[Here is the fourth in our multi-authored series of posts on Mad Men season 4, posted before the publication ofMAD WORLD: Sex, Politics, Style and the 1960s (Duke University Press.]
"THE COOLEST MEDIUM"
Written by Jim Hansen (English)
At the climax of Medium Cool, Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film, we find the former news cameraman John Cassellis (Robert Foster), caught in the clash between the young protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the National Guard. Coming near the conclusion of a film that operates as a critique of the medium of television—a film that works as a patchwork of cinéma vérité, actual documentary footage, and romance-plot—this particular scene with Cassellis as witness (someone who has come neither to protest the current order nor to maintain that order) has always struck me as a peculiarly compelling one. He is there at the Chicago convention to watch one of those crossroads moments in American political and cultural history.
Although Cassellis starts off as a fairly jaded character, he ends up forging sympathetic attachments to several of the other characters in the film, most notably to the widow Eileen and her son. As Cassellis stands between the National Guard and the protestors in the midst of a film that, itself, stands between fiction and reality, we the viewers seem to be invited to make a choice. With whom will you side? Do you stand with the old guard, with those who represent the power structure and the current status quo, or do you stand with the youthful protestors, with those demanding change, with those who oppose the status quo?e
A similar moment marks the ending of Episode 4 of Mad Men, “The Rejected.” As Peggy Olson, whom we have seen rise from secretary to copywriter, leaves for lunch, she stands between the male executives of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce and Vicks Chemical Company all clad in classic blue or gray suits on one side and her new bohemian friends clad in warm, earth-tone street clothes on the other. Like Cassellis, Peggy faces a decision. Like the viewers of Medium Cool, so do we.
Mad Men has always been a show about the 1960s, of course, and perhaps I’ve always hoped that at some point we’d catch Don Draper listening to Sgt. Pepper, dropping acid, growing out his hair, and discovering some mind-blowing inner truth about himself. He is, after all, a character defined by the malleability of identity—that is, by his capacity to alter his persona. I often forget, however, that Mad Men is also a show about the changing of the guard, a show about an eager new generation, represented for the most part by younger characters like Peggy and Pete Campbell, who confront an old guard represented by the likes of Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper, and—yes—even Don Draper. For all of his dynamism and slick charm, for all of his capacity to read a social or cultural situation so brilliantly that he can reshape the desires and motives of those around him, Don remains part of an old guard, the master of a world that is very quickly dissolving.
It will shock you how much this really happened
From the show’s inception we’ve seen Peggy and Pete watch Don with envy, dedication, hostility, and awe. They have, in some ways, desired him, desired to be him, and, in particular, desired to have his easy, suave charm. They openly compete for Don’s approval, and Peggy and Pete are even briefly lovers. Their responses to Don have helped to define the series. Will they choose to be like him? Could they emulate him even if they really wanted to? But Don’s life has been changing of late. In Season 1, we saw him walk nonchalantly between the varied worlds of Sterling Cooper, his suburban family, and his bohemian girlfriend, Midge. Now he often appears alone in his claustral Manhattan apartment.
In the Season 2 episode “The New Girl,” after Peggy secretly delivers her “illegitimate” child, Don visits her in the hospital. He looks down at her and advises her to forget the past and move on with her life. "It will shock you how much it never happened,” he tells her (in a line my colleague Rob Rushing chose for the title of his chapter in the Mad World volume). In such early scenes, Peggy was clearly the disempowered young girl, and Don was the sage manipulator of personas (and persons), the skillful executive who poured drinks for clients, charmed women, and counseled the young and talented.
In Season 4, however, he is divorced from Betty, mostly friendless, and beaten down. And I’d like to point out that it’s not nearly as much fun to watch a bruised and powerless Don Draper in Season 4 as it was to watch a canny Don out-drink and humiliate Roger in Season 1. In “The Rejected,” Don’s secretary, Allison, with whom he has had one rather degrading sexual encounter, openly refers to him as a “drunk.” In fact, when Allison finally manages to work up the courage to confront Don about their encounter she insists, “This actually happened!” A rather weary Don quietly replies, “I know.”
In the first and second seasons of Mad Men, Don seemed much more like a Wildean dandified survivor to me, much more like a character who could use wit, masquerade, and the capacity to read social situations to maneuver past nearly any obstacle, much more like someone who could say, with confidence, “this never happened.” By the third season, as he worked to hang on to his life with Betty and the children, he seemed less capable of controlling his identity or manipulating his various masks. No longer the master illusionist who can advise Peggy that she will be shocked by the ease with which we can all change, forget, overlook, or conceal our own history, Don looks more like a prisoner of his own contrivance now.
Thus, in “The Rejected,” after an infuriated Allison throws a paperweight at Don and storms out of his office, Peggy, standing on her desk in the next office, gazes down through the window as Don very morosely pours himself a drink. The situation we saw unfold in Season 2 has reversed itself as Don is quite literally beneath Peggy in this scene. She looks down on him, but she offers no advice.
As Peggy stands between the corporate executives and the sixties bohemians at the end of the episode, the show provides us with a number of important and overlapping choices. Besides the obvious one between work and fun, Peggy must choose between the old guard and the new, between men in their sixties and the 1960s, between a life defined by the corporate ladder and one defined by the historical moment.
The same episode finds Pete winning the Vicks account by extorting a promise from his father-in-law, and Peggy proceeding with the Pond’s cold cream account. The firm’s younger generation is clearly in its ascendancy on the show. Pete has evidently chosen the more cutthroat world of the executive who does business with lead-pipe cruelty. Peggy chooses to go out with the bohemian crowd. Don, significantly, is not even there, though Pete claims that the executive crowd waits for him. For once, Don appears to be out of choices. When the world got too rough for Dick Whitman, he merely took on a new identity. What will Don Draper do when things get too rough for him?
Medium Cool derives its name from Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 study, Understanding Media. For McLuhan, different forms of mass media allow for different levels of viewer participation. Subsequently, McLuhan defines the films that preceded the 1960s as “Hot Media” because such movies delivered visual narratives so fully that its viewers had to do very little thinking to fit the pieces of narrative together.
On the other hand, McLuhan defines television, with its quick cuts to commercials and its apparently open debates about opinion, as a “Cool Medium”: a medium that invites a great deal of thinking, a medium that requires much of its viewers. “The Rejected” refuses to tell us whether Peggy or Pete (who will soon become a father) has chosen the road to future happiness. By McLuhan’s definition Mad Men, whatever else it may be, remains among the coolest media around today.
"THE COOLEST MEDIUM"
Written by Jim Hansen (English)
At the climax of Medium Cool, Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film, we find the former news cameraman John Cassellis (Robert Foster), caught in the clash between the young protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the National Guard. Coming near the conclusion of a film that operates as a critique of the medium of television—a film that works as a patchwork of cinéma vérité, actual documentary footage, and romance-plot—this particular scene with Cassellis as witness (someone who has come neither to protest the current order nor to maintain that order) has always struck me as a peculiarly compelling one. He is there at the Chicago convention to watch one of those crossroads moments in American political and cultural history.
Although Cassellis starts off as a fairly jaded character, he ends up forging sympathetic attachments to several of the other characters in the film, most notably to the widow Eileen and her son. As Cassellis stands between the National Guard and the protestors in the midst of a film that, itself, stands between fiction and reality, we the viewers seem to be invited to make a choice. With whom will you side? Do you stand with the old guard, with those who represent the power structure and the current status quo, or do you stand with the youthful protestors, with those demanding change, with those who oppose the status quo?eA similar moment marks the ending of Episode 4 of Mad Men, “The Rejected.” As Peggy Olson, whom we have seen rise from secretary to copywriter, leaves for lunch, she stands between the male executives of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce and Vicks Chemical Company all clad in classic blue or gray suits on one side and her new bohemian friends clad in warm, earth-tone street clothes on the other. Like Cassellis, Peggy faces a decision. Like the viewers of Medium Cool, so do we.
Mad Men has always been a show about the 1960s, of course, and perhaps I’ve always hoped that at some point we’d catch Don Draper listening to Sgt. Pepper, dropping acid, growing out his hair, and discovering some mind-blowing inner truth about himself. He is, after all, a character defined by the malleability of identity—that is, by his capacity to alter his persona. I often forget, however, that Mad Men is also a show about the changing of the guard, a show about an eager new generation, represented for the most part by younger characters like Peggy and Pete Campbell, who confront an old guard represented by the likes of Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper, and—yes—even Don Draper. For all of his dynamism and slick charm, for all of his capacity to read a social or cultural situation so brilliantly that he can reshape the desires and motives of those around him, Don remains part of an old guard, the master of a world that is very quickly dissolving.It will shock you how much this really happened
From the show’s inception we’ve seen Peggy and Pete watch Don with envy, dedication, hostility, and awe. They have, in some ways, desired him, desired to be him, and, in particular, desired to have his easy, suave charm. They openly compete for Don’s approval, and Peggy and Pete are even briefly lovers. Their responses to Don have helped to define the series. Will they choose to be like him? Could they emulate him even if they really wanted to? But Don’s life has been changing of late. In Season 1, we saw him walk nonchalantly between the varied worlds of Sterling Cooper, his suburban family, and his bohemian girlfriend, Midge. Now he often appears alone in his claustral Manhattan apartment.
In the Season 2 episode “The New Girl,” after Peggy secretly delivers her “illegitimate” child, Don visits her in the hospital. He looks down at her and advises her to forget the past and move on with her life. "It will shock you how much it never happened,” he tells her (in a line my colleague Rob Rushing chose for the title of his chapter in the Mad World volume). In such early scenes, Peggy was clearly the disempowered young girl, and Don was the sage manipulator of personas (and persons), the skillful executive who poured drinks for clients, charmed women, and counseled the young and talented.
In Season 4, however, he is divorced from Betty, mostly friendless, and beaten down. And I’d like to point out that it’s not nearly as much fun to watch a bruised and powerless Don Draper in Season 4 as it was to watch a canny Don out-drink and humiliate Roger in Season 1. In “The Rejected,” Don’s secretary, Allison, with whom he has had one rather degrading sexual encounter, openly refers to him as a “drunk.” In fact, when Allison finally manages to work up the courage to confront Don about their encounter she insists, “This actually happened!” A rather weary Don quietly replies, “I know.”
In the first and second seasons of Mad Men, Don seemed much more like a Wildean dandified survivor to me, much more like a character who could use wit, masquerade, and the capacity to read social situations to maneuver past nearly any obstacle, much more like someone who could say, with confidence, “this never happened.” By the third season, as he worked to hang on to his life with Betty and the children, he seemed less capable of controlling his identity or manipulating his various masks. No longer the master illusionist who can advise Peggy that she will be shocked by the ease with which we can all change, forget, overlook, or conceal our own history, Don looks more like a prisoner of his own contrivance now.
Thus, in “The Rejected,” after an infuriated Allison throws a paperweight at Don and storms out of his office, Peggy, standing on her desk in the next office, gazes down through the window as Don very morosely pours himself a drink. The situation we saw unfold in Season 2 has reversed itself as Don is quite literally beneath Peggy in this scene. She looks down on him, but she offers no advice.As Peggy stands between the corporate executives and the sixties bohemians at the end of the episode, the show provides us with a number of important and overlapping choices. Besides the obvious one between work and fun, Peggy must choose between the old guard and the new, between men in their sixties and the 1960s, between a life defined by the corporate ladder and one defined by the historical moment.
The same episode finds Pete winning the Vicks account by extorting a promise from his father-in-law, and Peggy proceeding with the Pond’s cold cream account. The firm’s younger generation is clearly in its ascendancy on the show. Pete has evidently chosen the more cutthroat world of the executive who does business with lead-pipe cruelty. Peggy chooses to go out with the bohemian crowd. Don, significantly, is not even there, though Pete claims that the executive crowd waits for him. For once, Don appears to be out of choices. When the world got too rough for Dick Whitman, he merely took on a new identity. What will Don Draper do when things get too rough for him?Medium Cool derives its name from Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 study, Understanding Media. For McLuhan, different forms of mass media allow for different levels of viewer participation. Subsequently, McLuhan defines the films that preceded the 1960s as “Hot Media” because such movies delivered visual narratives so fully that its viewers had to do very little thinking to fit the pieces of narrative together.
On the other hand, McLuhan defines television, with its quick cuts to commercials and its apparently open debates about opinion, as a “Cool Medium”: a medium that invites a great deal of thinking, a medium that requires much of its viewers. “The Rejected” refuses to tell us whether Peggy or Pete (who will soon become a father) has chosen the road to future happiness. By McLuhan’s definition Mad Men, whatever else it may be, remains among the coolest media around today.