Plasma Pool

This essay is part of “Point-Hyperpoint: Mad Men,” a rollicking series of posts devoted to discussing AMC’s drama series. Spoilers abound. To read the entire series, please visit this page. To see all of Plasma Pool’s “Point-Hyperpoint” discussions, please click here.

I’m glad you mentioned the ways that the Sterling Cooper bunch brings their personal lives into the ads they produce, Darren, because the relationship between surfaces and interior depths is the one theme that touches almost every character in the show. I hate to bring up The Sopranos again, but the parallels are too obvious: in both shows, the primary characters live a superficially glamorous and exciting lifestyle that turns out to be restrictive and filled with depression.

There’s an important difference between them, though. The Sopranos is probably the most pessimistic show in the history of television, so every aspect of potential glamor is corrupted: the strip clubs are relentlessly tacky, the mistresses take much more than they give, all gifts to family members are essentially bribes, and supposedly loyal mob ties are broken whenever the heat comes around the corner. Mad Men, however, finds some amount of value in the facades that mask that difficulty.

The clearest examples of meaningful surfaces can be found in the relationship between Betty and Don. Despite all the lies and distrust, they share many tender moments, many of which occur early in the morning when they’re woken up by their children. In these scenes, you get the sense that these two actually want to wake up next to each other, and that the responsibilities of their lives away from each other harm their relationship more than any core animosity. Don is not a particularly great husband, but when he returns from LA at the end of the second season to ask for Betty’s forgiveness, you get the sense that he’s genuinely sorry for what he’s done. That doesn’t mean he won’t cheat again in this upcoming season, but that wouldn’t change the fact that his emotions are genuine. Outsiders often say that the Drapers are the ideal couple, and while that statement is obviously not fact, I don’t think it’s devoid of any grounding in reality.

My point about partially truthful surfaces gets back to what you said in your last post about the power of quality advertising: it’s at once both simple and profound. Sterling Cooper’s slogans and clever artwork might be manipulative, but they’re effective because they connect to sincere feelings. The question then becomes how we can possibly reconcile the effectiveness of that surface sheen with the knowledge that it’s essentially a simulacrum of the emotion expressed. Can we still be hooked by the ad even if we know it’s not all real?

These are questions raised by the aesthetics of the show, too. Mad Men is probably the best-shot series in the history of television: the colors are vibrant, the sets are exactly what someone who wasn’t alive in the early ’60s imagines the early ’60s to be, and the camerawork is peerless. (Check out this excellent video essay from Film Freak Central for more on that subject.) But this controlled aesthetic is almost always at odds with the plot and emotional content. It’s a representation of what the characters want us to think about them rather than a mirror of what they’re actually like.

Of course, the much bigger issue for everyone who watches the show — especially men — is what the hell we’re supposed to think about the image of cool these people project. Any self-respecting urban liberal should deplore the disgusting gender relationships, racism, and all-around dickishness of most characters on the show, but those same people create their own Mad Men avatar or dress up as Don Draper or Joan Holloway for Halloween or at least browse the new Mad Men collection at Banana Republic.

I don’t mean to cast aspersion on anyone who does any of these things, because I think it’s an unavoidable draw of the series. As primitive as it might sound, most men would love to spend their work days drinking and ogling women, and a large portion of that same group would love to spend their work nights drinking even more and bedding the same women they ogle during the day. Many of us would also like to get stories published in The Atlantic like Ken Cosgrove (although I would title mine something different than “Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning”), and we also would have to admit that there’s something very attractive about a woman who raises your adorable spitting images and always has food ready for you when you get home. We presumably want more out of life than all these things, but they’re still desirable.

Women have less to pine for from the Mad Men universe, but few would argue that Don Draper isn’t a handsome, exceedingly intelligent man, and last time I checked those types are still pretty popular with the ladies. Plus, Joan Holloway and Betty Draper are the kinds of sex symbols you rarely see in today’s media: Joan could wipe the floor with any of the bony models popular today, and while Betty conforms to our current skinny blonde mold, her most attractive quality is a grace you really only see today when Natalie Portman wears a gown on the red carpet. These women lead horribly restricted lives, but if you transplanted them to the modern era I suspect many women would prefer them to the sex symbols of our time.

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong about being drawn to these aspects of the show. My point is that any desire we have to live in the world of Mad Men is simultaneously checked by the fact that we know this attractive lifestyle is full of mean-spirited people and sadness. Is it okay to think the Sterling Cooper crew is cool when we know they do terrible things to each other?

These characters face a similar question in a slightly different form: how can anyone know if they’re following the right path when it’s both fulfilling and not enough? In the first episode, Don says that happiness is “a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay.” But what if the billboard doesn’t completely work?