Deconstructing the Apparition of Faces of the Mad Men Series

Mad Men, the award-winning original series on AMC is an alluring, postmodern account of the American culture traditionally referred to as the “1960’s”. Although this television show has won awards for its historical authenticity, its popular mass appeal may suggest slightly otherwise. It’s ability to deconstruct or to rigorously undo the fictional narratives on which this part of the American culture had been founded, pointing out its unstable and irreducibly complex foundation with both creative style and austere makes this program of value to the cannon of 21st century popular art.
Executive producer and creator, Matthew Weiner who was a contributing writer on the HBO series The Sopranos has found the perfect venue for the Mad Men script on AMC.
“The Network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series,” according to AMC Networks President Ed Carroll “and we took bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal.”
And that it did. The majority of this television drama is set in the early 1960’s at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City, the perfect breeding ground to expose the sheer lies of an idealized well-mannered and civil society. These ad men or “mad men” nurse stiff martinis before noon and blatantly harass the office secretaries in such a vulgar manner that can only be recognized as instances of sexual harassment today. In such an environment the relationship between the sexes is exploited and then perpetuated in the advertisements they intend to sell.
The show even goes so far as to satirize the phony world of advertising by providing vintage commercials at the break. One of these clips showcases how laundry detergent has been sold through time by playing up the role of the wife and mother as the sole nurturer of the family. A panoramic view showed generations of women doing their families laundry, with the only constant change being the technology and style, the tools they used to do the work. The commercial ended with a beautiful contemporary woman putting her family’s clothes in the laundry basket, pleased and satisfied by the usefulness of the material product. If that isn’t an artful means of deconstructing the unchanging female social role in a still current consumer economy, then what is?
Both the men and women in Mad Men understand the masculine and feminine roles that are expected of them. All the stereotypes are represented. The men appear assertive, direct and emotionless and the women are maternal pleasers, proper and sweet. Key word, appear. As the show progresses so does the careful deconstruction. The characters realize the gender roles they are expected to uphold are not adding up, and they challenge these roles in very interesting, sometimes detrimental ways. So yes, Mad Men captures the historical aesthetics of the time, in fact the clothing and visual appearance of the series can be hypnotizing to the eye. That may be the initial appeal, but the real Mad Men enthusiast is drawn to the deeply embedded social conflicts that plague each and every one of the characters.
Even beneath the shows intentional provocative layers, holds true a meaningful depiction of characterization. The individual is both apart and very distant from a culture that purports to define them based on their sex, social class, marital status, ethnicity and economic status. It stimulates the viewer, inviting them to consider the social conflicts of a culture that are still very relevant today.
Lead character Don Draper (Jon Hamm), creative director of Sterling Cooper appears to be the typical archetype of late 1950’s businessman with slick parted hair, a thin necked tie and tailored wool suit. Yet in action, Draper is revealed as a capitalist prince, convincing people that a life lived on commodity materialization is a meaningful pursuit. This unraveling of traditional stock characters of the late 1950’s exposes new truths and identities that are deconstructed and exposed for an insightful and rather radical affect.
The characterization of Draper presents a stark contrast to Robert Young’s rosy character, Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best. This feel-good 1950’s television program, which ironically ended airing in 1960, the same year the first episode of Mad Men is set, presents a very unrealistic representation of the social attitudes of the time. Unlike Anderson’s character that superimposed unrealistic expectations of moral unity as the ideal “family man” Draper distinguishes a lead character that is anything but admirable. As a philandering husband, sexist co-worker and casual alcoholic he represents a kind of troubled Byronic Hero whose prototype “bad boy” image assumes dark allusions to his troubled past and altered identity.
Dissimilar to conventional dramatic narratives, as a lead character Draper does not possess an overwhelming fixation of gaze from viewers. All of the characters on Mad Men eventually unclothe their expected stock character personas to reveal their repressed desires in a culture that leaves little room for “otherness”. Like Joan Harris, the offices queen bee secretary who uses her cunning sex appeal to manipulate the male workers at Sterling Copper and assume power in an otherwise male orientated world. Or Salvatore Romano, whose closeted homosexuality is challenged in the third season when his client makes a pass at him, jeopardizing his entire career. Mad Men presents a new lens to the cultural studies of the early 1960’s, infusing the real nuances of the social world with impeccable story telling that is far from traditional and immensely entertaining in the least.
Weiner’s characters are not only invariably unpredictable they are often indefinable. In the beginning of the first season, it was easy to classify Betty Draper (Don’s wife) as a typical housewife. She was beautiful, charming and aggravatingly compliant to her husband and the female role that was cut out for her. Yet slowly but surely Miss Draper began to question the constraint ideologies that have dictated her life. At the end of season two she comes to terms about her husband’s apparent infidelities, and summons the strength to kick him out of the house, only to accept him back not much longer after she realized she was expecting her third child.
This is precisely the appeal of this show. The characters conflicts are not fixed overnight, lovers do not recoil into each other’s arms knowing that everything is going to be alright. This television series does an excellent job of deconstructing the typical dramatic narrative which we are used to digesting.
That is why it is not surprising that the most climatic character of the series seems to be Peggy Olson, the woman of the future. Peggy is initially employed at Sterling Cooper as Draper’s secretary, but after impressing Draper with an apparent flair for the business she found herself a position as a copy writer. The young woman has a supporting role in the show, yet she is easily the most sympathetic, virtuous character. She is iconic in her pursuit to wield her own professional path in a world run by chauvinist men, before feminist values ever entered into professional consciousness.
Audiences are possessed with the power and comfort of familiarizing with a generation that was on the brink of a social revolution. They wait like anxious voyeurs eager to watch these characters respond and shape themselves through historical issues and events that have already occurred, but were represented quite one-dimensionally.
In episode twelve of season three titled, “The Grown Ups” the lives of these characters are disrupted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Depictions of various characters mourning over the President quickly escalated when alleged shooter Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed not too long after. Viewers who did not live through this traumatic event cannot help but associate the generation’s unbearable fear and anxiety for the future of an entire nation to the September 11th attacks of the World Trade Center. This television series depicts the chaos of social unrest that is progressively building, foreshadowing a world that will soon be divided by civil reforms and cultural revolutions. Unfortunately these conflicts have become immortal today. It is enlightening to see both an educational and entertaining form of popular art receive such an outstanding appreciation by Americans viewers. Watch Mad Men and there will be absolutely no wonder why.