Not to mention that it is brilliantly acted, notably by Hamm, who is stoically chameleonic in his role as the shadowy creative genius behind Sterling Cooper, his advertising agency. January Jones, as Betty, Draper's frayed-nerves, ferociously insecure Grace Kelly-esque wife, is exquisite. And Kristina Hendricks' Sterling Cooper office manager turn is a strutting, shuffling amalgam of pity, power, and deeply buried empathy for the ad men who are whoring and drinking themselves to oblivion. She knows how to play this man's game, but she chooses to play from the periphery. No character actually says this, but the sway of her ass could alter the course of history
As noted, the first season takes place during 1960, and the election between Kennedy and Nixon becomes increasingly a part of the multiple plots, sexual and occupational, that romp through Mad Men. Draper's firm—these days he'd be called the rainmaker—may or may not be asked to assist in Nixon's campaign. Which was dull work then, political promotion, or at least the ad men think so. But either way, everyone's for Nixon, and that's the way it has to be. Nixon is a direct link to the ebbing social repression of the Eisenhower administration, if cultural history is to be believed, a time when "proper" actually meant just that. And the ad men of the show are nothing if not proper (read: discreet) in their philanderings and social schemings. Kennedy is something new altogether — youth, perhaps freedom, an easing of the trappings society shackles these ad men with and which they massively drink and fuck themselves out of, if only momentarily. (Note: the one character explicitly not for Nixon is a divorced mother in Betty's neighborhood, which makes her a mystery and a kind of pariah and also one too seductive not to be explored in season two.)
Mad Men makes its points and illuminates its characters' lives so perfectly because of the time of its occurrence. We're between repression and what we believe is liberation. It is a great transitional time in our world. A few years earlier Kerouac and Ginsburg began nudging at society's seams with On the Road and Howl, respectively. The floodgates are about to open, say, around 1963, perhaps 1965. But not yet. Elvis is germinating. The Beatles are three years away. The counterculture is perched and ready to make a fool of itself a few years hence.
The seeming irony of Mad Men is that a less stringent outward probity might make for a more contented existence—one that could be lived from beneath the constrictions of a life properly lived in 1960. Sure, there'd still be extramarital couplings, deceit, social climbing. But it would perhaps have shed itself of some of the built-in repression and guilt and aorta-glutting acts that weigh so heavily on these Mad Men that it ages them, in certain scenes, literally before our eyes. (Or then again, maybe it's not so ironic; perhaps we are all Mad Men and women at any point in time.)
Article comments
1 - Matt
Great piece Stephen.
2 - Mary K. Williams
You sell the show well Stephen. Nice job.