Mad Men, page 4
Returning to boss mode, Don uses Peggy as a verbal punching bag, berating her and also forcing her into a difficult personal situation with her boyfriend and family. Here, Hamm is quintessential Draper—his voice is machine-gun-like and punishing, using biting sarcasm to exact razor-blade cuts. At the height of their argument over who deserves credit for an award-winning idea, the actors dip and shift like great dancers. Hamm: “It’s your job! I give you money; you give me ideas!” Moss: “And you never say thank you!” Hamm: “That’s what the money is for . . . you should be thanking me every morning, along with Jesus, for giving you another day!” (Episode 4.7, “The Suitcase”).
Don yells, and the window behind him is full of lights, but nothing outside is as bright as his starched dress shirt, a form of armor that accentuates his power. In another example of Hamm’s physicality, he becomes pure evil. As his voice grows louder, though, his face contorts, the dark five o’clock shadow stands out, his neck is red and lips askew. Peggy stands in front of Don, almost at attention. She lowers her face and begins crying. Don responds; immediately his features and body soften. “Ah, c’mon,” he says in retreat. She turns and bolts from the office. The setting conveys the action. Don is drunk, having had at least half a bottle of whiskey. The alcohol cart sits on the left side of the scene, while Draper is perched on the couch opposite on the right. The coffee table is strewn with papers and an ashtray. Peggy’s coat and hat are in the middle, rumpled, and discarded on the chair. He calls after her, “I’m sorry about your boyfriend, okay?”
After the reconciliation, Don—though drunk—is back to oozing seductive charm. When Peggy sees a mouse scurry under the desk, Draper drops to the floor, asking, “Where’d you go, Mickey?” But then they hear a phone ring, and the color drains from Hamm’s face. Then he realizes that it’s Olson’s phone. Again, the actor is able to hit marks of wry humor, concern, fear, and strength in a matter of moments. These little flashes fuse into the multifaceted model Hamm creates, thus bringing Draper to life.
Draper unspools the rest of the episode, which allows Hamm to magnify the character’s demise. After throwing up in a diner bathroom and an altercation with Duck, Draper sits in the dark office, sprawled out on the couch. There is a vomit stain on his shirt and his tie is loose. “Can you get me a drink?” he asks. “I have to make a phone call and I know it’s going to be bad.” Peggy sits down and he slumps over, placing his head on her lap in a display of trust that negates all the anger from earlier. “Sorry if I embarrassed you,” he whispers as he passes out on her lap.
Virtually unknown prior to Mad Men, Hamm now personifies the dramatic antihero of television’s third golden age, along with a handful of others, such as Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Michael C. Hall (Dexter). The actor told Rolling Stone that becoming Draper is like channeling his father, “a businessman in the Sixties . . . he had a million suits, and he drank at lunch and smoked too much—he was That Guy” (Maerz 2009). Commentators relentlessly return to Hamm’s handsomeness because it is a good hook for stories about the actor, yet examining the body of work, it is the actor’s physicality that stands out. Small gestures, like the look of horror when Don wakes up with an unknown stranger after a night on the town, or bigger ones, like chasing Megan through their apartment, tripping and dropping them both to the ground, demonstrate Hamm’s underrated skills in making the larger-than-life Draper seem real.
Draper Unbound
The image is priceless and virtually unbelievable—legs crisscrossed (big toe bending in a seemingly impossible way), a rumpled yet stern Don Draper sits seaside. The Big Sur waves crash behind him. Sitting around the New York City ad man are quintessential hippies: a blond woman in a tan, flowered dress and two blond men, both bearded, one old and one young. The older man’s palms are raised and eyes closed. Don’s right hand hangs from his knee and touches the ground.
This is a collective search for meaning, among those ruminating on the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, yet despite the meditative feeling of the others, Don is focused. The crease between his eyes is a familiar one to Mad Men fans; Draper is considering something new. Soon, the audience will catch their final, original glimpse of Don—a close-up of his face and a reassuring smile. Then the iconic Coca-Cola commercial begins, initiated with a single voice: “I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love . . .” Fourteen seconds into the ad, the viewer sees that the youthful singers are all holding a bottle of Coke.
Originally launched in July 1971, the famous brand, jingle, and commercial that pulls it all together take us into the future beyond the Mad Men timeline and keeps Don Draper alive (presumably) for nearly a year beyond the audience’s picture of him high above the California surf (it is fall 1970 in the series finale). We believe that Don created the piece because it manipulated the peace and love culture of the 1960s by showing teens and young adults from all over the world and different races together, which is the kind of breakthrough creativity that may have been sparked on Draper’s California adventure.
Filmed on a hillside outside Rome, the commercial featured the young people singing about the joys of Coke. Later, under the guidance of advertising agency McCann Erickson, two different pop acts released the song as a single, with one of them making the top 10 and the other entering the top 15. The jingle helped Coke strengthen its standing as a global brand. The song’s popularity led it to be played in many different languages and sold as sheet music, further extending its influence (Ryan 2012). The peace and love theme captures one portion of the era, yet overlooked the ravages of the Vietnam War raging in Southeast Asia. These kinds of choices were deliberate and conducted by agencies that did research to identify what messages would stick best with consumers.
Associating Don with the famous commercial allows Weiner to give Draper life beyond the show. Television critic Tim Goodman says that what the Mad Men series finale did well is end in an “open-ended” fashion. He explains, “On one level the stories the Mad Men characters live go on, even though we have resolution and closure on another level” (2015).
The key here, as usual, is in the manner Weiner allows us to think about Don and his potential future(s). Goodman rightly points out that the audience is free to imagine the ad man’s future, and as a matter of fact, by ending with the Coke commercial, viewers are led to believe that Don scores his masterpiece for McCann. Fans, too, have more than enough ammunition and experience with the character to envision any number of alternative scenarios. “This is what closing a window (for the viewers) on lives that still go on (for the characters) allows,” Goodman concludes (2015). Many alternative futures probably center on how one feels about Don and his responsibilities, not typically one of his strong points.
Goodman’s assessment of the finale also demonstrates one of Mad Men’s most enduring strengths—providing viewers with the content to not only consider the past from the characters’ perspectives, but to look at the era (filled with nostalgia) anew. This kind of dual viewpoint—looking at a show set in the well-known past and using it to think about that time period and one’s own—really fuels Mad Men. As the series ended, one could look back and consider the show as either supporting or destroying the stereotypical view of the 1960s.
In comparison, HBO’s series Deadwood (created by David Milch) won countless fans and critical praise, but no one alive today actually knows what it felt like to live in the Old West during its gold rush heyday. One might argue that Deadwood and other great television programs always compel the viewer to think differently about the past and its application to the contemporary world. The 1960s setting, however, gives Mad Men viewers who grew up or lived through the era more to contemplate, analyze, and interrogate. Similar thinking can be applied to the way the show used actual advertising campaigns and Weiner’s almost manic efforts to make the set details accurate. Though we have countless examples of the 1960s and the gold rush West across popular culture, no one could ask Grandma about the gunslinger days.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the great historian and JFK White House insider, no stranger to studying heroes in American history, once claimed, “Great men live dangerously. They introduce extremes into existence—extremes of good, extremes of evil—and ordinary men after a time flinch from the ultimates and yearn for undemanding security” (2008, 38–39). Mad Men viewers can read this quote and, just like the epigraph that begins the chapter, see Draper as representative of the age. Applying Schlesinger’s definition, one might be forced to accept Don as one of these mythical “great men.”
Yet, our contemporary perspective may not allow us to buy into the historian’s claim. Along the way, Don lost everything—marriages, money, health, self-respect, friendships, industry status, and many other points that define people in their lives. Draper runs from security and courts good and evil, but to what end? Unlike history’s great men (and women) who fight for causes and principles beyond their own interest, Don is often little more than a con man who manipulates people with his good looks and ability to sell dreams.
Despite his foibles, though, Draper benefits from viewers who are more or less inculcated with hope and the notion that even the worst offenders deserve redemption. We have an almost pathological desire and willingness to dole out second and third chances for people to redeem themselves—to be relentlessly optimistic, even when we might know better. Perhaps it is this word “redemption” that is the essential key in understanding the character and his greatness. The viewer is like the barroom minister in search of souls to salvage (Don punches him out and spends the night in jail) or the preacher Uncle Mac pushes down the front steps of the whorehouse, who covered in sweat exclaims to young Dick: “The only unpardonable sin is to believe that God cannot forgive you,” before picking up his Bible and limping away. Draper cannot save himself, even believes that he is unworthy of rescue, but as viewers we can grant him redemption.
The distance between our eyes and the screen enables us to both judge and forgive Don, because—in the end—no matter how much someone loves or appreciates Mad Men, it is just a television show. Viewers might not be so kind or lenient if they had a real-life Draper in their midst. Then again, this is the nation of second chances. Don is our poster boy.
Chapter 2
Mad Men and the American Dream
The organization man is not in the grip of vast social forces about which it is impossible for him to do anything. . . . He must fight The Organization. . . . It is wretched, dispiriting advice to hold before him the dream that ideally there need be no conflict between him and society. There always is; there always must be.—William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man (1956)
The perfect American family: Don, Betty, Bobby, and Sally. AMC/Photofest ©AMC
The New York Times headline blared: “Advertising: Picture for 1960 Looks Bright.” Based on a report by a research firm owned by ad giant McCann Erickson (perpetually Mad Men’s version of the evil empire), reporter Carl Spielvogel highlighted the findings, including a projection that the advertising industry would double its billings over the course of the decade, from $10 billion in 1960 to $20 billion in 1970 (about $120 billion in 2015 dollars). Though Spielvogel noted that advertisers faced some challenges, including clients that demanded more work done with greater efficiency, the 1960s promised to be a boom time for American corporations and the nation as a whole (1960).
When assessing the large advertising budget in light of historic comparisons, we see just how strong the ad business stood in the 1960s, as well as its enduring power. By 1979, for example, the total spent jumped to $27.9 billion, almost tripling the earlier amount. In comparison, advertisers spent about $180 billion in 2014, an astronomical amount of money but not that much more than the 1960s and 1970s, particularly when one considers the seemingly infinite number of channels available today versus the mid-century marketplace.
Given the nation’s economic power and how the ad business reflected that strength, Mad Men is a remarkable tool for examining the evolving American Dream. Within the confines of Sterling Cooper, the viewer finds a multitude of stories that expound on the tenets of the Dream narrative at every point in its development, from the juxtaposition of “Old New York” money lost (Pete Campbell) to up-from-nowhere Horatio Alger success (Dick Whitman/Don Draper). Another draw for Mad Men is the way the series interspersed the tribulations of real corporations and brands, including GM, Jaguar, Vicks, and Dow Chemical. Using actual brand names, the viewer might think about the role of corporations and products across historical eras.
Although the series primarily centers on the fortunes (no pun intended) of WASPs, there are many other characters whose destinies question how the American Dream did or did not work. While some critics and social commentators would have liked the show to go into more depth regarding the lives of blacks, Jews, homosexuals, lesbians, and members of fringe groups from hippies to cultists, Mad Men confronted these topics from a cultural and socioeconomic perspective.
Almost universally the audience is forced to interpret the show’s characters and the age via a corporate capitalist lens. Often the juxtaposition is between the “haves,” like the agency partners and employees, and the “have-nots” or “want-nots” that cruise in and out of their lives. For example, in Episode 7.4 (“The Monolith”), Roger Sterling’s daughter Margaret, now going by the laid-back moniker Marigold, runs away to live in a free-love hippie commune in a dilapidated farmhouse. Despite his hesitance to intervene in her life, the agency head and his ex-wife drive out into the countryside to bring her back. After seeming to reconcile, Roger decides that Marigold cannot drop out because she is a mother and has obligations to her only child. But as he attempts to physically force her into an old truck, the only vehicle on the farm that will allow them to escape, both father and daughter fall into a mud hole. Roger’s trademark expensive blue suit is covered in grime, which paints a stark contrast to his white hair and angular features. Defeated, the ad man limps away, leaving his daughter behind. From the look on his face as he hobbles, mud-soaked, he also loses more than a little of his soul. The juxtaposition of money versus happiness and responsibility versus freethinking is a by-product of Mad Men’s deliberate exploration of the nation’s values during the decade.
At the heart of Mad Men’s examination of the American Dream, however, is Whitman/Draper. The duality in the character is significant—while Draper is the fulfillment of a successful American life, it is a wholly inauthentic life. Since Dick essentially stole the Don identity from a dead man, it is impossible for him to trumpet his success. His wife Betty only finds out by snooping through his locked desk. Later, in Episode 4.10 (“Hands and Knees”), Don forces Pete to drop a potential Air Force account that demands a security clearance. When the FBI interviews Betty and she then tells Don about the visit, his fear is palpable—almost pure terror as he breaks into a cold sweat—as he contemplates life on the run.
Exploring celebrity culture and fame as it developed in the twentieth century, one finds that the very act of publicizing one’s rags-to-riches story seems part of the American Dream narrative, but one that Don/Dick must avoid at all cost. In Episode 4.1 (“Public Relations”), Draper is interviewed by Jack Hammond from Advertising Age for a short feature story, but his evasiveness comes across as arrogance. When the story appears, Hammond calls Don “a handsome cipher,” then compares him to Dorian Gray, the antihero of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, saying “One imagines somewhere in an attic there’s a painting of him that’s rapidly aging.” In the novel, Gray is a hedonistic, shallow man, on par with a vapid, lust-filled Prince Charming, willing to sell his soul to stay beautiful. As one might imagine, senior partners Roger and Bert Cooper chastise Don, which the younger man attempts to deflect, saying that the article will line birdcages by the end of the week. To counter the bad publicity (especially given the fragile state of the firm at the time), they get him an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter.
As the episode closes, Draper is regaling the writer with a new version of his story and turning on the charm. Like Jay Gatsby, he spins a tale that delivers the American Dream story in a way that potential readers, clients, and his bosses want to see. Fame culture is on full display. Don cannot tell the truth about his boyhood, which would have made a great story, because of what happened in Korea, but he can still craft a heroic narrative that coincides with his personal success and embodiment of the American Dream.
As viewers we are not completely omniscient, but we do know Dick/Don’s secrets long before the people with whom he interacts. The drama unfolds on camera, but how it unfolds is important because viewers get sucked into the “mysterious stranger” plotline. Because we know the real Don Draper is actually a dead man killed in Korea, the contrast with Ad Age’s Hammond is poignant. The reporter lost his leg in the war, which points to what a real hero is willing to sacrifice. Grasping that Don’s secret identity could also be his total undoing, we are induced to root for him, despite many other aspects of his personality and behavior that are reprehensible at best. The idea that one can more or less be reborn via some external reinvention is a powerful foundational piece of the American Dream.
Creating the Dream
The Drapers—a handsome advertising executive, his former model wife, and their two children (later three)—symbolize American power and prosperity in the Cold War era. They live in an early 1960s version of a “McMansion” in a New York City commuter town. Dashing out the door, Dad grabs his hat and ventures forth to the train station, while Mom stays at home with the youngsters, filling her day with television, gossipy chats with other stay-at-home moms, and a ubiquitous pack of cigarettes at the ready. They have an African American maid, which sets them apart from their slightly less wealthy suburban neighbors. Her job centers on keeping the children contained. Supper is on the table when Dad gets home, as well as a stiff drink or two . . . or three.
