[The fifth in the Unit for Criticism's multi-authored series of posts on Season 6 of AMC's Mad Men, posted in collaboration with the publication ofMADMEN, MADWORLD: Sex, Politics, Style, andthe 1960s(Duke University Press, March 2013) Eds. Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky and Robert A. Rushing]

"Get Your Wargasm On"

Written by: Nicholas D. Mirzoeff (New York University)

Last week my friend and colleague Dana Polan accomplished the astonishing feat of blogging Mad Men in the advert breaks. Watching him do this made me aware of the tension between a show about advertising and the advertising shown during that show. Mad Men’s drama is always doubled: between the present and the past it represents, the story the characters are involved in and the one known to viewers, and its aspirations to drama in a highly commercial environment.

At the end of the last episode, “The Flood,” an odd coincidence highlighted how fragile that balance can be. Right after the incomprehensible-as-ever “scenes from next week,” AMC cut to a title for its follow-up show Rectify, which happened to be “presented by Jaguar.” The once-British Jaguar that was sold by Ford to India’s Tata Motors in 2008 to increase its chances of survival in the financial crisis. The same Jaguar that boosted SCDP after Joan did her trade of sex-for-partnership last season. Which was valued by Pete Campbell for her at the beginning of this episode (the sixth in Season 6, “For Immediate Release”) at about $1 million: the size of her partnership if SCDP goes public as planned.


The coincidence reminds us of what we always know but try to forget—that the show about advertising exists to sell. In the new TV economy, it has to sell itself as much as it sells advertising. But sell it must.

In short, in a show that relies on disavowal, the fetishism at the heart of commodity fetishism must be kept intact. That does not mean we are not aware of it. As Octave Mannoni beautifully defined fetishism, its subject says: “Je sais, mais quand meme/I know but nonetheless...” So we know that Don Draper is Dick Whitman but he remains “Don.” Increasingly, it seems that the mythic Don is the only fixed point in the changing 1960s world of Mad Men, where even Pete Campbell has sideburns.

In one fell swoop, showrunner and writer of this episode Matthew Weiner set out to merge the two sides of the series, bringing sex and sales into one unit over the course of a single episode. That unit is a military formation, forged to “fight the war with bodies on the ground,” as CGC partner Ted Chaough puts it. The sole object of desire is now the all-American Chevrolet, presumably a Corvette. It’s the capitalist equivalent of the Weather Underground’s “wargasm,” the merging of anti-war and anti-racist action with compulsory anti-monogamy.

Wired blogger Sean Collins noted two episodes ago that Mad Men was getting worried that people hate what it sells. He meant within SCDP but underpinning the thought is a sense that audiences don't like the show as much as they like what's outside it--the radical 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement and so on. In “For Immediate Release,” all that anxiety is set aside for a car, the ultimate advertiser’s dream and the vehicle of many a sexualized desire.

The episode ends with Peggy drafting a press release for the new merger of SCDP with CGC. The dateline is May 14, 1968. No mention (yet) of the French revolution that is still so evocative that a recent film was titled simply Après mai. Peggy’s world has merged, not fallen apart. It will bring Don, her old object of desire, into bed with Ted, her new fantasy object. In the course of the show, Ted has kissed her, prompting her to say later: "I don't like change, I want everything to stay the way it was.” Bobby Kennedy has been mentioned twice in the last two episodes. The Democratic Convention, the formation of the Weather Underground and Nixon’s election are all coming.

To change Mad Men’s world, taboos are broken left and right. Jaguar is dumped by Don, unable to stomach Herb’s latest inanity, leading to fury from Pete and Joan alike. Now going public has been spoiled by Don’s private action. Joan witheringly says “If I could deal with him, you could deal with him.” What seems like a cataclysm is merely the set-up.

As Chevy comes into focus for us as viewers, the as-yet-unaware Pete Campbell encounters Mr. Vogel, his father-in-law, in the brothel they all seem to go to, with someone he describes to Ken as the "biggest blackest prostitute you've ever seen.” So much for the brief flirtation with anti-racism last week. No African-American characters are even seen during “For Immediate Release,” as if to say that the series had its “race moment” and is moving on.

Almost in passing, Vogel withdraws Vicks business from SCDP, asserting a TV version of the Law of the Father: it’s okay for me to be in the cat-house but you have defiled my princess, aka Trudy. SCDP seems to be down and out. In a theatrical deus ex machina moment, Roger Sterling is able to use his unlikely liaison with an airline hostess to stage an “accidental” meeting with a Chevy executive. And the series pivots.

The real merger arrives with a homoerotic encounter between Don and Ted. They’re drinking late at night in a hotel bar in Detroit. They realize that they are not going to get the Chevy account because they are not big enough—and yes, all these slightly juvenile puns resonate throughout an episode in which Megan decides to blow Don to get his attention, and the whole show is about “release.” Don pitches to Ted, always the ultimate erotic moment for Mad Men. His slogan for Chevy: “the future is something you haven't even thought of yet.” It sweeps Ted off his feet, and the two stop drinking because they “have a long night ahead.”

The show about advertising is watched by relatively few people from a sales point of view. 3.4 million watched the season 6 premier, the second highest audience for Mad Men ever. Over a third of those saw it via a DVR or Tivo device, whose attraction at least in part is to be able to fast forward past the ads. Nonetheless, Mad Men ads are relatively expensive for AMC but don’t cover the $2.3 million per episode cost of the show, according to industry gossip:

Commercials on first-run episodes of Mad Men cost about $20,000-$25,000 per 30 seconds, according to one buyer. (AMC gets $10,000-$15,000 for Mad Men rerun ads.) That compares with the $5,000 spots in AMC’s primetime movies.

Hendricks ad for Johnnie Walker.

Since Mad Men’s 2007 debut AMC overall ad revenue has increased by 23%, reaching $157 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Watching Mad Men’s ads for the first time—because I usually fast-forward through them—I discovered that there were about sixteen minutes of ads shown yesterday in the New York City area. Appropriately, we began with the Lincoln MT car ads that have tied the new vehicle to Mad Men, just as the show tied SCDP to first Jaguar and now Chevy. It was shown again later.

The Christina Hendricks Johnnie Walker whisky ad also appears twice, with her come-on line: “It's classic. It's bold. It's JOHNNIE WALKER. And you ordered it.”

The repetition is perhaps designed to catch the attention of the DVR crowd. But the femme fatale that repeats cannot help but remind us, as Freud had it in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, that repetition is the signature of the death drive. That’s a risky place for a show about selling to go. It’s evoked by Don in Detroit: “this business is rigged.” As if that was suddenly news to him. As if capitalism was really what Don says to heart surgeon Dr. Rosen: “Make your own opportunities.” Don certainly did with Rosen’s wife Sylvia. In the free market, most of us get screwed. In the actual advertising shown during Mad Men, there’s a similar uneven suturing between AMC’s standard programming and advertising, and the upscale fantasy the show represents. The ad that was most like the Mad Men aspirational audience was for a VW turbo hybrid, capable of overtaking trucks in the 500 meter passing lanes you find on mountain roads. In other words—yes, you can have a sporty car and claim to be green! These ads linked with AMC promotions for a new series of The Killing. Another less exalted TV world also came into view, one where Burger King is advertising 75 cent drinks, Staples offers 5% off everything and the aspiration is towards a trip to Atlantic City. These ads were paired with promotions for the second season of a grim-looking reality show called Small Town Security. The reality is that even in the prime New York market, AMC can’t fill its ad space with so-called upscale advertising because the recession continues and no one in the 99% has any money to spend. Nonetheless, together with other hit shows like The Walking Dead, Mad Men has lifted the whole AMC enterprise, according to a recent CNBC report:

Cablevision spun off its series of assets known as Rainbow Media Holdings in July 2011, renaming them AMC Networks after their successful flagship channel. Since starting to trade publicly as AMCX the stock has gained more than 75 percent.

The real deal comes from increasing other revenue. The price that AMC can charge cable operators has increased to 24 c. over the lifetime of the show, raising about $24 million new income. Netflix apparently pay $1 million an episode to have the show for its streaming service. There are iTunes, Amazon and international deals too. So it matters that Mad Men stays cool. If viewers cease to be interested, the revenue dries up. The reboot that went into effect in “For Immediate Release” should have the desired effect. But choices lie ahead. How long can you show sexism (think how Betty is framed by the show) or the pervasive racism of corporate America and not be complicit with it? It’s encouraging to see that these issues are now being foregrounded in the series. Will audiences stay with it as it does? Will advertisers? It’s certainly become more interesting to watch and see.