asks if he wants her to order food.
It works. It might not work on any other man. It might not work on any other day. It might not work coming from anyone except her. But it works.
Whether or not you believe, as I do, that Peggy has some autistic traits, there’s no denying that this woman is wired differently. In 1965, what other woman would dare? What other woman would be able to give the appearance of utter detachment throughout her entire challenge to him? What other woman would have studied and studied the man like he was something she found under a rock that wouldn’t stop biting her, until she figured out how to disable the bite mechanism?
Peggy is gonna OWN this business in a year, you just watch. That is, if she doesn’t decide she’s meant for even bigger things.
Peace, little girl.
66 Responses to “Attack of the Killer Mouseburger”
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hmm, I'm not really getting the math here. He can totally get away with it = she has nothing to lose? Um, how about if she miscalculated and he called her bluff and she actually got raped? That would be more of a loss than whether other people believed her. It would actually be getting raped.
This scene just didn't ring true to me. Weiner claims in the "Inside" vid that it comes from an actual experience of a staffer, and let's just say I'm skeptical. Were the circumstances really that this woman was alone in a hotel room with this person? And she knew almost nothing about him other than he was a jerk with a big mouth? Who outweighed her by 70 lbs? And it was 1965?
I personally think the story as written is malarky, and I'm sure the details of whatever formed the basis of it were quite different in important ways. Hey, I'm all for Peggy asserting herself, but I'd prefer that they were more realistic about it.
I completely agree. Getting naked with a guy you hate in a hotel room does not sound like a good idea to me, and no matter how nice it is to see Peggy so bold and confident, I don't think this would have happened. It actually gave me the creeps.
I bought it. And I'm not so sure that just because he outweighs Peggy that he would have been able to rape her. He's not angry, he's frightened, and he's a loudmouth and a bully but not the kind who ever backs it up. Peggy on the other hand is tough as nails. I think he knew perfectly well that she'd be picking his brain tissue out of her typewriter keys (those things are heavy) if he tried anything.
He's just another all talk and no action man. And all of his "liberated" dialog is straight out of the editorials in those Playboys.
The scene rang true for me, though. Everybody was a little ridiculous in the sixties, and Rizzo's hardly the first or the last to get caught up in a rhetorical standoff that was more than he was able to cope with. We're all so cynical today; back then, for the right sort of person, "OK, then, I WILL strip off" would have seemed just daring and modern enough to do. It's actually much more true to 1965 than it would be to 1975, '85, '95 or now (in '75 they would have had embarrassing sex).
The sad reality behind the Playboy Philosophy, of course, is those enormous, ludicrous tighty-whities. And guess what? Peggy owns him now.
I agree completely., Fnarf! Peggy's reaction was actually a strategy. Don told her "she was going to have to figure out a way to work with HIM." She's managed by her actions to take all the sexual BS off the table and get to work. It will be interesting to see how their relationship (Rizzo/Peggy) changes after this. I suspect it will be for the better. By the way, after Peggy forces Rizzo's hand and he finally folds, she asks him if there is anything he "WANTS" – open-ended. Very clever way to put some salt in the wound. Loved it!
Interesting post. That man was a grade-A certifiable male chauvinist P-I-G PIG!!!!! I was amazed at how well Peggy handled him and had to bark with laughter at how she called him out. I agree that she was in a dangerous situation (though it didn't occur to me at the time and obviously didn't to her or else she wouldn't have disrobed). At least he wasn't AS nasty of a piece of work as he could have been. I also agree about this being proof of being wired differently, I can't imagine too many women, especially not seemingly prim ones (at least in appearance) just stripping like that in front of a strange man especially back then. The ones who I'd think would do that would be the daring wild-child type and though Peggy has her wild-child moments, I'm talking about the ones who are ALWAYS and apparently big risk takers and who every body knows they are wild. Very few people, really know how wild Peggy can be at tim
Let me put it another way – to me this story was the woman's equivalent of the tough talk that jerk was spouting. "Oh, sure, if some big loudmouth jerk were to say that to me, I'd call his bluff and just take off my clothes and dare him to do the same!" yeah, right, sure you would, honey.
It seemed gratuitous. I don't know what Matt is up to with this element of the show, but it struck me as frat boyish and self-indulgent. We know he mapped out the first three seasons of the show years in advance; perhaps he had less time to think through S4 and this is the result.
Season 4 was when The West Wing began to drift, too and by Season 6, it was over. I hope that doesn't happen to MM, what with this and Draper's decline.
I bought the premise, but the scene was a little off. The way it was shot never gave me the impression that Peggy was really in the nude. As a result, it was neither quite as sexual, nor was she quite as vulnerable, as I think was intended.
It was not terrible. Nothing on MAD MEN has ever been bad. It was just a little off.
What I thought was interesting was what set her off. Peggy is clearly a little defensive about her relationship with Don. I don't agree with the folks that seem to think she is done. Instead, she seems frustrated. Peggy wants and needs Don's attention. It annoys her that he is unable to focus long enough to give it to her.
Clearly, that is largely a function of the drinking. One of the major threads this season appears to be Peggy vs. Don's drinking problem.
I just read the Jack Nicholson interview of January Jones in Interview and stumbled on this quote:
Nicholson: And then, after that period when the show takes place, the women’s movement said, “Take off your bra!” etc.
Jones: That was a tangible way to say, “I’m not going to be held under these constraints of being a woman.” And so, in an act of defiance, women took off all their physical restraints—their girdles and their bras. That was a way of setting it right on the table.
(http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/january-jones/4/)
this could have literally scripted the scene!
Thanks for posting "Daisy" ad… it's effectiveness is admirable.
@6, it's a TV show. They can't show actual naughty bits. But she was naked.
Same with Don in bed with Doris — you know how women always hold the sheet up around them like that on TV? He's seen her breasts before. That's not real. Or how Don very carefully slips on his boxers under the covers before getting up? No one does that. Especially not with the mother of all hangovers; in real life he's going to be straining at the end of his rope just to get out of bed without falling and cracking his head. He's certainly not going to try to hide his junk from the naked waitress in his bed.
It's just a convention of TV, like using "555-" for phone numbers (which I always find jarring).
Oh, I buy the Peggy thing entirely.
In the early '70s I was up against a married middle-aged boss who hit on anything that moved — from teenage girls in braces to 30 year old hat check women.
Was before they took middle-aged men to task who fucked 15 year olds in the darkroom.
Way before sexual harassment laws, and this guy liked to talk about sex. But by the time he went over the line, and threatened to fire me unless I slept with him, I observed him in action, and knew him so thoroughly I knew how to put the kibosh on his little plans for me.
Didn't have to pull a Peggy, but I kept my job, and he kept his hands off me.
Unfortunately, now that Peggy has neutralized Rizzo, drunken Don has handed her another problem employee.
Guess who's now stuck deflecting the bad ideas of, and trying to pry out decent copy out of, Jane's cousin?
#10 Congrats for dealing with that jerk. I completely believe you. I just don't buy the "naked in a hotel room" thing.
I definitely think there's a storm brewing between Peggy & Don. A category 5, at least.
The point is: I knew my adversary and how to hit him, where it would stop him.
Peggy knows Rizzo, where to hit him, where it will hurt.
He said she's unattractive to him, she's the prude, and he's oh so liberated and comfortable with nudity, all to avoid doing actual work, and puff up his own ego.
So Peggy turns the tables on him.
She knows he a lazy, lying, cowardly braggart: too lazy and chickenshit to rape her, that's for sure.
And Peggy is right, on all counts. She owns Rizzo.
Another anecdote from the '70s: I worked in a small office at another job with two middle-aged men who put up a nudie girl calendar, and then elbowed each other and hardy-har-hared about the discomfort they were sure to cause me.
Plus: If I objected, they could call me a prude.
IBut next day brought in a male nude centerfold from Playgirl and tacked it over my desk.
Their faces fell, their discomfort reached legendary levels, so they hit back from their old-fashioned men-rule/women-lose playbook.
"Judy, I didn't know you were that kind of girl."
See? "A nice girl" couldn't win for losing. If I didn't like female nudes in my office, I was a prude. If I hung a male nude, I was sexually loose.
Didn't work on this liberated woman, "I didn't know you where that kind of boy, Herb."
Peggy is second wave feminist, whether she knows it or not, and those women paved the way by rewriting that men-rule/women-can't-win playbook.
To say Peggy couldn't, wouldn't pull off "naked in the hotel room" for fear of rape, smacks of victim blaming in advance, or insisting Peggy needs to wear a burka to fend off male advances.
Peggy is rewriting the playbook, both on old-fashioned sexism, and the new-fashioned sexism, and that alone throws men off their game.
And Matt is illustrating that '60s change, in a wonderfully hilarious fashion.
# 9:
I find those conventions jarring as well. MAD MEN has generally done a nice job working around them. It is rare that I get pulled out of the reality of the show.
My concern is less a question of naughty bits than conveying the impression of nudity. A shot showing her legs and sternum at the same time with a desk covering the rest would have done the trick. It would have been less skin than a Jantzen two-piece.
Conversely, the modesty from Doris was totally plausible. The light of day (and sobriety) can do that to a person.
Yes, I'm still one of the folks who thinks Meowser's autistic spectrum/trait idea may explain Peggy's repeatedly unorthodox, unexpected, startling, seemingly non-emotional (at least on the outside), and often inexplicable actions. Remember her sister's complaint? "I do what I'm supposed to do, unlike Peggy, and SHE gets to live a glamorous city life!" (Paraphrased) The risks she has taken, her boldness – my own conservative, cautious, risk-averse, and strict parents would say "That's stupid! You're asking for trouble!" if I were to even think about anything close. Sometimes watching Peggy is both thrilling and scary
As recently as 1991 I had a situation re:CFO at work hitting on me after a United Way dinner (we were both married, I was beyond uninterested and had sent absolutely no signals his way). I called his bluff and he blew away like a tumbleweed. I wish I'd been able to pull off something as dramatic as Peggy, but the situation didn't warrant it, nor was the setting right. I was still quite pleased with myself afterwards, though.
I think every woman who's ever had a guy at work really try to grind her down has fantasies about letting him have it, but most of us don't get the chance. Remember "9 to 5?" That was a very fun movie for us working girls.
So I LOVED the way Peggy said, "Let's go…" and threw down the gauntlet. Like kids finally having a fight on their way home from school after weeks of hating on each other on a daily basis.
I’m hoping this is all a set-up to bring Sal back. This new art director guy seems totally contrived and coincidental…he just suddenly appears and is a problem for Peggy. I’m thinking he’ll mess up big and then, oh gee, we know an out of work art director….
oh, I hope hope hope you're right!!
And a tip of the cap for the use of “mouseburger” in the title.
It’s the term Helen Gurley Brown used repeatedly in “Sex and the Single Girl.”
I am not sure if I buy it or not, and I am not sure it is very important. Sure MM as a whole follows a realist aesthetics, but there are also pulpy elements (and I mean that in a nice way), or rather moments when the meaning is put forward more forcefully than through the realist telling of the story. I have the feeling that there are more of these moments this season (Lane and the steak come to mind).
For me the nude Peggy thing worked not so much because I “buy” it, but because it is so well tied to a constant theme in the show since early on : the gaze, and how men use theirs to objectify women, sometimes to idolize and often to degrade them. Rizzo is reading Playboy, and she tells him: Why don’t you stop staring at naked women who cannot stare back?
And through what is basically a stunt, she gives him a woman who stares back – and boy did she stare. I saw that scene more as performance art than simply at the political level. And I agree that it would probably have benefited from being more explicit, because the whole point is that the naked body of Peggy – but a naked body that is equipped with a gaze in opposition to Playboy models – is the statement here.
Yes! Yes! A Thousand times yes!
The obvious answer is, because he’s a coward. Otherwise, he’d actually go out and be a nudist. But he doesn’t know anything about nudism for real; he just reads magazines. I’m not even 100% sure he’s not a virgin, or close to it. It’s all an act. He’s certainly nowhere near as liberated as Peggy, who really IS free. The sixties were innocent and naive enough that she could do it; as I said, by the mid-seventies that would have been a much darker and more dangerous thing to do.
Innocent and naive? Not on this show!
Compared to the dark seventies they were. Compared to the cynical times we live in, they sure were.
Just as was posted at #6, The scene didn’t quite work for me. And I didn’t need more nudity, the tone just didn’t quite connect.
On the other hand, I was so enormously pissed off at that new art director, that I was happy to see Peggy get a win.
I really disliked Stan. I’m not so certain that he could get away with raping her though (and of course, I certainly hope it never comes to that). Unlike you, I do feel she would have people who would speak up on her behalf, or at least trust her word.
Like Brenda and Dean (#5 and #6), I’m not sure this scene really worked for me. I’ll watch it again, of course, but something about it did seem a bit gratuitous. Well, either that or else maybe I just prefer seeing her light up a doobie with the boys from the old SC.
Pete (#7): I forgot about that Jack Nicholson interview! interesting.
Fnarf (#9): “Same with Don in bed with Doris — you know how women always hold the sheet up around them like that on TV? He’s seen her breasts before. That’s not real.”
That actually does seem real to me. It depends on the woman, but some women are more inhibited afterwards. It’s one thing to be naked in bed, but afterwards when you’re getting up to get dressed or get a glass of water, and the lights are bright, you might not as comfortable.
Bling (#17): Great comments. Although I didn’t love the scene you summed up really well why it was there.
It's one thing having sex with a stranger, in the dark, at night, and another exposing yourself in broad daylight, especially if you're a woman.
Way back when I've made the same move.
I’m still scared for Peggy. She seems to have the upper hand for now, but I don;t put it past Ratso to be looking for revenge, big time. She hit him where it really hurt, and although he totally had it coming, men like that don’t take a needle to the ego lightly.
I kind of agree, he may be plotting revenge.
Peggy is so alone as a professional feamle at the office (except for Joan, who is an unreliable ally at best — we really haven't seen much bonding between them, and Faye doesn't count because she's not on staff) while Stan has a whole gang 'o guys behind him.
Perhaps he will say something about her using the fact that he saw her naked (leaving it to others to infer they had sex) and Pete will punch him out. Or want to but not want to tip his hand that he has feelings for Peggy and not punch Stan, and then go back to his office and bang his head or take out his gun and wave it around with the door shut. I can totally see Pete tying himself up in knots in that situation.
But we all know that most of what we guess never happens!
# 15 Heather Says:
August 31st, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I’m hoping this is all a set-up to bring Sal back. This new art director guy seems totally contrived and coincidental…he just suddenly appears and is a problem for Peggy. I’m thinking he’ll mess up big and then, oh gee, we know an out of work art director….
I had the same thought, but there’s still the problem of Lee Garner Jr not wanting Sal to work there. So I’m wondering if Peggy is going to start working with Sal under the table so he does the art but isn’t hanging around the office. I wonder if she’d even do that and not tell Don?
Not to mention – why would Sal WANT to work for Don or Roger again, after the way they treated him?
The hotel scene did not ring true for me. Peggy has grown, but it seems more like something she would have fantasized about doing than acutally ponied up to.
The earlier scene, where she professed to Stan how angry and humiliated she was, that Don did not acknowledge her work on Glo-Cote, also did not ring true to me. Of course he gloated and had no sympathy for her. He’s a misogynist ass, and she knows it. She’s too smart to have walked into that one…
I had not thought about Peggy’s “Aspergerish” tendencies before, but it is a very valid call out…she’s an odd bird and fascinating to watch.
I’m a newbie here…great forum!
I think part of it is the way that women "know". I know it's a stereotype, a cliche, but most women will tell you that they "know' about a man. Peggy's been running with the pack of Alphas for four years that we know, so I think she knows that Scuzzo is all talk, and that she can stop his ridiculous attempts to establish dominance by stripping, so they can get some WORK done–which I guess is the ASD shoutout: work is the one thing you can know; the one thing that never fails you.
There are two main characters in this show, Don and Peggy. Look at the billing, the screen time, the scenes in which they are alone, thinking. I think that Don is being written from the outside. He is a surface that reveals what is beneath slowly and reluctantly. Speculate all you want, but you don't really know him yet–I don't think the writers do either. He is the sum of our observations his past actions. That's why we can't take out eyes off him.
Peggy is being written from the inside. I'll bet that at story conferences, someone can say "Peggy wouldn't do that." it may be a couple of writers who can say that, and the others concede; the one saying it may well be a woman. By now WE know what Peggy will and will not do–not predict it, but agree with it, and we know her better than any character in the cast.
The only other character written like that, at that depth, is Sally.
I doubt it was planned that way at the start, but after a few episodes . . . Phillip Dunne relates that "How Green Was My Valley" was planned as a movie starring Tyrone Power, until everyone saw the test with Roddy McDowell and realized that the kid could carry the picture himself.
I think that Kiernan Shipka is going to be around for a long time.
One thing that struck me wrong about this episode was that Don sent Peggy to a hotel with Rizzo. That is simply not right. Don? Who made a guy remove his hat when he was being a pig in front of a woman? No amount of drunkenness strips the protectiveness towards women from a guy of that era, particularly not a woman he cares about. Don would simply not have endangered Peggy that way.
Drink can mess you up. Sober, I agree he wouldn't do it, but sober it would be stupid on a number of different levels. I guess I'm torn here and do see your point, but I think he was in an altered state.
(This is Meowser; the system is not letting me log in as me right now.)
But does he actually think of Peggy as a woman? Remember when Don had Miss B book the hotel room for "Messrs" Olson and Rizzo? Yeah, you could say they had to book it that way because at that time, you couldn't book a man and a woman who didn't have the same last name into a hotel. But even as far back as S1, when she asked him timidly for a raise, he told her that if she was "presenting herself as a man" she had to ask like one.
I thought about that, but wasn't sure how to phrase it. You often say what I want to say — I'm not sure how I feel about that.
The guys at the office have always seemed confused by Peggy and I think that she might be the one woman Don does not sexualize. Also, as Don's favorite, that would probably be good protection.
Oh, and also: Old Don wouldn't have hired Rizzo the pit-scratching troglodyte in the first place. He's like the anti-Sal!
I think Don was just being flip because he was drunk and didn't understand what was going on. After all, he didn't remember later.
Well, if there's one thing you don't want to do, it's ask Miss B for clarification of anything. Don, when he's not 50,000 leagues into his cups, knows that Miss B will take pretty much anything he says completely literally, except when she doesn't take it at all.
Hmmm…maybe she's one of us too? (The wig adjustment cracked me up, because I've done that!)
I swear I knew that guy — in junior high. Really, it was striking how well he did the posturing of an insecure teen boy, complete with clear inferiority complex.
Steve, I so agree with you about Peggy, who I loved from the start and saw as a match for Don. Maybe she can even save Don (but maybe it's not that kind of show). And…Sally. What a complex character, so richly drawn (yet with not that much screen time), and wonderfully portrayed by Kiernan. As someone who was younger than Peggy and a bit older than Sally during the 60s, I've been drawn to both these characters and am amazed at the writers' ability to draw them so beautifully.
And it is possible that he meant "book a room" metaphorically. Peggy thought so at first, until Miss B. convinced her not to seek further clarification.
Don't really have anything to add about this post, but I'll say something about the whole ASD thing. I'm a 25 year old guy and realized I had something like AS. Yes, I am an engineer. I also have a full-blown autistic cousin, but I've never really interacted with him.
I think some of it may be us reading too much into it. Matt W would need to know a lot about ASD to give not one but two characters it. More likely, I think, Matt based both on people he knew in real life who were also a bit off and also had a lot of interesting drama around them. More people have ASD then you realize or probably the writers realize.
That said, now that the connection has been made, I do have a lot of similarities with Pete Campbell. First of all, I realize he succeeds as much as he does because of a laserlike focus on the work for work's sake. Somebody once said that most of those corporate wistleblowers likely had AS and I agree with him. We don't usually half-ass something and try to create some excuses, like that tool Peggy worked with/for. I've gotten a lot of good feedback from clients and coworkers because, even though they realize I'm kind of awkward, they know I genuinely care about helping them and putting personal agendas aside to get a job done.
Now, I have had some "Negros buy televisions too!" moments as well. One client, who did come around to me eventually, got very angry because he found our system hard to use. He was a hard-ass and would constantly complain about things and I was dumb enough to try to give him full technical answers that were way over his head. While I try to run a "script" and be aware of circumstances like this, it is easy to relapse into socially disastrous monologues.
In the end though, people have a lot of different dimensions. Roger is lazy and is an NT but just doesn't care that he's socially upsetting. Don is self-isolated and, indeed as Roger said, he doesn't care about relationships. Ken, well, it is hard to find a fault with him, isn't it?
Anyway, life gives you a managerie (sp?) of people, some coworkers, some family and some spouses. ASD is usually less some full-blown I Am Sam disorder and more just another personality dimension. As adults, people at the end of the day just need to understand their differences, work through them and even prosper from them.
Well, without social constraints on blog comments, I went a bit long with my monologue there
Matt, I lean towards believing the AS connection was not conscious on the writers' part. But if you (general you) autistic yourself, sometimes you can spot autistic traits in supposedly NT people more readily than the NTs can. There are so many different possible presentations.
And believe me…if anyone knows how many adults are running around undiagnosed, it's me.
Melissa I agree. Don was loaded. He meant it figuratively, not literally. They could have been "locked in the conference room", but somehow with Ms B blowing it out of proportion, it becomes another Waldorf Story.
I don't think Stan went to take a shower or urinate. I think he turned on the shower to drown out the sound of him rubbing one out. He had been looking at Playboy and a naked Peggy, and the only thing that would get him to go down was to "relieve" himself.
I agree — or at least the shower was a cold one.
just curious where most of the blogger commenter community is from – or the many places. I read this blog now a bunch, and comment a bit. any way the lipp sisters could get a bead on where the MM fans hail from?
Writing from home in brooklyn, ny. working in manhattan mainly.
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I interpreted the initial scene between Peggy and Don a bit differently. Peggy is behind on the Vick's project and admits it to Don. Don points out (and rightly so) that she can't rely on their relation to excuse this; she needs to learn to work with the art director, whether he's good or bad, in order to get the project done. (I suspect that someone with more account experience, like Pete, would have gotten tough with the art director earlier in order to avoid falling behind.) This is good advice from a work standpoint and would generally help Peggy to deal with difficult people and eventually handle more responsibility.
I also think that he was nervous about the Clio award, and his response to Peggy that led to the hotel room situation is along the lines of "Don't bother me with this problem". I'm impressed that Peggy was tough enough to call the art director's bluff and make her deadline. Peggy is learning that, as a woman competing with men in 1965, she has to be tough in order to be taken seriously.
i posted a comment somewhere else about stan and sal being perfect foils for one another…there are similarities in their names (same initials/ almost the same name!), their physicality (same type/build/coloring), obviously their profession in the artistry…both reveal their intimate and innate truths in a hotel room…these to name a few. i wonder where the compare/contrast is going with these two characters.
And they are both probably Italian-Americans. Rizzo? I think he was also a product of Catholic schools, like Peggy.
I really like "the idea of it" that this is "Peggy's time' and she's going to "own the business," but my brain knows that the massive power changes we've seen in the last 45 years didn't happen overnight. Men didn't all just wake up one day and forget everything they'd been taught to believe about women for the first 20-80 years of their lives. Nor did men want to loose "their jobs" to women. Every new person brought on board has to adjust to Peggy because it's not what they are used to. (Pete, Paul, Ken, Freddy, Joan, Peggy's secretaries –all had to adjust). Stan and Danny will also have to adjust. There has been a slight uptick–more women doing more "real work": Faye, Joyce, Dr. Edna, Cake Mix Lady …. But the male power structure still exists and Peggy needs to play her cards carefully.
What seemed wrong to me about that moment is not the oddness of Peggy's behavior, but rather the fact that nudity as an issue between Peggy and Rizzo had not been set up convincingly before the scene. Maybe it has to do with editing, it seemed like there was one scene missing between the first confrontation and the hotel scene.
Not enough of a set-up? Somewhere else, either on this blog or another one, I saw an entire list of the many nasty things Stan has said to her. It was LONG. Longer than his dick, apparently!
And Don told her to show up on Monday with the work done. She had to take drastic steps because Stan was doing absolutely nothing but bait her. And then they got it done, right?
BTW, over on Lorenzo & Tom's fashion blog, they referred to Stan's rather large white undies as "man panties." Hee hee.
I meant not enough of a set-up for the use of nudity as a weapon.
don't forget , Don said to peggy work with him ( rizzo). Look what happen to Sal who did not work with Lee from lucky Strikes. Peggy is just frusrated from not being heard. She is in a man's world and has to fight that system everyday. Could you imagine if she drank as much as the other male workers. Peggy would be fired. Peggy has to work twice as hard as the other guys to be were she is. Getting undress was saying to Don and the rest of them OK I will do this act to get the job done. She had no other corse, she was under a dead line.
T’anks to # 7 Pete who said:
“I just read the Jack Nicholson interview of January Jones in Interview ”
The link did not work here, but I found it here (all on one page)
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/january-jon…
I love that this is such an intelligent interview – veteran actor and youngster with chops, nevertheless:
“I’ve never been trained as an actress, so it’s all instinct.”
“I still feel like a newby”
I suppose I have to go out and buy the print copy to get the whole interview.
Go here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/07/27/mad-men…
for:
‘Mad Men’: The Promiscuous Mingling of Art and Copy.
A short and sweet retrospective on the ad agency revolution depicted in MM.
I suppose I must be the first to make this un-PC comment:
I surely can not be the only guy who perked up his antennae when Peggy started to disrobe – can I?
All the rest was clear – her smugness, chutzpah, self-possession, pragmatism.
Bottom line for me – she was bare-a$$ naked behind the desk!
I'm not a guy, but why would they even be considered in the neighborhood of an un-PC comment? Of course the scene was supposed to work on that level, if for no other reason than for Rizzo's reaction to make sense. Guys, viewers, do still get to find females attractive and to want to see then naked.
I do not buy the “autistic” Peggy trait–it was only 1965, not that long after Rosie the Riveter and the massive frustration that many American women felt after being forced “back into the kitchen” so the boys would have jobs when they got home from the war. There’s no “father/husband” in Peggy’s household when she goes home for Sunday visits, and I’m sure she grew up watching what happens to women who chose to do what good girls are supposed to do–that’s why she decided it wasn’t the choice she’d make. There have also always been women who have never wanted children, and never felt “maternal”. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Peggy to understand that a child would severely limit her life choices, and she’d turn out just like her mother–poor, no husband or lover, saddled with responsibility she didn’t plan for or want, and very frustrated. Judging from many of the older women I meet and get to know, Peggy was definitely not unusual, not for her time or even for eras preceding hers. Peggy would be in her seventies now, if she were living in our time–and I’ve met women even older than she would be who tell me of their first jobs building ships during the war effort, or running their own companies (one eighty year old woman ran a number of her own construction companies) that they started when they first emigrated here as young women (I live in Canada).
Feminism isn’t just a recent invention, it’s been around as long as patriarchy has. What we saw in the sixties and seventies wasn’t even the first time it became visible in the 20th century–there was suffrage before that, the Flapper era, and Rosie the Riveter, all before the sixties came along. Women have had to figure out how to earn money to support themselves and their families and their dreams for as long as men have, right along beside men and often even in families, when husbands died or divorced or deserted them. I do not think Peggy has to have some kind of neurological or mental/emotional illness to be ambitious for the life of her dreams, even in the early sixties. After all, Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own decades before then; so the idea wouldn’t have escaped Peggy’s notice. I don’t think she needed Autism to make her determined to be acknowledged for her work and her talent, especially when challenged.
As for fixing Rizzo–he’s your typical grade school bully, massively insecure, especially around women he knows to be more powerful and more talented than he is. Once you’ve watched one of those people work, you can tell their Achilles heel is their mortification that others will know they are as inadequate as they feel themselves to be. Well, Peggy knew–and when she was good and ready, she let him know that she knew. She knew his body, like his actions, would betray him. And it did. An “autistic” person would be so incapable of communicating with others that that kind of understanding of human desire would be almost impossible; Peggy’s forte is reading others well–you can rule out autism on that alone. I don’t think this makes her “wired differently” (except in the sense that that’s where her talent is, others might have a talent in something else). I also don’t think you have to be somehow pathological to behave as she did, kids do it all the time in schoolyards, it’s survival.
I believe it will only be a short time before we see Peggy put Rizzo in exactly the situation he needs to destroy himself at SCDP for good.
#65: Well said, and I happen to agree.