“You Really Got Me Now”
Written by Todd McGowan(University of Vermont)
The term “the other woman” is almost necessarily pejorative. But this episode of Mad Men takes as its project a redefinition of its titular expression. The other woman is not the mistress or even the car that the man cannot have (as the Jaguar ad campaign suggests) but the woman who cannot be bought, the woman who resists the very logic of exchange, whom no man can have. This is Peggy at the end of the episode. The fundamental idea of the episode is that it is only by adopting this position of the other woman in the way that Peggy does that one can challenge the universalized prostitution that capitalism demands of its subjects, especially women.
The episode “The Other Woman” explores the link between prostitution and capitalism from beginning to end. We prostitute ourselves or employ others as prostitutes, the show suggests, out of social or economic exigency, and capitalism incessantly produces this exigency. Though prostitution obviously predates capitalism, the relationship between the two is very close. It was Marx who first saw capitalism as a “general prostitution of the laborer” for its insistence that this economic system forces workers not simply to sell what they produce but themselves and their time. In fact, this parallel with prostitution distinguishes capitalism from a barter economy in which one can trade products rather than one’s labor.
Because “The Other Woman” makes the universalization of capitalism fully explicit, it is perhaps the most feminist episode of the series thus far. We see several moments where capitalism involves the transformation of women into sexual commodities. Even when Megan seems to strike out on her own as an actor to follow her dream, she finds herself forced to show her body to three men while trying to get a part in a play and also has to endure Don’s refusal to accept that the demands of her fledgling career might disrupt the life together that he imagines. For her part, Peggy cannot work on the firm’s most important prospective account because Jaguar does not want a “girl” on the project, and the men at the agency capitulate completely to this implicit demand.
The great strength of capitalism as a system stems from its capacity for the always-disappointed promise of inclusion. Inclusion seems to be embodied in the very next commodity, the commodity that one doesn’t yet have but sees from afar. The newest commodity appeals most strongly because it appears to hold the key to an always-elusive sense of inclusion. This is the foundation of the Jaguar advertising campaign that Don pitches to the company’s selection board. Buying a Jaguar, the campaign claims, enables the male consumer to have the unattainable object. As the unattainable object, the Jaguar is standing in for a woman that a man views as just out of reach. The Jaguar will serve as the mistress/thing of beauty that the man desires but can never own, and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce will play the role of the pimp facilitating this relationship.
This is evident in Don’s act during the partners’ meeting early in the episode. When Pete relates the request for a night with Joan made by Herb Rennet, Don rejects the possibility categorically and walks out of the meeting. The other partners, despite their statements concerning ethical qualms, all remain in the meeting and consider the prostitution of their friend and colleague as thinkable. (Lane, perhaps, assuages his guilt while also attending to his own bottom line by encouraging Joan to insist on a 5% partnership in lieu of a one-time outlay. Although the idea appeals to her and enables her to insist on voice in decision-making, the root of it is Lane’s own dire financial situation which has driven him to extending the firm’s credit and forging a check.) Later, Don’s exceptional status further stands out. When he learns that Pete and the others have presented an offer to Joan, he exclaims, “I don’t work like this” and tries to dissuade Joan from going through with the nefarious rendezvous — but tries too late.
If we think of the term “the other woman” in the usual sense, Joan qualifies. She is not Herb Rennet’s wife and yet she sleeps with him. (In the last episode, “Christmas Waltz,” Joan even played at being Don’s wife for a Jaguar test drive.) But in agreeing to sleep with Rennet, Joan does what most of us would do in a similar situation. Her rapist husband has just filed for divorce after abandoning her for the sake of his own version of male inclusion and with uncertain means for supporting herself and her child, the decision to prostitute herself just once for so large a gain makes good economic sense.
Not only that, but the show illustrates that Joan doesn’t really have a choice in this situation. All of the forces at the agency and within the social structure depicted by the show push Joan toward the act of prostituting herself. Don, the one figure who presents the opportunity for resistance, is ineffectual and arrives too late. He comes to Joan to express his absolute opposition to the transformation of the ad agency into a sexual procurement agency. The depiction of his visit to Joan reveals his lack of efficacy and Joan’s absence of true options. When we first see him arrive and speak to Joan, it seems as if she has not yet gone to see Herb, but later the show repeats Don’s visit to make it clear that it occurs after the act. Even Don cannot prevent the debasement that the firm perpetuates and it is a debasement that the show reveals to be universal within the capitalist world.
Often on Mad Men we witness Don commit a seemingly self-destructive act that liberates him from his symbolic attachments. Most famously, perhaps, in Season 4’s “Blowing Smoke” he writes an advertisement attacking cigarettes after already losing Lucky Strike, a brand of cigarettes, as the firm’s most important client. Peggy is also capable of such acts. Her most dramatic moment occurs at the end of “The Other Woman,” as she tells Don that she is leaving the firm. She refuses any counteroffer, no matter how much money it might involve and tells Don that she is only doing what he himself would do. She makes clear that the capacity for this type of absolute break is something that they both share as an ethical position.
One might object that Peggy is not so much making an absolute break as advancing her career. But this would be to misread the nature of her act. The episode ends not with Peggy newly installed at the new agency but with her departure from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Though Peggy leaves for another ad agency and a larger salary, she specifically leaves Don and the office. This becomes evident when she rejects the very possibility of a counteroffer. Peggy’s career move serves as an alibi for her departure. Though Peggy has no knowledge about Joan’s involvement in the Jaguar deal, it is no coincidence that these two story lines happen in the same episode. We have no idea what Peggy’s reaction to the partners’ request or to Joan’s acceptance of the deal might be, but we do know that the partners’ pimping out of Joan further solidifies the agency’s descent into an unrestrained capitalism-as-prostitution with no space for an act outside of its insistence on unbridled corruption.
The burden of this position falls on us as spectators. If we enjoy Peggy’s smile, we enjoy the possibility of our own exclusion and our own escape from the system of universalized prostitution in which we are mired.