Mad Men, page 15
One example is Episode 7.4 (“The Monolith”), the title of which (accompanied by specific visual cues) is a clear reference to the large monoliths that periodically appear to announce the onset of a new leap forward in human evolution. The presence of the film in Mad Men thus helps to support the contention of the series that the decade of the 1960s was a major turning point in American history in a number of ways, including the importance and function of technology. One of the great achievements of 2001 is its ability to present technology as beautiful and graceful, almost more a form of art than of machinery. But it also suggests a sinister side to this technology, which can become so advanced as to outstrip its human makers, making them unable to control their own creations.
“The Monolith,” meanwhile, is built around the somewhat science-fictional theme of the introduction of a massive new computer into the offices of SC&P in 1969, a theme that had already been anticipated in Harry Crane’s complaints in the previous episode that the firm was losing a potential competitive edge by not having a computer.
Commenting on that previous episode (7.3, “Field Trip”), Donna Kreisel has noted that the role of the (then nonexistent) computer is clear, setting up an opposition between the work of talented humans like Draper and the soulless, number-crunching otherness of the computer: “The face-off is made explicit: an ‘old-fashioned’ and romanticized vision of humanistic (and human) inspiration and creativity versus a future-oriented, mechanistic brute intelligence that threatens to render human agency obsolete.” This opposition, of course, goes well beyond the offices of this specific advertising firm and was, in fact, a central reality of the trajectory of the 1960s, so that the events of the series, as always, are placed firmly within that trajectory.
The significance of the new computer, an IBM 360, can best be understood by looking back to the key year of 1964, when that hugely successful line was introduced, for the first time making available an entire range of computers of different sizes with extensive compatibility and expandability, including interchangeability of a number of components and allowing smaller versions to be expanded to larger ones at any time. The introduction of the IBM 360, which turned the previously exotic (and science-fictional) device of the computer into a genuine commodity, brought about an unprecedented penetration of computers into various aspects of American life, so that, by the end of the 1960s, computers were being extensively used in a variety of American businesses and institutions, whereas before they had been largely limited to research facilities and large corporations.
It is thus appropriate that a key event in the final season of Mad Men involved the 1969 installation of an IBM 360 in the offices of the relatively small advertising agency featured in the series, an installation that requires considerable reshuffling of the limited space in the offices, making the computer the dominant feature—as opposed to the previous setup, in which the centerpiece of the offices had been a “creative lounge,” where various creative types interact and explore ideas. The symbolism of introducing this computer in an episode that overtly refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey is quite clear: the computer marks the beginning of a new stage in the development of the agency (and American advertising industry and American society as a whole), just as the famous monoliths of 2001 marked the beginnings of new epochs in the evolution of the human species.
2001: A Space Odyssey, through the figure of its HAL 9000 computer, which attempts (murderously) to wrest control of the central space mission in that film from the human crew, also deals centrally with the threat posed to human hegemony by ultra-advanced computers. Similarly, there is a certain implication in Mad Men that the introduction of the IBM 360 into the advertising agency’s offices represents a sort of spiritual death for the firm, signaling the end of the era when advertising was dominated by genuine human creativity, with artist figures such as Draper soon to be supplanted by bureaucrats and management types. The computer thus announces the beginning of a new machine-dominated age when advertising itself would become as commodified as the products it attempts to sell.
The brilliant, groundbreaking 2001 brought new cultural respectability to the whole genre of science-fiction film, demonstrating that such films could be genuine works of art. Indeed, even the technological devices featured in the film are often works of art, and one of the most striking aspects of this extremely striking film is the sheer beauty of the technology represented in the film. 2001 is, however, anything but an unmitigated celebration of technology. In particular, the film’s most remembered image is probably the intelligent HAL 9000 that goes off the rails and murders most of the human crew of the space expedition that provides the central plot arc of the film. As a major cultural event in its own right, 2001 firmly established the notion of artificially intelligent computers as potential dangers to humans, at the same time introducing a new wrinkle into the fear of intellectuals that pervades much of American cultural history. The ultra-logical HAL 9000 is a new sort of movie character. But in some ways he is a quintessential pop-cultural intellectual: devoid of human feeling, he is so caught up in logical thought that he loses touch with common sense, despite his vast processing power.
HAL was the first major example of a threatening artificial intelligence in American film. It is thus a key marker of the film’s achievement that he remains the most prominent example of this important motif nearly a half-century later. It was, in fact, the influence of 2001 that helped to establish artificial intelligences as key “villains” in science-fiction film. That the IBM 360 in Mad Men is also to be seen as villainous is marked in the series in all sorts of ways, including the fact that its introduction finally drives Michael Ginsberg (already a high-strung creative type) off the deep end into full-on paranoia.
A key sign of this paranoia, incidentally, occurs in the next episode (7.5, “The Runaways”), when Ginsberg observes Lou Avery (the firm’s new, highly uncreative head of creative in the wake of Draper’s exile) conferring with Jim Cutler (the new, less-charming counterpart to Roger Sterling, acquired in the recent merger of SCDP and CGC) inside the sealed glass room that contains the new computer, computers at that time requiring highly controlled environments in order to operate efficiently. Unable to hear because of the enclosed room, Ginsberg can nevertheless see the lips of the two men moving, and he attempts to read their lips very much in the way HAL attempts to read the lips of two astronauts who are plotting against him in 2001. Eventually, the perceived threat posed by the computer will drive Ginsberg into insanity and self-mutilation, though this odd moment of lip-reading complicates the reference to 2001 by placing the computer-phobic human Ginsberg in the position of the film’s human-phobic computer.
Ginsberg’s reaction to the computer, which involves a belief that the computer plans to turn them all into “homos” and ultimately involves cutting off his own nipple (to open the “valve”) and presenting it to Peggy in a gift box, seems a bit extreme. But Ginsberg, born in a concentration camp and then orphaned (though at one point in the series he claims to be from Mars), has had an extreme life and perhaps has good reason to be paranoid. And there have been signs of this paranoia before, as when, in Episode 6.10 (“A Tale of Two Cities”), he becomes upset with Cutler and calls him a fascist. Following the Freudian-Lacanian view that artistic types can ward off insanity by sublimating their unconscious energies into their creative endeavors, one might speculate that Ginsberg has now lost that remedy due to his feeling that the computer is making his work as a “creative” obsolete. Following a more historical arc, meanwhile, one could argue that Ginsberg’s mental illness is a sign of the general sickness of modern society, a sickness that at least partly emanates from having never properly dealt with the twin phenomena of Nazism and the Holocaust.
Ultimately, the claim that Mad Men can be viewed as a kind of science fiction probably rests less firmly on the series’ frequent references to science fiction and frequent use of the iconography of science fiction than on its use of the central aesthetic/affective strategy of science fiction: cognitive estrangement. One of the most striking overall characteristics of Mad Men is its ongoing ability to surprise even its most loyal viewers with sudden moments of jarring strangeness (such as Ginsberg’s surprising nipple-ectomy), very much in the mode of the best science fiction—as famously noted long ago by Darko Suvin. For Suvin, cognitive estrangement is the central strategy of science fiction as a genre, which for him is distinguished by its ability to unsettle audiences from their customary habits of thought by projecting them into strange, new worlds that are different from their own. Moreover, they are different in ways that encourage audiences to think about these differences and to wonder what has caused them—triggering a process of interrogation that presumably helps to open the audiences for science fiction to new ways of thinking about the world. Cognitive estrangement in science fiction (like the “estrangement effect” in the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht, from which Suvin in fact took the basic idea) can thus potentially serve a strongly utopian function by helping audiences to realize that the world could be different than what it is.
Mad Men’s moments of strangeness often perform a similarly positive political function. A classic case occurs in Episode 3.3 (“My Old Kentucky Home”). Here, Roger Sterling and new wife Jane host a Derby Day garden party (placing this episode in the first weekend of May 1963, when the Kentucky Derby was won by Chateaugay) attended mostly by pretentious rich snobs, though a number of the less-rich principals from Sterling Cooper (including Don and Betty) attend as well. The setting itself is no doubt estranging to most of today’s viewers, who will never circulate in such an environment of genteel wealth and privilege, itself something of a throwback, even in 1963, to earlier times. Indeed, hearing of the party, Smitty immediately responds, “Going back in time?”
As it turns out, the party does indeed reach back into the past when it is highlighted (or perhaps lowlighted) by Roger’s stirring rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home” in full blackface, with a giggling Jane by his side, already well on her way to the full-on inebriation that will later in the party become something of an embarrassment. Roger, the charming rogue who has lived his life in a cocoon of privilege that often makes him indifferent to the problems of others, is clearly clueless concerning the racist implications of his song. But even in 1963, this performance is problematic enough that it drives Don (who has enjoyed no such cocoon until very recently in his life) from the gathering to seek sanctuary elsewhere. For viewers in 2009, meanwhile, the scene cannot help but serve as a jarring reminder of the extent to which racist attitudes could be publicly (and proudly) performed less than fifty years earlier. The rich, in 2009, were of course still rather indifferent to the sufferings of the less fortunate, but the scene serves as a reminder that some things have at least changed between 1963 and 2009; moreover, if some things change, other things can change as well. The scene thus serves both as a stern reminder of how deeply ingrained racism is in American society and as a suggestion that even such fundamental attitudes can indeed change over time. It thus contains a potentially powerful utopian reminder of the possibility of change, as does the best science fiction, per Suvin. Meanwhile, this episode’s representation of the party, which also features a rousing performance of the Charleston by Pet and Trudy, suggests the general way in which the rich are still rooted in the past, oblivious to the sweeping changes that are on the horizon in American society.
The sudden intrusions of shocking events that punctuate Mad Men often carry with them a similar political charge. In Episode 2.3 (“The Benefactor”), for example, as the principals at Sterling Cooper try to repair the damage done to their relations with the Utz potato chip company by the barbs of insult comedian Jimmy Barrett, Don pulls Barrett’s wife, Bobbie, aside for a consultation. That Bobbie clearly serves essentially as the manager of the out-of-control Jimmy makes this consultation perfectly understandable, even though the male-dominated world of the series makes Bobbie’s status stand out. What shocks us, though, is that Don turns vicious when he gets Bobbie alone: not only does he threaten Bobbie in no uncertain terms, suddenly dropping his smooth visage, but he violently grabs her by the crotch to emphasize his threat. Granted, it soon becomes clear that Don and Bobbie are involved in an affair (one that nearly wrecks the Draper marriage after Betty finds out about it), which makes this rather intimate threat a bit less out of the blue. Nevertheless, the revelation of this gangsterish/sadistic side of Don, already clearly the protagonist of the series, surely came as quite a shock to viewers conditioned to expect that such protagonists would be virtuous and heroic good guys. Moreover, the particular sexual violence with which this threat is issued was unprecedented on American commercial television—and really in American culture in general, where such crotch-grabbing threats had only been seen when directed at men. The implication is clear: if Bobbie wants to wear the pants in the family, she is going to have to face up to that responsibility like a man. The swirl of gender-based implications surrounding this moment is very rich—and made richer by the shocking nature of the scene as well as the disorienting reversal of genders that it involves.
Don’s sometimes erratic behavior is often the source of defamiliarizing moments in Mad Men, as when his rough treatment of Bobbie Barrett is to some extent echoed in “The Monolith” when he suddenly confronts Lloyd Hawley, the man responsible for installing the IBM 360 in the firm’s offices, with whom he had earlier had a perfectly friendly conversation about the possibility of creating an advertising campaign for Hawley’s computer firm. Out of the blue, Don warns Hawley that “you talk like a friend, but you’re not.” “I know your name,” he tells him, in a rather threatening manner. “No, you go by many names, but I know who you are. You don’t need a campaign. You’ve got the best campaign since the dawn of time.” Don’s hostility might be understandable given the structural opposition in this episode between the kind of humanistic tradition represented by Don and his typical advertising strategies and the runaway posthumanist modernization represented by the computer. Still, it seems a bit over the top, especially in the suggestive way Don describes Hawley almost as a kind of vaguely inhuman (perhaps Satanic, perhaps capitalistic) villain, his words echoing both 2001: A Space Odyssey and things such as the Rolling Stones classic “Sympathy for the Devil,” which had first appeared on the December 1968 album Beggars Banquet and which was still quite current at the time of this episode.
Draper also experiences several moments in which he undergoes what appear to be hallucinations or visions, though these can often be recuperated realistically as either simple flashbacks or the effects of alcohol or drugs. At other times, Draper’s “visions” are not so easy to explain away. Sometimes, as when he sees a clear vision of his father in Episode 3.7 (“Seven Twenty Three”), the event can fairly easily be attributed to the effects of mind-altering substances such as alcohol or drugs. In other cases, the source of the vision is harder to locate, as in the stunning moment at the end of the first half of Season 7, when Draper suddenly experiences a vision of the recently deceased Bertram Cooper performing a soft shoe and singing “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” accompanied by a group of scantily clad dancing secretaries and creating a scene that looks like something out of Dennis Potter. This moment is strange for a number of reasons, even beyond the obvious one that Cooper has recently died. In particular, the song itself is a sort of anti-materialist, even anti-capitalist anthem, and the irony of the fact that Cooper (a follower of Ayn Rand) chooses this particular song for his “comeback” is especially telling. One could, of course, argue that death has changed his perspective or that such a change was wrought by his last (somewhat science-fictional) experience in life—watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. After all, a key line in “The Best Things in Life Are Free” declares that “the moon belongs to everyone,” suggesting the moon as an image of the fact that there are bigger things than the tawdry capitalist scramble for profits.
Of course, one could argue that the choice is actually Draper’s and that it functions as part of his ongoing questioning of the ethos of business, which has driven his career to the brink of ruin even as he seeks to return to the real roots of his success in his love for the art of advertising, rather than its commercial aspects, which have gradually taken over his life and work. In short, as in the very best science fiction, Cooper’s posthumous soft-shoe routine raises questions that demand cognitive responses—and responses that might have strong political connotations, while suggesting that the world might be very different than it is. How are we to interpret this scene, for example? Self-referential, nonrealist postmodern shenanigans that mirror the workings of advertisements, while commenting on the fundamentally dishonest nature of those workings? A sign of Draper’s own cognitive dissonance due either to his impending psychic collapse or to his estrangement from the dog-eat-dog ethos of modern capitalism? A simple nod to the song-and-dance talents of Robert Morse—though one that possibly isn’t so simple, because it evokes a link to Morse’s best-known role in the 1967 musical comedy How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which itself satirizes corporate ethics (or the lack thereof)?
Such questions clearly align Mad Men with the best science fiction. Given this alignment, the periodic allusions in the series to specific works of science fiction, the continual engagement with questions of technological transformation, and the occasional references to iconic science-fictional images (such as time machines or spaceships) all take on added significance. Together, all of these aspects of the series work to confirm Matt Weiner’s original characterization of Mad Men as a work of science fiction, though of course this complex series participates in a number of other genres as well.
