Camelot and Its Discontents: Mad Man’s Third Season Comes to DVD
Watching the third season of AMC’s Mad Men series, recently released onto DVD, makes for the same push-pull love/hate response that the TV series itself has with the era it portrays. Say what you will about its first three seasons, at the very least, the show is a reminder that the early 1960s, now frequently known as “Camelot” thanks to a powerful assist from a then-recently widowed Jackie Kennedy, was nowhere near as tranquil and idyllic as that word suggests.
What we look back at mistily as “Camelot” was actually one of the most tumultuous stretches of American history since the end of World War II. It began in November of 1960 with a close election in which Richard Nixon (in contrast with Al Gore in 2000) conceded rather than having a protracted fight against John F. Kennedy. This would leave some thinking that Kennedy stole the election, “selected, not elected,” to coin a phrase. October 1962 saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, with wide swatches of America wondering if they’d wake up to see the next day. (Shades of 9/11.) And it ended on November 22, 1963, with President Kennedy the most important, least understood victim of the Cold War.
Along the way, the American business community hummed along, with the first waves of mergers and conglomerations, the rise of the slide-rule technocrats, and the transatlantic men — British businessmen more comfortable in the States, away from the ridged class structure of their homeland.
That last item informs much of the subtext of the third season of Mad Men. (WARNING: SPOILERS GALORE AHEAD!) Picking up close to where it concluded in the last season, the fictitious all-American firm of Sterling-Cooper is now just a cog in the wheel of its new British owners, Putnam, Powell, and Lowe. The latter firm has sent efficiency expert Lane Pryce (played by Jared Harris) to keep an eye on the upstart yanks. Though he slowly begins to go native, finding it much more freeing than the rigid caste system of England, much to the consternation of wife Rebecca, played by veteran South African actress Embeth Davidtz. Unlike the core Mad Men characters driven by Manhattan’s boundless energy, her character hates the grime and the crime of New York City, which in 1963 was just beginning its long slide into the dissipation and decline during the Lindsay years.
Rebooting The Show: Draper’s 11 Swings Into Action
A key moment along the way that signaled trouble ahead for New York was the demolition of the magnificent original Penn Station by a cash-strapped Pennsylvania Railroad, to build the modern Madison Square Garden sports arena and a Miesian high-rise office tower above it. This subplot was explored in the third season’s second episode, causing some bloggers to write extensively on the topic. But by the end of the episode, the Sterling-Cooper ad campaign is scuttled by Pryce under orders from the home office across the pond, because the firm can’t afford the copywriters and artists it would take to man the account versus its relatively low initial revenue. Though with the promise of the World’s Fair and 30 years of advertising business once Madison Square Garden is up and running, it’s left to Don to ask, “Why the hell did you buy us in the first place?”
Pryce replies that he doesn’t know — though by the end of the season, we know: to be acquired by an even bigger agency in the show’s last episode. But rather than being swallowed up into a faceless corporation, Don concocts an Ocean’s 11-style caper to steal Sterling-Cooper’s core book of business over a climactic weekend, while the home office in London is asleep at the wheel. (Anybody in advertising or financial services who’s changed firms but kept their client base intact during otherwise hostile circumstances can relate to this plot.)
Unlike the gloomfests of the previous two seasons’ climaxes, the third season of Mad Men ends the show on its highest note. While JFK is dead and the nation as a whole is still in shock, and with Don and Betty heading towards a potentially bitter divorce, Don is now a full partner in the newly christened Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The lean and mean new firm, working out of the Pierre Hotel, is positioned to go anywhere next season: they could still be in their hotel office; they could be in another high-rise in New York, or in sunny California, making it the perfect reboot, apparently right at the show’s fulcrum.
Making Sense of Mad Men’s Politics
Mad Men has always been viewed by both its fans and foes as a scathing attack on American conservatism, but the audio commentary by creator/producer/overall auteur Matthew Weiner on the DVD’s optional soundtrack helps to place that a bit more into perspective. In its pivotal third season episode “My Old Kentucky Home,” set in May of 1963, shortly after singing show tunes at a restricted country club in blackface(!), Roger Sterling regrets that because of Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce the GOP will likely be saddled in ’64 with proto-conservative Barry Goldwater. Add this to their glowing endorsement of Richard Nixon in the first season and you get a clue to the mindset of Sterling-Cooper’s brain trust. Nixon, of course, would govern domestically very much in the mold of LBJ, much to the delight, decades later when the blinders came off, of New York Timesmen Tom Wicker and Paul Krugman.
During the voiceover on that episode, Weiner condemns the death of the moderate Republican — which surely must be news to John McCain, Lindsey Graham, George Voinovich, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. And in the penultimate episode of the season, built around (HUGE SPOILER ALERT!) Kennedy’s assassination, Weiner tells us that Pete Campbell, Don Draper’s wealthy bête noir, and a fellow as sexist as anyone in the Sterling-Cooper offices, is a Roosevelt Democrat. (There’s a brilliant scene in a previous episode designed to contrast Pete’s incredibly uncomfortable demeanor with the black Sterling-Cooper elevator operator he quizzes for marketing ideas with Don’s ease with a black waiter who he interviews for advertising inspiration in the very first scene of the Mad Men pilot.)
But then, Mad Men is as much about class as it is about politics. Don is a sort of Gatsby-esque figure, but unlike Gatsby with his Long Island mansion, Don owns a relatively modest split-level house in suburban Ossining. Until the middle of the second season when Roger Sterling talks him into a Cadillac, he happily drove mid-level Dodges and Buicks. In an early episode, he asks for a raise to about $40,000 annual salary. Big money for the early 1960s to be sure, but he’s not old money. Which is why, after all of his fooling around, Betty leaves him for a man who is such a Rockefeller Republican, he’s on Nelson’s staff, which adds an extra whammy to the news about Rockefeller’s divorce early in the show’s third season. (In another example of how history has changed America’s mores, this one off-screen, nearly two decades later, Americans didn’t worry too much about another Republican governor’s divorce — or his conservatism — when they swept Ronald Reagan into the White House.)
Here’s Connie!
While the Brits inhabiting the offices of Sterling-Cooper are new characters, the most charismatic new edition to the cast is a sort of postmodern recreation of Conrad Hilton. He’s likely more of a fictitious construct created to be a foil to Don Draper than anything resembling the real man. Actor Chelcie Ross does a terrific job of playing “Connie” as a flinty, self-made American who came from the same humble roots as Draper, but whereas Don has a decent sized book of advertising accounts, Hilton overseas a vast international empire of hotels and resorts.
Rewatching the first season with my wife right now, and I found it almost prescient when, in about the 8th or 9th episode, Ol’ Man Cooper told Don he needed to read Atlas Shrugged..
Split-level house??? What show were you watching? Don and Betty’s house is a classic center hall colonial, much like the one I grew up in not too far away in northern New Jersey.
Mark,
Thanks for the update; my architectural knowledge is less about my house, more about the Bauhaus.
“Weiner condemns the death of the moderate Republican — which surely must be news to John McCain, Lindsey Graham, George Voinovich, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins.”
When people who would have voted for JFK are considered right-wing radicals, what do you expect?
I just remembered that the Atlas Shrugged reference was in the season one episode “The Hobo Code.” I’d seen it before, but watching it a second time kind of blew my mind. There’s a scene where a hobo tells the young Dick Whitman about how he once had a job, wife, and kids, and he dumped them all and was now “free” to wander around living off the kindness of strangers.
This is juxtaposed with Don Draper hanging around with one of his mistresses and her fellow Bohemians in the Village, who view him as a square for having the job/wife/kids tying him down.
But Don, who has just received an enormous bonus for his work is “free” to fly off to Paris with his mistress at the drop of a hat. And when the cops show up, the “free bohemians” won’t leave the apartment because they don’t want to be harassed. But Don points out that because he’s a “square” in a suit and tie, he can walk right past them with no worries.
It blew my mind because the message seemed to be that the freedom of the hobo and the bohemians was illusory, and they didn’t appear to know it. They felt free, but they were still stuck. Whereas the man with the money, the man who had a job, the “square” in the grey flannel suit — he was the one who was truly free.
This is so upside down from the normal romanticized view of the hippies that it knocked me over. (And again, connect that with the moment earlier in the episode where Cooper tells Don to read Atlas Shrugged . . . and it had me thinking that Mad Men was being written by people supporting the importance of private enterprise and the freedom of personal wealth.
Of course, this freedom also meant that Don was free to ditch his wife and kids for a weekend in Paris (which he chose not to do), but that’s the thing about freedom: there’s freedom to do the right thing, and there’s freedom to do the wrong thing. But there’s freedom.
A people dependent on someone (oh, for the sake of argument, let’s say THE GOVERNMENT) are not truly free even though they have the illusion of freedom. They are mere vassals of the state. I’d much rather have the freedom to make bad choices than lose my freedom to a government promising to always make my choices for me.
I got a slightly different message from the scene where the cops show up in the Hobo Code episode. It wasn’t so much a criticism of the bohemian lifestyle vs. Draper’s safe, middle class persona; rather, the writers were showing that there are compromises that have to be accepted no matter what identity you choose to wear, and some choices come with more restrictions than others. It’s just the way the world works, and Dan is smart enough to realize that fact.
Smugness with nothing to back it up. I believe that applies to anyone who looks down at advertising in 1960ish America with disdain and derision. Actually, in 1960, advertising was on the leading edge of liberalism. Not only did its creatives vote Democratic overwhelmingly, but their ad messages tilted a lot more liberal than American society. Which, I believe was good. 1960 America should have listened to Dr. King; not allowed the FBI to harass him.
The Mad Men years, in a very real sense, were liberalism in bed with free enterprise. Which produced some very praiseworthy offspring. Unparalleled economic expansion. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. A government responsive to the will of the people. Who knows how long we would have kept fighting and dying in Vietnam if the government turned a deaf ear to citizen protests, both violent and non-violent? Today’s Obamunistic government has lackies scream sedition at opponents. They should be shouted down placed in a huge room filled with insurance salesmen.
So what’s our claim to fame as the 21st century gets off to its start? One jumps out at me. By a significant majority of the voting public, the election of the first African American in United States history. That the Obama regime is a train wreck; the fact he’s trying to kill free enterprise and destroy the ideals of America brick by brick doesn’t take away the fact that Americans are trying to put racism behind them.
The worst part of America today, I believe, is that we’ve turned chicken. We’ve been given freedom and we don’t have the will to stand up and be counted when it’s threatened. Which example (there are many to choose from) sticks out like a sore thumb? Last week’s South Park fiasco when Fox shrunk like a violet because of veiled threats by religious perverts. Islam must be taken back by righteous members of the faith, who, like Fox executives in charge of South Park, seem to be afraid of their own shadows.
Maybe Washington shouldn’t have crossed the Delaware because it was too cold. And too dangerous. Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 you wouldn’t have wanted to spread out a towel on and had lunch, but that didn’t stop Americans from landing there.
It’s time you’re challenged, America. You’ve got a free press that exercises its constitutionally guaranteed freedom in the worst way. They carry water for a Presidential administration. The mainstream media should be water boarded. America, are you really too scared to stand up for what’s right? Get a backbone. Or use your second amendment rights and buy a gun. Anything’s better than hiding under the bed.
You’ve got Republicans and Democrats in Congress who should be willing to fall on their swords if need be; to speak out against the neutering of our military and the socializing of our economy. Instead they’re silent. When the Danish cartoons came out, and Islam had a cow about it, every paper in America should have put those drawings on their front page. Is Pam Geller the only blogger in the world with any balls?
Which brings me to an aside. Inside baseball. Bill Bernback said that the riskiest thing a company can do is run safe advertising. Which is one of 101 great quotes. David Ogilvy said people can’t read reverse type. So most type is black on a white background. Roy Grace said that initial caps are hard to read, and make the product look old fashioned. So what does every blog from here to timbuctoo do? Use initial caps. Did we not learn anything from the 1962 Avis Rental Car campaign? One thing’s for sure. The people who do Mad Men didn’t learn anything from Bernbach. Their creative is atrocious. Their wit is AWOL. They’re predictable as the Chicago Bears offense. I must know a thousand creatives. Zero are as witless as the Draper group. Except for Draper, alias Joe Hamm. He’s the Davy Crockett of TV. He can capture the attention of the audience and not let go.
And as you probably suspect. Draper’s sexcapades are made for TV BS. It’s Weiner bowing to the lowest common denominator of the viewing public. In the 60′s, fans, sweat was pouring out from people who were trying to think up ideas. Who were deadly afraid of losing business. Not from sex. Erectile dysfunction was part of their world before the term was invented. So you think all that drinking was without its side effects? (big rachel eye roll)
Another observation.
Weiner criticized the ad guys for ignoring the African American marketplace. Not surprisingly, Weiner doesn’t have a clue. Talk to anybody on the Kool cigarettes account. He’s totally off base on this one. Marketing then and now was and is based on psychographics, not skin color. This amounts to a dumb as dirt criticism. Granted, psychographics was pretty much a nascent term in 1960,(trout and rieves were years away) but intuitively, the agency people, about a zillion times smarter than Weiner, practiced it.
Weiner, in fact, reminds me of a guy who writes a book on WWII without ever being in combat. Relatives in combat don’t count.
Regardless, anybody who thinks the ad people back then were naive is simply demonstrating his naivety. Here’s a naive thought directed not at Weiner, but at television big shots in general. How much longer are the TV news people going to be restricted to light skinned African Americans? Not to mention talk show people. We love that light skin when it comes to casting. And inside the racism is a double standard. Dark skin is more acceptable with males than females. What’s with that? Whatever it is it’s time it comes to an end.
Thank goodness for “Precious.” A fat and dark skinned girl in a lead role who we all fell in love with. America, maybe there is hope for you, yet.
Now, America, all you have to do is get a backbone and not be afraid when the bully dressed in religious nonsense tries to scare you. Pam Geller, you’re my kind of lady.
As to MadMen, I’m reminded of a Woody Allen joke… “two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ‘em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life – full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”
Which in a way applies to my relationship with MadMen. With all its faults, I have one overriding complaint to Michael Weiner about it. Why do the episodes go by so fast?
My guess is the “Atlas Shrugged” reference in S1 was a red herring intended to gain or keep conservatives to the show’s viewership. Reading this article is proof that they were snookered, big time.
Robert,
I tried to be a bit more open-minded about the show than my first PJM review (which I believe is in the links above), without having my brains fall out of my head. But I guess I didn’t succeed in the latter department entirely.
I’m tempted to buy the DVDs for the commentary and the higher video quality. I don’t know if AMC has a parallel high-definition channel, but if it does, my DirecTV subscription doesn’t include it, and “Mad Men” is about the only series good enough to justify my watching it in “ordinary TV” quality any more.
BTW, although I don’t dispute that it’s conventional wisdom that the show mocks or attacks conservatives, I don’t agree that that’s necessarily the case — even if it were so intended by its makers. (And I write as someone who actually can remember 1963.)
“For example, when Pete quixotically tries to convince Admiral Television to aim their marketing at the then-nascent African-American marketplace, Weiner notes how myopic it was for businessmen to ignore this rapidly growing marketplace for political reasons, leaving millions of dollars of potential revenue on the table. This coming from a man who works in an industry which has been alternatively ignoring and insulting half the country in the form of the American right since the late 1960s.”
Weiner would say he’s an artist and making $$$ is incidental.
Advertising, “an industry which has been alternatively ignoring and insulting half the country in the form of the American right,” also ignores and insults the American man. Thus, the target audience of American advertising is the Lipstick Leftist (pink in more ways than one) segment and only that segment.
It’s time for the American man to Take Back The Wallet.
9.Micha Elyi, you’re right. Advertising certainly does ignore and insult the American man. It’s really getting irritating. I make a point of not buying products marketed at that level. Time for the companies who pay for those ads to get a clue!
Ever notice how it’s always the dad or husband who needs to be clued in about some great new product or service by his ever-patient wife and precocious kids?