Mad Men: Part 1

I wasn't going to comment on the AMC program Mad Men until March of 2012, when it's scheduled to return from a prolonged hiatus.  But I see that the networks are premiering shows in the next weeks that are attempting to cash in on the popularity of the early 1960's retro drama, so now seems as good a time as any weigh in on the trend. On the off chance you've never seen the show but plan to check out the back episodes, let this serve as a SPOILER ALERT.  

 

Mad Men

TV-14

AMC (New season to begin in March, 2012. Back episodes streaming on Netflix)

I had read all the hype on AMC's show Mad Men, about its spot on production design that uncannily recreates the look and feel of the early 1960's, its perceptive social commentary and solid cast.  It had been on hiatus since last October due to a contract dispute between it's producer and the network, but is now filming it's fifth season and is scheduled to return next March.  To catch up, and see if the hype was just hype, I trudged through the first four seasons in August on Netflix. And it is true; the sets, clothing, hairstyles and even incidental props all point, almost obsessively, to that earlier era.   The cast is very good, and they're given literate things to say.  But not far into the first season it dawned on me that for all the genuine quality on display Mad Men is really just an over glorified soap opera. And like many Soaps it's moral message seems to be a bit confused.

Mad Men takes place in the most politically incorrect setting imaginable. The series transports us to the fictional Madison Avenue advertising firm of Sterling Cooper (later Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) between the years 1960 to '65.  The men are hard drinking, heavy smoking, skirt chasing, sexist, racist, homophobes, and loving it (after two heart attacks one of the main players admits that he's lived like he's been on "shore leave" for the last twenty years).  The women are over worked, underpaid, unappreciated, sexually repressed and or under constant threat of being put upon for sexual favors. And when they give in they are more often than not thrown to the side once it's over.  In spite of all the good times and material prosperity there are deep wells of depression and lack of emotional fulfillment welling up in the main characters.  The only people who seem to have it together are divorcees, bohemians and unmarried working women in their thirties (though even they get their comeuppance eventually).  Like all Soaps there are more characters than you can shake a martini at, and it would take a small booklet to describe them all and the somewhat convoluted predicaments they get themselves into.  

More important than the individual personalities, it's the show's mood  that sets it apart. We see the United States at the zenith of its material wealth, international power and influence, with boundless optimism over the future.  The men are in sharp suits and Fedoras and the women are dressed in concealing yet form fitting dressed that scream femininity.  Yet underneath the surface lies an understanding that it's all fake.  No one is who they pretend to be or satisfied with who they are or what they have. This is personified most clearly in the show's main character, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) whose adventures and tragedies the series follows.  He's the creative director of Sterling Cooper, a position he conned himself into.  But his con wins him not just a job but also a beautiful wife, who he has two children with when the show starts, and a spacious home in suburban Ossining, New York.   He is highly successful, and the other "big boys" on the Avenue are hot to steal him away from his midsized firm.  He's also a serial philanderer and, like almost all the main adult characters, has a serious drinking problem.   But Don has a deeper secret to keep than his womanizing and alcoholism; he's not who he says he is.  During the Korean War he switched identities with a dead officer who had been burnt beyond recognition in a freak accident. Richard Whitman (Don's real name) is assumed dead while Donald Draper lives on.  He's able to carry on the charade with cunning and more than a little help from the real Draper's amazingly understanding widow, with whom he begins a close but platonic relationship.

Much of the ground Mad Men covers is not terribly new; movies like American Beauty or The Graduate have shown the soulless, hypocritically phony suburbs and Fight Club gave a critique of our consumer driven, conformity obsessed society.  While I must admit that what's new about the show is its packaging more than it's content, and that it seems to loose steam a bit in the third season, I was hooked.  Part of it is the style.  But viewer be ware; the fashion covers up a multitude of sins and moral confusion, not just of the characters but of the basic message being proposed.  More on that next time.