Mad Men, page 14
That Don’s personality can be so multifarious should come as no surprise. The “Don Draper” featured in the series is a self-made man who has literally manufactured his own identity, and it is clear that his self-fashioning has included a liberal contribution from his viewing of films, somewhat in the same way (as convincingly demonstrated by Michael Rogin) the identity of Ronald Reagan was carefully crafted from materials that were largely derived from the movies. For Rogin, Reagan “found how who he was through the roles he played on film,” ultimately merging his real-life identity with those of the characters he played in movies (1988, 3). Of course, Don has essentially abandoned his real-life identity (though it still haunts him); he is always playing a role, always performing the identity of someone else, though it is also the case that this someone else is not the “real” Don Draper who died in Korea, but simply a fictional version invented by the substitute Don Draper, who is thus a sort of walking simulacrum, a copy of a man who never existed in the first place. Dick Whitman, in becoming “Don Draper,” merely assumes the name of the dead man, not his identity. That identity itself remains an empty container, a blank slate ready to be written on and loaded with content, but also subject to constant erasure and re-emptying, to ongoing change and revision.
The movies are, for Don, a prime source of this constantly evolving content, so it should come as no surprise that he also turns to cinema when he is in need of content for the advertising campaigns that he is so noted for creating. Indeed, his creation of his identity and his creation of advertising are very much part of the same process. He is a builder of images, whether they be the images used to market products to potential consumers or the images of himself that he presents to the world, which is also, of course, a matter of marketing as well. His own identity, in fact, is very much like the ads he creates. Don lives in a hyperreal world of images that is essentially devoid of any contact with concrete reality; this fact, combined with the fact that his identity is so fragmented and tenuous, his temporal bandwidth so narrow, suggests that Don is the prototype of the postmodern subject, as described by Fredric Jameson.
One can, in fact, describe the overall project of Mad Men as the narration of the emergence of postmodernism (which, per Jameson, is also the story of the emergence of late capitalism) as a cultural dominant in America. Then again, Mad Men can also be seen as the narrative of the rise of technology as the most important force determining the texture of daily life in America—or as the story of the rise of the media (especially television) as a force saturating and penetrating every aspect of life in America. Most fundamentally, the series can be seen as the narrative of the death of the American Dream. It is, in fact, a series that lends itself especially well to characterization via such capsule summaries, very much in the mode of the advertising slogans Don and Peggy and their colleagues are so good at creating. Mad Men operates, in fact, very much like an extended advertisement; but it is also a highly cinematic series that acts very much like a movie. Indeed, one of the things the series demonstrates most clearly is just how similar movies and advertisements really are, as they should be in the world of an emerging postmodernism in which all such cultural artifacts are in the process of being reduced to commodities, all commodities being interchangeable with all others.
Chapter 7
The Science Fiction of Mad Men
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). ©MGM
In Episode 7.10 (“The Forecast”), Roger Sterling, now president of a Sterling Cooper that has been reconstituted as a subsidiary of the much larger McCann Erickson, assigns Don Draper the corporate-bullshit task of producing a “Gettysburg Address–type statement” outlining the firm’s vision for its future. “Just reasonable hopes and dreams. It doesn’t have to be science fiction,” Sterling explains. But Mad Men, we know, is in a very real sense science fiction. At the inception of the series, creator Matt Weiner (a self-professed fan of science fiction) famously declared his view that the series was a form of science fiction that was intended to address issues in the here and now (such as racism and sexism) by presenting those same issues through the defamiliarizing lens of a shift to a different time. Thus, the series employs a strategy similar to that of conventional science fiction, except that the normal science-fiction leap into the future is replaced by a leap into the past. In addition, one of the key ways in which Mad Men situates itself in the historical context of the 1960s is through a careful tracing of a variety of cutting-edge developments in contemporary technology, from space-age rockets to disposable diapers. In addition, Mad Men situates itself in the culture of the 1960s through references to a variety of contemporary works, many of which are themselves science fiction. Finally, Mad Men often relies for its effects on surprising, even shocking moments that produce cognitive estrangement in viewers of a kind that theorists of science fiction have long associated with the genre.
Sometimes, the defamiliarizing perspective of the 1960s is used for largely comic effect, but even then the reminders of how clunky certain technologies were in the 1960s serves as an important reminder of just how far we have come. For example, in Episode 7.2 (“A Day’s Work”), the newly bicoastal Sterling Cooper & Partners attempts to hold a partners’ meeting via conference call, two of the partners (Ted Chaough and Pete Campbell) now being located on the West Coast. Communication turns out to be comically difficult, as everyone stumbles over themselves trying to determine if the partners on the other end can actually hear them, with most participants yelling at the top of their lungs in an effort to be heard, while others worry about the astronomical cost of the long-distance call. This scene, however amusing, provides a stark reminder of just how far the technology of business has come since 1969 (when this episode is set), while also reminding us that it was indeed for the convenience of capitalist enterprise that the vast increases in communications technology (so vast, in fact, that they have the texture of science fiction) since that time were primarily made.
Of course, science fiction itself is not always set in the future and has sometimes achieved cognitive estrangement through settings in the past, as in the cases of alternate histories and steampunk. In addition, as Fredric Jameson has noted, science fiction set in the future often plays a role in today’s culture similar to that played by the historical novel in the past, but with a focus on the future rather than the past. Noting Lukács’s identification in The Historical Novel of the work of Flaubert as a marker of the collapse of the conventional historical novel in the late nineteenth century, Jameson suggests that it is no coincidence that this same historical moment also saw the rise of science fiction in the work of Jules Verne. For Jameson,
We are therefore entitled to complete Lukács account of the historical novel with the counter-panel of its opposite number, the emergence of the new genre of SF as a form which now registers some nascent sense of the future, and does so on the space on which a sense of the past had once been inscribed. (2005, 285–86)
For Jameson, the historical novel and science fiction are twinned genres that can be viewed as performing similar functions because past, present, and future are all part of the same historical process. If the historical novel reminds us of the pastness of the past, science fiction conventionally reminds us of the futurity of the future. In both cases, we are urged to recall that the present in which we live is not eternal but part of an ever-evolving process that can work fundamental changes in the way we live.
This suggestion that thinking historically works both forward and backward in time resonates in an interesting way with the advertising strategies typically employed by Sterling Cooper and its various successors in Mad Men. Many of the firm’s younger creative personalities (such as Paul Kinsey) tend to favor what might be called science-fictional advertising strategies, touting the futuristic properties of the products they are attempting to sell. Thus, very early in the series (Episode 1.2, “Ladies Room”), the firm is charged with coming up with an ad campaign for Gillette’s new Right Guard deodorant in a spray can. Kinsey responds with an approach that emphasizes the high-tech nature of the product, building upon the physical resemblance of the can itself to a rocket. This campaign points toward the important role that will be played by the space race throughout the series, at least up until Episode 7.7 (“Waterloo”), which features the Apollo 11 moon landing. On the other hand, Kinsey’s high-flying idea is immediately shot down by Don Draper, who is in a bad mood from budding domestic problems at home. But, bad mood or not, Draper’s dismissal of Kinsey’s idea is rather predictable given Don’s consistent preference for the sentimental and nostalgic campaigns, often attempting to hawk new products by linking them in the imaginations of consumers to good times in their own pasts.
Kinsey, in fact, is often shot down by Draper in the series, as in Episode 2.11 (“The Jet Set”), in which Kinsey (representing “creative”) and Pete Campbell (representing “accounts”) are set to travel to Los Angeles to attend a “Rocket Fair,” hoping to round up new business from the high-tech aerospace firms that will be attending the convention. At the last minute, Draper decides to displace Kinsey and go to the convention himself, leaving Kinsey (something of a would-be science-fiction writer) stewing because he will now be unable to visit the land in which Edgar Rice Burroughs had established his Tarzana Ranch nearly half a century earlier. It eventually becomes clear that Kinsey had other motivations for wanting to go to California, as the trip would give him an excuse to escape his commitment to his new black girlfriend to accompany her on a Freedom Ride into the Deep South, a trip about which Kinsey (not the bravest of souls) is experiencing severe trepidations. This motif is presented in the episode without comment, though anyone with a knowledge of the background of Tarzana will appreciate the delicious irony of the fact that the Tarzana community had initially been established by Burroughs as a segregated white enclave, complete with a panoply of racist discourse derived from the history of the British Empire.
A little knowledge might be a dangerous thing, but it can sometimes go a long way in helping one to appreciate such moments in Mad Men. Of course, in line with the notion that Mad Men is science fiction set in the past, even Don sometimes turns to the language of science fiction in constructing his past-oriented pitches. Season 1 of the series ends, for example, with Episode 1.13 (“The Wheel”), in which Don delivers what is perhaps his greatest pitch of the entire series. Here, Don describes his campaign for the new Kodak carousel slide projector, which, because of its shape and innovative technology, was envisioned as a flying saucer analog. Don, though, argues that the carousel is not a spaceship, but a nostalgia-fueled time machine that takes its users back to the fondest times of their past lives. The pitch is, of course, a success, and Sterling Cooper gets the Kodak account. In fact, it is such a success that even Don is overtaken by a fit of family-oriented nostalgia, given the fact that his own childhood family history was so grim. Having already arranged to send the wife and kids off packing to visit Betty’s family for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Don rushes home after the pitch so he can join them after all. Of course, when he arrives home, he finds that they have already left, leaving him in his customary lone state as the episode and the first season of the series come to an end. Families may function perfectly in Don’s carefully tailored advertising visions, but they don’t work very well in real life as depicted in Mad Men, suggesting the extent to which idyllic images of family bliss are merely fiction, part of the mythology of an American life that is becoming increasingly manufactured and commodified as the 1960s roll forward.
The action of Mad Men spans the entire decade of the 1960s, a decade during much of which science fiction in both film and television was in something of a lull. Still, 1966 saw the emergence of what would go on to be arguably the most influential work in the history of the genre, television’s original Star Trek series, which debuted on NBC on September 8, 1966, and lasted for three seasons, despite consistently low ratings. Predictably, Star Trek makes an appearance in Mad Men, in Episode 5.10 (“Christmas Waltz”), which takes place during Christmas season of 1966. Here, Kinsey (having disappeared from the series amid the various reshufflings of its central advertising firm) resurfaces, now having become (in good 1960s fashion) a Hare Krishna. But he has also continued to pursue his dream of being a science-fiction writer, which we learn when he approaches Harry Crane (who has become the firm’s central liaison with the television industry) hoping that Crane can use his business contacts with NBC to help Kinsey market the new script he has just written for an episode of Star Trek.
Kinsey seems, by this time, to have fallen pretty much off the deep end, so it comes as no surprise that the script is not a good one. In fact, from what we hear about it, it reads more like a parody of Star Trek than an actual episode, though it is in fact a work of heavy-handed racial allegory, on which Trek episodes such as “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (January 10, 1969) fundamentally relied. Kinsey’s script is also a virtual parody of the science-fictional strategy of cognitive estrangement, presenting a world that is recognizably similar to our own history but with several key parameters reversed. In particular, it features a planet populated by a white race and a black race that employs slavery as a key element of its economic structure. The kicker is that the whites are the slaves and the blacks are the masters—and to make matters even more “surprising,” the “Negrons” of the title are actually the white race, rather than the black.
If Crane’s reaction is any indication, the clumsiness of this allegory is matched by the clumsiness of the writing in general. It’s so bad, in fact, that Crane elects not to risk his reputation by even attempting to hawk the script, though he tries to placate Kinsey by telling him that the Star Trek people loved the script but just aren’t currently in the market for unsolicited manuscripts. He then gives Kinsey money and urges him to head for California to try to make a new start there as a science-fiction writer, a suggestion that echoes Kinsey’s own earlier identification of California as a locus of science-fiction writing in “The Jet Set.”
Even when Mad Men refers to specific works of science fiction, it often does so in extremely complex ways the significance of which requires considerable unpacking. A good case in point is Episode 6.5 (“The Flood”), which centers on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. With practically everyone in the episode feeling sad and distraught (and awkward, as when they feel they must offer personal condolences to Dawn, Don’s black secretary) over the assassination, Don decides to take his son Bobby to the movies to see Planet of the Apes, which, in fact, had opened in New York on April 3, 1968, just one day before Dr. King’s shooting.
In addition to the coincidence of dates, Planet of the Apes provides a perfect gloss on this Mad Men episode, which focuses on race, racism, and the clumsiness with which Americans deal with both. Planet of the Apes was also a landmark in the evolution of science-fiction films. For example, the film is an impressive technical achievement in many ways, including its now-famous Oscar-winning ape makeup. However, most of the considerable serious critical attention given the film and its sequels has focused not on their technical achievements but on their political implications and their serious treatment of issues such as the possibility of nuclear holocaust. This particular issue is, in fact, the most obvious one in the original film, but the most important political commentary of that film (and, especially, its sequels) probably resides in the way the depiction of relations between apes and humans can be read as allegorizations of the relations between different human races in our own world, especially in the United States. As Eric Greene has argued, these racial allegories and other political aspects of the film are what make it truly important as a cultural artifact. For Greene, “the makers of the Apes films created fictional spaces whose social tensions resembled those then dominating the United States. They inserted characters into those spaces whose ideologies, passions, and fears duplicated the ideologies, passions, and fears of generations of Americans. And they placed those characters in conflicts that replicated crucial conflicts from the United States; past and present” (1998, 9).
Interestingly, Draper’s viewing of Planet of the Apes is quickly duplicated in Episode 6.9 (“The Better Half”), when Roger Sterling attempts to follow Don’s example of parental bonding by taking his four-year-old grandson to see the same film. Apparently, however, the cognitive estrangement in this film is a bit much for the underage boy, who is subsequently so traumatized that his mother fears they will have to get rid of the family dog because her son is now so “afraid of fur.”
Planet of the Apes was not the only major science-fiction film released that spring. While much of the 1960s was a relatively fallow period for the production of science-fiction film, that same April 3, 1968, also saw the New York premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, meaning that two of the most important films in all of science-fiction history were released on the same day, at least in terms of their official New York premieres. Not surprisingly, 2001 also figures prominently in Mad Men, more prominently, in fact, than does Planet of the Apes . Indeed, while Don Draper also attends 2001 in the course of the sixth season of the series, that film becomes particularly important in the seventh and last season when it becomes a crucial gloss of some of the most important themes of the series.
