Mad Men, page 17
Here, and perhaps with the show in general, the audience assumes it knows something about the 1960s as the era actually unfolded. The Weiner touch is the process of using moments from the past and transforming them into history. There is no way for a fictional character to have slipped on ice in the real-world past, but the experience can re-create the time and make it seem genuine. We are slipping between memory, present, and created history to “see” what takes place on the screen.
Even more to the point of how Weiner adds authentic moments to the show, he actually sent a person to Columbia to take a photograph of what would have been the view out of Professor Podolsky’s window in the late 1960s, even though it is from the old business school, not the business school’s current location. To Weiner, the detail is significant because “it feels like college” (2014). In other words, he did not settle for the real feeling created by the authentic-looking office, clothing, bookshelves, or other accouterments. Weiner had to have the “real” view out the window. America’s historian is giving viewers his best restoration.
Weiner understands that he has a responsibility in the past/history interplay. He explained to writer Hanna Rosin as the last season began:
The weirdest thing about all of this is that I do have something to say and I say it in the show, but I really try very deeply to not judge people that I am writing about. And that means characters don’t help each other through scenes. Everybody has a point of view. And the show captures a lot of private moments. That behavior, it’s real. (March 19, 2014)
Essentially, Weiner plucks moments from the past to create a history-infused series using authentic props, scenery, and actors who seem reminiscent of the era or real-life figures. The commitment to authenticity enables viewers to interpret the show from a number of different positions, including nostalgia. At the same time, the latter is a tool employed by characters on the show as they negotiate their onscreen lives. Weiner then infuses the program with scenarios that ask (perhaps compel) the audience to not only rethink what they believe they know about the 1960s, but also to reassess their own lives and modern times.
Draper’s Worldview
A ragged hotel, Don and Peggy sit close together on the bed, their shoulders touch, his hands are only inches from her short skirt . . . this moment sounds like the dream or nightmare of every Mad Men fan. Are Don and Peggy taking their odd relationship to a new place?
No! The reason they sit—completely enthralled—drinking two beers Peggy has pilfered from somewhere in the dry town is more momentous than mere sex . . . it is the 1969 Neil Armstrong moon landing. They stare intently—enraptured—probably not even realizing that they are so close.
A man on the moon! The whole nation watches in gleeful happiness but also with an air of anxiety. Potential “what ifs” cause passionate speculations. For the Burger Chef team on the road for the client pitch the next day, there is tense rubber-meets-the-road anxiety. If there is some kind of devastation, there is no way the pitch will take place. However, this is secondary. Don and the crew are aware of the epic moment taking place. They give it the reverence it deserves.
Across the country, in the Francises’ Rye, New York, enclave, the extended family and their overnight guests also gather around the television set for this historic moment. But there is discord. The generations are arguing over the cost of the program—the parents taking the patriotic stance, while the teens argue that the money could have been spent on social justice causes at home. The generational clash over the cost of space exploration symbolizes the growing schism between adults and their children, particularly as Vietnam, civil rights, and antiwar demonstrations sweep the nation.
Finally, the only member of Mad Men who represents an even older generation and the only one born before the new century turned—Bert Cooper—sits alone on his oversized couch, the TV picture illuminating his face and the room. He calls to his maid to come witness the world-changing event. It will be the last moments of his long, distinguished life.
Later in Episode 7.7 (“Waterloo”), Bert will be resurrected as a vision, sending a not-so-subtle message to Draper. The old man dances and sings through the Broadway classic “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” a point that on the surface seems antithetical to the fast-paced world of Madison Avenue firms.
Don, though, is the person who might comprehend its significance. His deep historical thinking, mixing nostalgia, personal experience, and a keen ability to contextualize history thematically, provides a means of looking beyond his profession to consider existential challenges. According to scholars David Strutton and David G. Taylor, “The examination of history allows one to acquire experience by proxy; that is, learning from the harsh or redemptive experiences of others. . . . Mythology is less reliable than history as narrative of actual experience; yet, it may hold more power than history” (2011, 468). Don, professional interpreter of contemporary history and culture, grasps the correlation between myth and history. Bert’s song and dance alerts Draper to what the moon landing demonstrated—history’s great moments are free and should lead to deeper reflection regarding our place and time.
Focusing on the moon shot and its consequences (both on a personal and macro level), “Waterloo” is an example of the way Mad Men asks viewers to think and reinterpret their ideas about historical moments or themes, many of which the audience actually experienced in real life. There are multiple ways of viewing history here: an event “happening” to the characters, something they are interpreting, a depiction that viewers are interpreting, a portrayal that viewers experienced in real time or as a piece of history, and a program purposely based on history that asks viewers to assess that representation.
Concentrating a television show on history is a risky proposition. On one hand, history-based programming is a staple in popular culture—just imagine the innumerable movies and TV shows running the gamut from Forrest Gump to All in the Family. The spotlight on history, though, also threatens to seem boring or antiquated to audiences that have countless entertainment options. The challenge, then, is presenting history in a manner that is new and different but building on familiar ground viewers and critics understand. What so many of these vehicles have in common is the use of ideas that spark immediate recognition while drawing on themes one might deem timeless, like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon or the assassination of JFK or Martin Luther King Jr.
A television series like Mad Men that uses nostalgia and historical memory as a central feature necessarily sprints into uncharted territory. Just as the idea of nostalgia is contested on the show, the notion of history (and exactly who can be considered a historian) is as well. In the broader culture, “history” has a general meaning that orbits around foundational ideas such as truth, objectivity, chronology, and facts.
However, history is also reworking the past. In that revision, one finds the historian slipping into the portrait. Alun Munslow explains, “It is the historian’s narrative acts—emplotment process, arguments, ideological and moral positions and all the other epistemic choices and preferences—that ultimately invest the past with meaning” (2002, 20). This decision-making process on Weiner’s part accounts for why Mad Men is a drama versus musical or comedy or even film versus television program. This discussion of history as a conscious, creative act on the part of the creator is fundamental to understanding Mad Men and what it asks of its viewers.
Draper’s Nostalgic Moment
“Nostalgia . . . it’s delicate . . . but potent,” Draper explains, launching into a highly personal, dramatic pitch to win Kodak’s account for its new wheel slide projector. In that two-minute span, his dazzling monologue leaves one staffer running from the room in tears. The Kodak executives are spellbound, despite their desire to feature it as a technological innovation. “It’s not called ‘The Wheel’; it’s called ‘The Carousel,’” Draper proclaims, his voice quivering. “It lets us travel the way a child travels, ’round and around, and back home again . . . to a place where we know we are loved.” The images that shuffle by feature Don with his wife and children, zigzagging back and forth through time. On the surface, they appear to be the perfect family (Episode 1.13, “The Wheel”).
Despite Draper’s claim of delicacy, though, little about nostalgia on Mad Men is subtle. As part of the show’s narrative arc, the carousel speech solidifies Draper’s creative genius, a breathtaking moment that shows him standing atop Madison Avenue, regardless of his personal failings and mysterious past. For the Mad Men franchise, the carousel scene symbolizes the zenith of powerful writing, direction, style, and setting, culminating in overt audience outreach by appealing to viewers’ nostalgic notions of the Camelot era.
The key to this multilayered interpretation within the storyline and on the part of the audience is that each accepts nostalgia’s “potent” place in the way people live and as a way of synthesizing their stories into the broader culture. Ending the first season of Mad Men by clobbering the characters and audience over the head with nostalgia as a part of the plot, it is as if Weiner and his production team are asking viewers to reexamine what they think they know about work, relationships, family, and history as it unfolded over the first season.
Michael Janover explains that “nostalgia is the pain of homesickness.” Expanding on the notion, though, he offers a new term, “nostalgias,” defined as “the pangs of longing for another time, another place, another self . . . almost certainly romantic in seed and, potentially, corrosively decadent in growth” (2000, 115). This view contrasts with Draper’s “ache,” which causes psychological pain but has a positive outcome by returning one to a better place—“where we know we are loved.” In the carousel speech, nostalgia is heart wrenching but with a happy ending. Ironically, Draper’s understanding of nostalgia as a tool to win an account is crystal clear, yet the concept is neglected in his own life.
For Mad Men viewers, nostalgia may also provide the tools for comparing and contrasting today’s world with the fictional vision of 1960s America. According to Jason P. Leboe and Tamara L. Ansons, “Nostalgic experiences represent a distortion of both the past and the present. The ‘good old days’ may not have been as good as they seem in retrospect. In turn, the present is only as bad as it seems when compared against an unrealistic ideal” (2006, 596). Given Mad Men’s focus on booze, cigarettes, sexism, and other decadent behaviors, today’s audience may thump its chest in superiority in comparison or at least sense that modern ills are no worse than back in the supposed good old days.
However, this is not the only way to watch Mad Men. Viewers have options as they watch and decode the show. The same viewer who prides herself on condemning the era’s harsh sexism and other shortcomings can simultaneously get wrapped up in the romantic or glamorous visions the show renders. Mad Men is unflinching in portraying life’s dark side, but the power of the representation appeals to the audience. Thus, what could be considered pretty dour or perhaps even depressing programming is elevated to hit status.
Rather than simply make the heroes heroic and the villains evil, Weiner created a multifaceted series in line with other popular and critically acclaimed contemporary shows, such as Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, and Dexter. The 1960s proved to be the ideal tool for examining the muddled daily lives of people as they experienced a culture undergoing a series of watershed moments. The leftover aspects of JFK’s Camelot, however, also provided insight into the high glamour of the period. Don is a witness and participant in both worlds. His mask may be the trappings of a successful businessman and creative genius, but it hides away the vestiges of an early life mired in the lowest rungs of society. Don’s nostalgia is another parlor trick, created by an ad man to sell himself to a world in which he does not fit. Writer Emily Nussbaum explains, “Having spanned so many years, both imaginary and real, ‘Mad Men’ has become a show that induces nostalgia for itself” (2013).
The outsider/insider nostalgia device loops full circle in Episode 7.7 (“Waterloo”). At a moment when all seems lost for Draper—his marriage has crumbled and he is about to be fired from the agency he created—Don does the right thing by having Peggy Olson deliver the Burger Chef pitch. According to Weiner, Draper’s looming downfall made viewers uneasy, especially when discomfort seemed a constant factor in our own times:
I am always writing about the period we’re in, and sometimes I’m telling people things they don’t want to hear. Some people have an insatiable need for violent retribution. . . . The economy, the Internet—all these things are isolating us and making us feel defeated. Our national culture feels defeated, our exceptionalism. To see Don lose his confidence was hard for them: They want to be in a world where even if crime doesn’t pay, you go down shooting. (Rosin 2014)
The scene begins with Olson in the classic Draper back-of-the-head silhouette made famous in the show’s opening credits montage. Rather than a position of power, though, she is vulnerable. The all-male voices in the room are clubby and masculine; the men freely and easily laugh and engage with one another in a stuffy boardroom, the ultimate stronghold of male power in the corporate world. In a kind of dreamy state, Olson turns and coughs loudly, which brings her back to reality and the pressure of the situation. In another nod to Mad Men’s internal nostalgia, the first face Olson focuses on is Pete Campbell’s as he greases the client sitting by him at the table. Next, though, with a slight nod, Draper masterfully introduces Olson and she launches into the account-winning pitch.
It is not just that Peggy’s delivery and performance are reminiscent of Draper’s Kodak carousel pitch from Season 1; rather the significance rests in the way Weiner (director and co-author of the episode) frames the scene itself as simultaneously revelatory and self-reverential. He knows that loyal viewers will think back to the carousel scene, their own nostalgia for Mad Men’s early days. At the same time, as a scene, the handoff symbolizes the older generation (Don) giving power to the next (Peggy), just as it represents a shift in influence from male to female. Olson explains the breakdown of the American family in relation to the fast-food joint, saying, “Dad likes Sinatra. Son likes the Rolling Stones.” Society is being ripped apart by a move away from what we now call family values and the chaos wrought by the Vietnam War. For Mad Men, the scene solidifies the connection between the macro and micro perspective—each infusing the other, while fundamentally transforming the whole.
In that one cough that launches the scene, the entire Mad Men world is brilliantly revealed—iconic pose (a symbol for the show itself and Draper) and a quick, abrasive cough signaling a watershed moment. Finally, after seven seasons of wondering what will become of Peggy, her moment has arrived and the promise of brilliance is fulfilled. Her triumph demonstrates the newfound power of females in the workplace (outside) and her personal victory (inside), the two parts of the nostalgia narrative forming a whole. Olson’s transformation is not in past successes, owning an apartment building, or climbing the agency ladder when history is against her. Rather, it occurs in the small space, surrounded by men, but delivering a short speech that leaves them in awe. Peggy emerges from this trial by fire with a new identity, a fulfillment of the show’s narrative arc dating back to its earliest moments.
Reality and History
Selling Mad Men to a television network took Weiner a decade. Even after getting the pilot episode made, the show’s future hung in the balance. The early promotion centered on portraying the show as a realistic look at the early days of Madison Avenue and its leaders—eventually, as it seems with most campaigns, the show garnered criticism.
Several famous, real-life “mad men” (and women) slammed Mad Men for focusing heavily on negative, sensational aspects of agency life in the 1960s. For example, George Lois, who created the legendary Xerox commercials that featured a monkey using the copier to show its simplicity, explained, “It has nothing to do with the creative evolution. It was really obnoxious, the whole thing. I guess the world can watch it and say, ‘That’s exciting; that’s wild.’ But I was throwing up watching it. I kept moaning” (qtd. in Steinberg and Hampp 2007).
Cynically, the desire to question the show’s authenticity may have merely been an effort of media outlets to sell papers, gain viewers, or knock down something that received nearly universal praise. While Mad Men never reached the kind of audience numbers of a major network hit, the show gained credibility for its artistic sensibilities and drew strong numbers for the fledgling AMC network. Then it ran off a string of four straight Emmy Awards for Best Drama.
Despite some criticism from the real ad leaders still alive from the 1960s, the show’s style created an atmosphere that triggered the audience’s nostalgic feelings about the era, particularly the Camelot days, even if one’s memories are fanciful. Leboe and Ansons explain, “Many instances of nostalgic experience represent distorted perception, leading to an appreciation of the past that is more fantasy than reality” (2006, 607). Fantasy, then, is a tool that Weiner wields in telling the story of a fictional ad agency and its employees, while simultaneously using nostalgia to market the show as a financial entity. Leboe and Ansons discuss the outcome of using nostalgia in this manner, claiming that “out of this bias to distort the past in the positive direction emerges a biased characterization of contemporary circumstances” (607).
The commitment to authenticity and its resulting influence on viewers grew critical in creating an atmosphere that allowed the audience to root for often-vile characters. Comparable to motion picture cinematography, every aspect of what would normally be considered background comes alive in Mad Men. Barbara Lippert explains that the show’s “rich cinematography, evocative lighting and fantastic devotion to period furnishings and wardrobe could make a mid-century fetishist out of anyone watching.” While all these factors added to a dynamic that made the series feel authentic, she points to Jon Hamm and his impact, saying, “The fact that Draper looks perfectly appointed and dashingly handsome . . . [despite] all his inner turmoil is part of the appeal” (2009). As such, careful viewers recognized nostalgia’s role in creating and propelling the story. Hamm is a throwback to Hollywood’s Golden Age, playing a character who thinks about the past nostalgically as a cover to the actual horrors of his childhood. Draper’s fantasy is a happy past, perhaps one that most people would call “normal.”
