Madison Avenue Revisited


Mad MenIn the beginning, there were men. Actual men, in a litany that includes N.W. Ayer, J. Walter Thompson, David Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, John Orr Young & Raymond Rubicam, Mac Dane, Ned Doyle, & William Bernbach. As individuals they created an industry that is the epicenter of the American economy: advertising. Many of the classic advertising agencies have been subsumed into nameless conglomerates like Publicis, Interpublic Groups, and Omnicom. Orwell would have a field day with this.

But AMC’s new series Mad Men turns the clock back to the undisputed heyday of the business, the Madison Avenue of the 1960s, when men smoked, drank, and back-stabbed their way through the honest week’s work.

I don’t know how much time I will want to spend in this period piece, but I love the homage to Saul Bass in the opening credits: that distinctive falling body is reminiscent of the poster for Vertigo and his film title sequences . Bass was the advertising graphic designer of the AT&T Bell system logo who revolutionized film graphics. It’s a clever nod, and in a small example of vertical integration, the series premiere was preceded by Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which Bass also did the title sequence for. Someone at AMC is thinking like a mad man.

The premiere episode touches on every note one associates with the time: smoking, anti-Semitism lumped with Catholic slights, black America as waiters, Eames chairs, Reader’s Digest, the last gasp of the circle skirt.

But for me, it’s the characterization of women that makes me wonder if I will spend much time in this world. It may be historically accurate, but I don’t find it charming.

I came of age in the relatively privileged 1980s. The ‘70s Feminism was still wafting in the air, but the roots that had propelled it didn’t touch my sheltered life. I was always encouraged at home to strive for whatever I could attain, and I never worked as anyone’s assistant.

But this is the world of “Good morning girls” from Mr. Campbell and Mr. Draper, where the worldly secretary Joan says of the new electric typewriter, “It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.” The spectrum of women continues from dandy Don Draper’s mistress who owns her own business to his wife, tucked away in the suburbs, to the female owner of a Jewish store who voices the prescient dictum of people wanting to buy something because it costs more. It’s true, these are not narrow portrayals, and we see that Mr. Draper, for all his power, suffers a fatalist’s outlook: “You’re born alone and die alone.”

As television, it’s a powerful re-creation/evocation of a time and place by Matt Weiner, a writer and producer from The Sopranos. It’s clear that this era holds a fascination for Mr. Weiner, perhaps fueled by the celluloid slickness of The Sweet Smell of Success, See Sammy Run, maybe even Bewitched. There are nice flourishes, like the Bass opening and the myth of the napkin doodle, that show a true fan’s warmth toward his subject. Still, Mr. Weiner’s ad men are in a clearly defined Members Only club of their own, and whether it’s a compelling place to spend an hour each week is yet to be seen.

updated July 21, 2007

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July 20th, 2007
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Viewing 6 Comments

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    Great review Ms. Peel - I for one will be tuning in again. I thought Mad Men was well-crafted in its debut, and in the creation of an alternative universe: New York in 1960.

    I do suspect that the anti-feminism in the series will be a secret fantasy world for modern men to revel in once a week. I really do.

    But I'll forgive that. Such a fascinating period to recreate - such clear ties to iconic cultural pieces ranging from North by Northwest (which essentially had Cary Grant in the Draper role just a few years before) to the Apartment (the young secretary is clearly an homage to Shirley MacLaine's great role) to Bewitched (no accident the blonde at the end of the driveway in Westchester when a darker, brooding Darren Stevens gets home).

    The vices and prejudices of 1960 New York make me feel better - in my lifetime (off by a mere two years) everything has changed.
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    Great post. I was thinking the same thing as I tuned in last night. I was curious about it, but I don't know if I'll be able to stomach it on a weekly basis.
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    I happened on the late-night repeat of the show quite by accident, and, oddly enough for such a male-dominated show, my favorite characters were some of the women: the career-gal artist (and mistress of the main male character), the Jewish department-store owner, and "the new girl" in the office. The fact that main-guy Draper seems to have such a Conradian world-view is appealing to me, and the mise en scéne, as noted, is a lot of fun. I was pleasantly surprised by the show, but then I watch any new show expecting it to suck to high heaven. Which they usually do.
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    Tom, you're right that this is a very stylish fantasy land of very un-p.c. attitudes for men. It will be interesting if the gender divide becomes an issue for the series, in terms of audience and ratings.
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    Our friend Jim Wolcott has a has a post up on his blog that references Ms. Peel's here and adds his own take. Here's a sample:

    "There were other implausibilities in the premiere episode, many of them revolving around Draper's deceptively gawky, naive new secretary, and a clumsy signaling of one character's closeted status, which was handled with all the subtlety of a tic outbreak. I don't understand why the show started off so dour. It'd be one thing if we saw fear of failure, financial and marital worries, etc., gradually chip away at the ad men's wolfish grins, but in their jet-black suits they seem to be wearing their hollow souls from their first silhouetted appearance, and each plume of cigarette smoke carries a whiff of damnation (since the show establishes from the outset that they're peddling cancer)."

    Well said, but I also agree with his take-away too:

    "But it would be churlish not to give Mad Men a few more tries. A labor of love this dedicated deserves some leeway, and maybe the tone will lighten now that it's established its serioso post-Sopranos bona fides. If it gets any darker, we'll have to wear flashlight helmets to pick out the principals as they drown their sorrows in even deeper sorrows."
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    The most affecting moment for me was toward the end of Don Draper's conversation in the cocktail lounge with the woman who owns the department store. There was a look in his eyes when he, and we, recognize that this is probably the first time a woman has spoken to him with the conviction that she's his equal. He's stimulated mentally by a woman in a way that he almost certainly has not experienced before, and we can see how much of a boon feminism has been for men, too.

    The only really heavy-handed moment was when Draper pulled out his Purple Heart.
 

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