Arts & Events

When my brother and I were pre-teens, our parents took us to visit Uncle Larry in the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue in New York City. At that time, the mid-50’s, Lawrence W. Mester was managing editor of several Luce magazines including House and Home and Architectural Forum.

As the humble country cousins, we were wonder struck by the sleek modern office and bustling staff that our uncle commanded. After showing us around, he stood in a central space, spread his arms, and asked, “Now children, what do you think created all of this?” a rhetorical question that he immediately answered with one emphatic word: “Advertising!”

I recalled this incident recently while watching the series Mad Men, which supposedly takes place in an ad agency in the Time-Life Building, although the business is sometimes referred to as “Madison Avenue” and was mostly shot on sets in Los Angeles. The historical accuracy and detail of these reconstructed interiors, from the Eames chairs to the abstract paintings, frame the main story and its 92 episodes, which span the 1960’s. 

The creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, was born in the middle of that tumultuous decade, so his acclaimed revival of the times, its transformative events and maxed out energy, was based on research and imagination. Survivors of the 1960’s each remember a different version of that epoch, now recognized as a cultural revolution. I was a senior in high school when John Kennedy was elected, a college student during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his assassination, and a welfare case worker in Brooklyn when Dr. King and Bobby were killed. 

Weiner references these and other memorable events, such as Vietnam and the first moon landing, as guideposts but does not attempt realistic history. Rather, Mad Men succeeds as a satiric entertainment of notable artifice, an expertly dramatized and drawn-out 20^th century Trollope novel like The Way We Live Now. 

Originally aired on the AMC Network from 2007 to 2015, the complete series is now available on DVD at both Five Star Video stores in Berkeley. 

I started watching Mad Men in October while farm sitting in the foothills with nothing better to do after a day of exhausting chores than plop down and follow the shenanigans of Don Draper, the complex main character who fascinates even though he’s not particularly likeable. In fact, he’s a charlatan, having stolen an identity from a soldier whose dog tag he changed for his own during combat in Korea. 

I’m not giving much away here, because Don’s phony persona is the premise of the entire series, and it’s established in the initial episodes. But I’ll try not to spoil too many surprises for anyone who has not yet watched the series. 

Played by John Hamm, Don Draper has two tickets to ride, the first being his classic Cary Grant-like good looks, described once as “a matinee idol.” The women he attracts complicate his already compromised identity and further loosen his grip on authenticity. A natural born philanderer, he nevertheless gets married twice and has numerous affairs and one-night stands. And true to his upbringing in a whore house, he pays for sex one way or another. 

His second asset is a quick intelligence that intuits what other people want, a survival instinct honed to high art. Hamm’s face reveals an actor playing an actor, especially when he presents his advertising ideas to clients in meetings that are scripted and rehearsed. 

The controlling conceit about Don Draper is that he was raised in a house of prostitution and now works in one, an industry of whores. He and his colleagues pimp corporate goods: cars, airlines, drugs, chemicals, cosmetics, hosiery, tobacco, fast food, and much, much more. The companies and their products are all familiar household brands; the dramatic intrigue comes from watching the inner workings of the agency, how the advertising “creatives” dream up narratives and slogans to sell products while their main medium changes from paper to television.  

All the while Don, his friend and partner Roger Sterling (played by John Slattery) and colleagues smoke and drink. The amount of alcohol they consume is staggering, and every season I expected Don to walk into an AA meeting and start to dry out. But he always comes back from being drunk until he hits the bottom. That’s the basic trajectory of the show: the descent of an impulsive alcoholic. Like the film Sideways, Mad Men treats addiction as satire to maintain the comedic mode. 

Alcoholism is no joke. In an instance of life imitating art, Hamm had to put himself into rehab in order to finish the show, calling the main character, “a pretty dismal and despicable guy.” Given the abuse of alcohol in our society, especially binge drinking among the young in this university town, some impressionable viewers might actually see Don Draper as a role model rather than an anti-hero. One never knows. Smoking is judged more explicitly because Sterling Cooper represents tobacco companies when the U.S. Surgeon General issued the first warning, and one character gets lung cancer and a terminal prognosis. Not all the characters survive their bad habits. 

The volume of money that flows through the office of Sterling Cooper and into the pockets of the partners is also staggering; getting rich motivates, unites, and corrupts them, as they vie for corporate accounts worth millions. The cash trickles down to the mini-skirted secretaries who arrange their hectic work schedules and hedonistic adventures. Nobody has any job security, and the words “You’re fired!” echo Donald Trump’s gag line in The Apprentice. Whether that reference is intended or not, Mad Men shows how narcissism, so evident in the campaign of the leading Republican candidate, infected the blood of corporate culture. 

There is little violence in Mad Men, which makes it relaxing as well as fun. The office is full of droll characters, forever strategizing and never at peace with themselves or each other. The witty dialogue surprises and delights. The costumes are magnificent, especially for the women. While Don usually sports a simple dark suit, his parallel character Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) wears ever fancier outfits as she moves up the ladder. No office worker of the 1960’s could afford such clothes, and never the same dress twice. But what the hell: that’s television. 

The direction and editing are top-notch with skillful changes of scene. The orchestral music composed and directed by David Carbonara is so subtle as to be hardly noticeable, except for the haunting theme behind the introductory credits, while each episode ends with a different pop song that provides an emphatic and often ironic wrap. I’ve been watching telenovelas to improve my Spanish comprehension and find that the music is slathered on so thick that I often can’t hear the language. 

Despite being written and directed by a coterie of colleagues, including some of the players, a uniformity of ironic tone pervades, a testament to the guiding hand of Weiner. The series has garnered so many awards that they aren’t worth mentioning. In so many ways, Mad Men sets a high technical standard for the industry. 

I could make the case that Mad Men is essentially a feminist drama because the central focus is on social relationships between men and women with an emphasis on the power imbalance. Some attention is given to racism and homophobia, but gender roles get top billing, especially how perceptions of the other change over time and how dishonesty and false expectations destroy trust. I had more sympathy for Peggy, Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Megan (Jessica Paré) in their struggles to achieve respect and equity in the work place than for any of the male characters, and the role of Don’s first wife Betty (January Jones) was also written with depth and sensitivity. 

The treatment of children is notable as we watch the young actors grow with their characters, including a boy portrayed by Weiner’s oldest son. The role of Don’s daughter Sally is handled brilliantly by Kiernan Shipka in a career making performance. If there is any optimism in Mad Men, it resides in the imagined future of the children. 

Class differences are neither obscured nor sugar-coated. From the first episode, we know about Don’s impoverished background, and the arc of his character reveals the psychological imprint of childhood trauma and deprivation. Many episodes play up class contrasts including real estate, status, and culture. 

Watching Mad Men over a four month period before and after a surgery was the perfect diversion. Although it depicts men in his world and time, my Uncle Larry would not have approved of Don Draper nor found his story compelling. He and my father were dutiful family men whose own early adulthoods were influenced by the Great Depression. They didn’t smoke, drink, or sin, and their earnings went to support their wives and educate us children, imparting their old-school values and self-discipline by example. 

The great benefit of getting old is developing a lived understanding of history; distance creates detachment and irony, sometimes mistaken for wisdom. Through experience, we learn to differentiate and evaluate practical and fictive narratives. Watch Mad Men primarily for its entertainment value as social satire, not as a cautionary tale on vice and the theme of Radix Malorum est Cupiditas nor as a revelation of the corrupt advertising machine, although it delivers all of the above.  

Toni Mester is a resident of West Berkeley.