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On Mad Men

Jill

So, Mad Men! Two pieces you should read: Alyssa Rosenberg on the show’s race and gender coverage, and Amanda Marcotte on watching 60s sexism in a year where retro misogyny is back in vogue. First Alyssa (spoilers!):

The limitations of those characters, by necessity, become the show’s—there are no meaningful black characters with sustained story arcs in Mad Men because none of the show’s main characters have meaningful and sustained relationships with black people that recognize the full humanity of African-Americans.

It appears that could change in Mad Men’s fifth season, though not because the show’s characters are any less solipsistic or any more inclined to reach out beyond the limits of their own experience (unless it’s to add new power dynamics to their sex lives). Rather, it’s because the African-Americans who live in New York and Connecticut, and whose communities and worldviews have been evolving beyond the notice of the people at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, have decided to finally take these powerful men in their gorgeous buildings at their stated words.

That change begins when SCDP’s rivals at Y&R decide that it’s hilarious to taunt a group of, as they describe them, “cops and negroes and kids” demonstrating to ask the Office of Economic Opportunity, founded in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, to fulfill its promise. The advertising executives, who have already put up hand-lettered “Goldwater ’68″ signs and hollered at the demonstrators to get jobs, pelt them with paper bags filled with water. But they find the tables are turned on them when a number of women and children, accompanied by a white, male reporter march up to Y&R.

There’s something fitting about the fact that they confront an aging secretary first—the most vulnerable person in the firm has to turn away the vulnerable people calling the firm to explain its conduct. God forbid an executive actually have to account for himself when he can pit members of disadvantaged groups against each other.

And Amanda:

But here in 2012, the real world is ceasing to take domestic violence as seriously as the fans of Mad Men. Republicans in the Senate are trying to block the once non-controversial Violence Against Women Act, an effort to pander to a base that believes that women who report violence break up families—not the men who commit it. Since the last airdate of Mad Men, the community that would applaud Joan for marrying her abuser in an act of wifely submission has moved from being a fringe movement to controlling a major political party.

In light of all this, will the writers of Mad Men be able to shock and horrify viewers as easily as they did in the past with straightforward demonstrations of 60s-era sexism? Or will that behavior read as modern and unfortunately ordinary? Or will seeing the parallels between the 60s and today help wake viewers out of their complacency, and push us to demand more action to preserve the gains made during the 60s and after, and which are currently under serious threat from an invigorated conservative movement?

Discuss!

10 thoughts on On Mad Men

  2. When I first watched Mad Men, the sexism and abuse already read as modern and unfortunately ordinary to me. It’s why I don’t watch the show.

  4. I’ve always found the parallels to contemporary life in “Mad Men” obvious and unsettling. It’s a compelling, very honest show. I have never understood how some people could come away thinking it’s merely an opportunity to play Sixties Dress-Up games.

  5. The worst overt sexism is gone today, but the way Peggy gets manipulated (she’s accused of being too demanding, or not demanding enough) or has the rug pulled out from under her without warning is straight out of 2012. Peggy may be eclipsing Don in the audience’s sympathy, but she hasn’t eclipsed Don in real life.

    The show is obviously more than a sociology text. I enjoy “Mad Men” in part because it allows me some insight into people I would not care to meet in real life, or who would have nothing to do with me.

    Interestingly, “The Office,” a purported comedy, makes me queasy, because it’s so dishonest. It shows odd, often unpleasant people who are thrust together but no real harm is done in the end. I find it unwatchable. In “Mad Men,” I recognize the maneuvering, the insecurities, the nastiness, the hypocrisy.

    Not that anyone should be weeping any tears for handsome, successful, rich, white ad men, but the show explains how even their position was not entirely secure. There’s a reason the average ad men died at 40-something and alcoholism was common.

    It’s refreshing to see the truth told, with some nuance.

  6. Reader, you must be referring to the U.S. version of “The Office,” because the U.K. version is a far more brutal portrait of how asinine office life can be. That wouldn’t fly in the States, where U.S. consumer audiences like their feel-good fantasy.

    More people would watch “Mad Men” if it weren’t such a ruthless portrait of misogyny and abuse from that era. But then the show’s existence would be pointless, much like anything by Michael Patrick King.

  7. More people would watch “Mad Men” if it weren’t such a ruthless portrait of misogyny and abuse from that era. But then the show’s existence would be pointless, much like anything by Michael Patrick King.

    I stopped watching Mad Men because of said ruthless portrayal. I can stand an hour or two of watching horrifying things, but I don’t particularly enjoy watching sexism in the workplace for several hours a year. I get enough IRL, thanks.

  8. I had a similar reaction to “Precious” in 2009. I could only watch that film in chunks — there were too many triggers per minute. (One friend couldn’t watch it at all. I couldn’t blame zir.) My mates are big “Mad Men” fans, but not everyone’s sadomasochistic enough to subject themselves to that for fun.

  9. That change begins when SCDP’s rivals at Y&R decide that it’s hilarious to taunt a group of, as they describe them, “cops and negroes and kids” demonstrating to ask the Office of Economic Opportunity, founded in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, to fulfill its promise.

    The quote’s actually “nothing but cops, negroes, and priests,” which, to me was telling because it hearkened back to a time when priests (I assume Catholic because of the tab collar the priest they showed had on, which is not traditionally worn by Anglican priests) stood up for something besides teh fetuses.

  10. The advertising executives, who have already put up hand-lettered “Goldwater ’68″

    Absolute nonsense. I imagine if screenwriters were conservatives instead of liberals, they’d do the same thing. They’d rewrite history to vilify Democrats and liberal leaders. Goldwater in ’68? He lost power in 1964 and lost to Johnson in a landslide. In fact the demonstrations were at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Remember the hippies and yippies? Remember Mayor Daley of and his volatile police force? I’m guessing unless you’re as old as I am you don’t remember them, nor do the screenwriters obviously. The one-way political slant in Hollywood saddens me, but makes me glad I’m an Independent. I’ll only add the juvenile jab at Mitt Romney’s father so they could diss the name “Romney” was in very bad taste.

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