The Animation Pimp

In Mad Men, advertising guru Don Draper tells a colleague that “advertising is based on one thing: Happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car… It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay.”
On the surface, everything about Mad Men seems to confirm Draper’s words. As we enter the world of the Sterling Cooper ad agency with newcomer Peggy (a mousy suburban girl who seems completely out of her element), lush ‘50s and ‘60s iconography saturates the screen.  Then we meet Draper, the man who has it all: great job, beautiful wife and kids, lovers, respect of his colleagues. He is Mr. Cool. We arrive seeing our preconceptions about this ‘innocent’ era confirmed. Everyone smokes, drinks, and dresses smart. The ladies giggle when their asses get smacked. The office is like a scene from an advertisement. Everyone looks fabulous and are having the time of their lives. Everything is okay.

Or is it?
Despite being set in the often luscious sights and sounds of a bygone era, Mad Men is one of the first TV shows to deal seriously with the complex and often contradictory relationships between our work and home identities — and the more general, and rather hefty, themes of identity and desire in the modern world.

Many TV shows have been set in offices. But most have done so in a satirical and comic fashion (e.g. Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, The Office, WKRP in Cincinnati).
That’s not to say that comedy cannot serve as a relevant and potent depiction of the complexities of everyday life. Mary Tyler Moore was a landmark show that depicted the life of a working single woman. Both versions of The Office deal humorously with the problems we have bordering our work and personal spaces. In fact, the British version was such an uncompromising depiction of office realities that it was often more tragedy than comedy. Everyone has worked with an offensive twit like David Brent — or more accurately, everyone has a bit of Brent lurking inside them (which was what made the show all the more uncomfortable to watch).

Work dramas have — and do — exist, but they have almost always been set in high-profile workplaces to which few of us can really relate. Homicide: Life on the Street and Hill Street Blues dealt with cops; L.A. Law and Street Legal with high-powered attorneys; E.R. and St. Elsewhere with doctors.

While these shows did delve into the working and domestic lives of their characters, they rarely did so consistently and meaningfully, often relying on insipid soap-opera hysterics.  Outstanding shows like The Wire did explore their characters difficulties balancing job and family, but the series never really delved too deep into their psyche. Jimmy McNulty, for example, was a guy who lived through his job and lost his family as a result. Why McNulty is the way he is isn’t explored — ignored as was David Brent’s background and childhood in The Office.

The distinctiveness of Mad Men stems not from its many themes (which can be found on any soap opera, let alone other office dramas), but from its willingness to explore these topics (adultery, repressed sexuality, identity, racism) in a restrained and subtle manner that routinely asks the viewers to piece things together.
Like an onion, each episode of Mad Men strips away a layer of a character, showing us that these people are not at all the happy, flawless folks we assumed them to be. Don Draper, in particular, is a mess of contradictions, a man who is very quickly losing his grip on the domestic and professional identities that he’s created for himself — even his name, as we learn, isn’t really his own. Don is a hollow man, a blank slate adrift from the world.

Peggy, the seemingly meek secretary, turns out to be an ambitious woman who wants to be equal with her male colleagues without accepting the pre-existing roles available to her (the ad men believe these are the only two types of women: Jackie O or Marilyn Monroe – in other words, the mother and the whore. Peggy, fittingly, remarks that she doesn’t identify with either of them). Her determination to be treated equally is so fierce that it becomes psychotic (After getting knocked up by a colleague, she refuses to admit to herself that she’s pregnant – even as she’s about to give birth.  She then refuses to even look at or care for the child.)

Mad Men is a cast of floating identities. We have no idea what to expect from them because they don’t even know what they’re going to do next. Mad Men defies expectations by refusing to succumb to ready-made categorization. Things change in an instant, without any logical explanation. The characters are inconsistent, hypocritical, surprising and confusing – like us.
It would be a mistake to assume that Mad Men is a show solely about a bygone era. Certainly the series addresses a pivotal time in American history, when gender roles were beginning to be shattered and opened up. Masculinity is in crisis. Women are on the verge of gaining power in society. Roles are changing. The rise of advertising and how it has affected (and created) modern identity is also a prominent theme of the series. However, take away the clothes and settings, and not all that much as changed. We’ve just become more repressed. Bottles are hidden in desks. Smokes are taken outside. Sexism lives but lurks behind closed doors. Advertising is ubiquitous.
Whereas The Office, Mary Tyler Moore, 30 Rock and other office comedies take a more laissez faire approach by asking us to just laugh off our absurdness, Mad Men asks uncomfortable questions about the human condition with the hope that we can change and learn to live comfortably in our skin. As Don says in season two (quoting a poem by Frank O’Hara: “Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 5:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.