Over at the Art of the Title blog, they have an extensive interview with the designers of the Mad Men TV series’ now-iconic title sequence. (How iconic? The Simpsons did a fun parody of it, with Homer as Don Draper, of course.)
As Mark Gardner of the design/production house Imaginary Forces tells Art of the Title, when the title sequence was initially conceived in 2007, “AMC had all kinds of issues with having someone falling from a skyscraper. I have seen some blog posts written about this, arguing whether or not it’s exploitative for the show to use a figure falling. Some people saw references to 9/11 and all of that, and in the beginning AMC were totally against the idea.”
And hopefully, series producer Matthew Weiner eschews conventional melodrama sufficiently so that we can assume that the series won’t end its run with Don taking a header off the top of the Seagram Building. So it functions as a metaphor for the day to day life of Don Draper himself. At least in the show’s first three seasons, on a regular basis, Don goes from Master of the Advertising Universe (to mix metaphors with Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities) and swinging stud juggling affairs with sexy businesswomen and Greenwich Village artists to taking the 5:30 back to Ossining every night — well, almost every night. There, seated in his living room couch, Lucky Strike in hand, he has to play the role of dedicated family man. Work and home require very different identities, and Don’s entire identity (SPOILER ALERT!) is itself a put-on, so no wonder each day for him runs the risk of a sort of metaphoric suicide. Or as hard-drinking ad man Freddy Rumsen wistfully says to Don after being fired for not being hold his liquor, “If I don’t go into that office every day, who am I?,” the flip-side of Bert Cooper’s aphorism that “a man is whatever room he is in.” Don Draper is Gatsby as Everyman, but underneath it all, Dick Whitman, Don’s version of James Gatz, midwestern farm boy who escapes to the big city, is much closer to the surface.
Great shows are more than the sum of their parts, and just as Star Trek and Miami Vice would be unthinkable without their stylish title sequences, Mad Men’s title sequence, while somewhat “apart” from the show itself (an AMC executive, upon viewing the Mad Men titles for the first time, thought they had a bit of a a Twilight Zone-style surrealism to them) also opens it up — both in the sense of opening the show, and expanding upon its themes — in a way that’s truly striking.
My immediate thought upon watching the very first episode on DVD last year was 9/11. If you have seen Richard Drew’s photo of Falling Man, how could you *not* make that association when you view the title sequence? The vertical beams of the WTC Tower in Drew’s photo … the strong verticals of the NYC skyscrapers in MM … Falling Man dressed in black and white … Ad Man (sub for Don Draper) in black and white … and the obvious of, both guys taking a header (Falling Man’s implied descent in the still photo, Ad Man’s actual descent in animation).
So, yeah, I found the title sequence disturbing. Not because it was a vague & generic “some references to 9/11″ but because it was a very specific reference to a very specific and iconic image of 9/11.
And I suppose I would have found the reference less disturbing if the main character and, by extension, the show, weren’t so nihilistic. Listen to Don Draper’s speech to Rachel Menken in the pilot episode. He doesn’t believe in the future (“You’re born alone and you die alone … I’m living like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t one”) and so his approach to life has become hedonistic. A lifestyle the show itself, by its obsession with style and visual attraction, pretty much wallows in.
Mad Men is a weird dichotomy — a show that ostensibly criticizes American materialism (post-1960) while at the same time reveling in it and embracing it. A show that ostensibly is concerned about soul-lessness & the effects of the modern American Faustian bargain (anything for success), that at the same time cannot seem to extricate itself from its own critique. A show that ostensibly portrays “America 1960s” (esp. the morals thereof) when what it is really doing is serving up yet another version of Hollywood doing a show about itself (see the special features on Season 1 … I think it is Matt Weiner himself who makes the explicit comparison that Madison Ave was to 1960s America what Hollywood TV is to America today).
So, yeah, the title sequence, and the show, are exceptionally stylish and intelligent. The evocation of Saul Bass in the flat geometry of Ad Man in the title sequence is terrific.
But what is the show for? What is it proposing? On what hilltop is it planting its flag?
I would submit that “We look great, we’re witty, and we’re all a bunch of doomed weasels” is not a necessary or enhancing addition to the cultural landscape.
Which brings me back to that title sequence.
If Mad Men perceives America and Americans to be full of people like its main characters — an assorted collection of the foolish and the damned — then isn’t one interpretation of the title sequence, with its specific reference to the 9/11 Falling Man, that America more or less got what it deserved on 9/11? That this “end” is fitting and appropriate?
Like I said, I find the show to be a weird dichotomy. It’s Hugh Hefner *and* Pat Robertson, at the same time. Or maybe it’s Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
To which I would like to reply, “Who is this ‘we,’ kemosabe?” Hollywood critiquing the post-60s cultural morass that was created largely by post-60s Hollywood is pretty rich irony.
Here is a dissenting voice on Mad Men. Ed Driscoll has validated my blog on the subject while emphasizing the “put on” character of Don Draper. See http://clarespark.com/2010/10/24/mad-men-and-the-jewish-problem/.
I didn’t really see a similarity between the title sequence and 9/11 until right after I rewatched the videos from 9/11 this past month. And I’m still not sure that there is an overt or intended connection there.
Of significance is the backdrop- the “ads” that plaster the building past which Don (we presume) is falling. It’s larger-than-life imagery that in reality is completely unimportant and useless to a falling man. I think that does a really fine job of illustrating how utterly meaningless his job, advertising, and even the products themselves are to Don and the world at large. And the leisurely pace at which he falls suggests he doesn’t really give a damn any of it- his situation, the ads, anything.
I also think it’s significant that the end of the sequence is the silhouette of him sitting with an outstretched arm and a cigarette- a pose which is cleverly acted throughout the series if you look for it. In other words, the fall doesn’t start with him in his office- it ends there. And that’s exactly what’s happened with all of the characters- they’re not trying to get away from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. It’s their talents AND failings that have landed them there.
That’s why I don’t have a problem with this series. I don’t think it says anything about the morals of the ’60s. It speaks volumes about the morals of ad agencies in the ’60′s, however. From time to time the stories intersect with people who aren’t part of this privileged world- Carla, the housekeeper; Adam Whitman; Father Gill; some of the neighbors and friends. At those times the contrast is striking and we’re reminded that this isn’t how regular folks behave. Even Peggy Olson’s evolution and Sal Romano’s tragic story arc are reminders that one way or the other good people don’t last in this outfit.
I learned everything I needed to know about the ’60′s marketing industry from Bewitched.