Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

Also I might start my own thread on this or something because I know it's annoying to everyone and I really don't want a repeat of the previous Mad Men thread's clusterfuck, but the entire way they've treated Dawn's storyline has been so downright bizarre that I'm not sure what they're even going for. A black secretary at a company like SCDP wouldn't have been that unusual in 1960 much less 1966. I'm not sure what the point is, since she doesn't even have her own story (and apparently never will because she doesn't want to be a copywriter), she's just a character to watch Roger/Peggy/etc. be racist towards. And it wouldn't be anachronistic to do a black copywriter at this point, so Weiner's hands aren't tied or anything in terms of finally offering up a character of color with a single moment of development on the show. Why did they even bother with this given that she's apparently not going to be a character whose perspective we ever see? It just seems like some cheap "times are changing" window dressing to me (on the same level as Mad Men's usual thing with using black people as props at parties to signify a level of progressiveness) and I find it gross. I mean, I could be wrong and she could suddenly become a fleshed out character, but so far the show definitely is working far harder to develop Ginsberg than Dawn.

i agree with what you say. i wonder whether the lack of a substantive black character is part of weiner's seeming compulsion to not follow predictable TV-series tropes (in this case, introducing a minority character late in a series)--obviously it's misguided if the case.

although having a major black character would in some sense make the show "about race" in a way that one can argue it is not at this point, in any great measure anyway. maybe you just have a bunch of white writers too scared to introduce a major black character and "get it wrong." which would be telling in its own way.

A black secretary at a company like SCDP wouldn't have been that unusual in 1960 much less 1966.

this is absolutely true. a LOT of (black) friends' parents and grandparents were secretaries in white-owned and largely white-operated firms. it was actually a major way black families could become upwardly mobile in the middle of the century.

i don't know if this pattern holds all over the country, but it's certainly true in major northern cities.

that would be a fun thread xposts

i don't mind having that discussion here. got to do _something_ in between sundays.

i say have at it right here

seems like the tension is between Matt Weiner as the p. much undisputed Author of the series as a whole being interested in and capable of telling stories about a set of things that apparently doesn't include black folks and the importance of advocating for diverse viewpoints in the pop culture we as a society create and consume

it'd be nice if MW turned out to have an angle on race/black folks other than erasure/omission and tokenization

I don't see his use of race or black folks as tokenization.

Tokenization would require more interest than he seems to have.

this might have been optimistic for the season ahead, but Mad Men and Race

His figures might be disputed (Melissa would know) but I think it's always important to remember how this is a show about an insular place that is incredibly slow in adapting to anything, whether it be cultural or personal. I'd like to see Dawn developed (although I imagine that would be tricky), but her face after Peggy says "but you're not a nurse" was one of the best moments of the season for me.

I'll probably be disappointed if the race issue doesn't develop more though, if only because the first scene was so much about it and that tends to establish the theme for the season.

Don Draper sitting there with the Ad Age reporter v.o. "Who is Don Draper?" a pretty great moment for the show last season. Except for it being "on the nose" I guess

I think the insularity of SCDP would be easier to swallow if the show would occasionally acknowledge the world outside its walls. Peggy still seems to think she's the only female copywriter in New York, as does everyone around her. Caroline Robinson was already three years into being a copywriter at JWT while the show is acting like hiring Dawn would have been a big deal. There's no way that these characters wouldn't know these things already.

And I have issues galore with that Slate article. But that would take a little time for me to detangle and I'm drifting off. x-post

I don't know. the world around them seems to pop up as background extras in parties so

I'm pretty sure Dawn will develop as a character. there are, thankfully, more ways her character could develop that her wanting to be a copywriter (which would be ridiculous, frankly, since two of don's previous secretaries have had this as a development point) but her character development would only make sense as a result of contact/conflict/empathy or whatever with other members of the office and she's had limited contact with anyone, other than peggy, so far which this seems realistic.

There's no reason the show couldn't follow her home the way it has Ginsberg.

true but it was that that seemed unusual coming so early on.

I agree Dawn hasn't had much to do so far but I don't think the fact that she's working there is considered that weird to anyone at SCDP except dinosaurs like Roger.

The camera following Ginsberg home felt really jarring at the time, they totally fumbled that IMO.

(It's also a show that has tended to introduce characters, even major ones like Laine and Megan, very slowly. Not saying they'll definitely develop Dawn's character but they could well do so).

Truly boggled that ppl are complaining about not enough development of Ginsburg and Dawn something like two episodes after they were introduced

Also I don't see how it's obvious in any way that Dawn isn't going to have a larger role, they are always promoting characters out of the background, do I even have to mention Megan

That doesn't make for a great social justice outrage Guardian article though.

Fuck off.

I think after four seasons of no poc on the show, and finally the only black character introduced in an era of black copywriters is a secretary, it's not being unreasonable to ask for a little more from the Mad Men writing staff. This isn't 2 and a half girls. We can expect a little more.

And with Ginsburg the problem isn't that he isn't fleshed out enough but that the backstory and characterization they've given him is particularly poor and tin-eared. But I get that for whatever reason there will always be ppl defending this show against these sorts of critiques.

im quite happy to hear criticism of this show, and i think there are lots of things wrong with it, but i just abhor the loathsome obsession with representation. it's tiresome.

I'm really not bothered if all we see of Dawn is her sitting at her desk answering phones tbh. There's plenty of other characters that maintain my interest.

if mad men had 15.2%, or whatever the correct quota would be, of fleshed out minority characters, and the correspondent ratio of women copywriters would that make any fucking difference to anything whatsoever? and would it change the fact that the matthew weiner's of this world are and will continue to be mainly white dudes, which would seem to me to be the more pertinent issue? blah. whatevs.

it's not just the lack of representation but the type of representation. considering how terrible the few scenes with dawn this season have been (particularly w/ peggy + the purse) maybe they've been avoiding race cause they kinda suck at writing about it?

They're deliberately muddying the backstory and characterisation of Ginsburg, the whole point is that we don't know which bits he's making up and which bits are true.

We don't know where they're going with Dawn's character at all yet. Although I'm unsure if they're being criticised for not giving her much screen time or failing to put a black character in a sufficiently senior position (in a very conservative environment). If you're going to critique the writers' treatment of these characters then it's probably best to wait until closer to the end of the series, otherwise it's like making pronouncements on Peggy's character based on four or five episodes in S1.

We're talking about quotas awfully early on in this conversation. Wake me up when we get to pretending that what I actually unreasonably want from the show is a legion of feminist black one-legged schizophrenic lesbians. x-posts

Even Peggy tho - how come the most powerful female copywriter in the show had to be championed by a white guy? I love Peggy and I've enjoyed her story but this is a very particular way of showing how these equality movements made inroads. Instead of showing (except obliquely through office windows and rumors) how people were fighting to break their way in, they primarily show when the company is forced or agrees to let people in. They hire Dawn because they made a stupid advertisement to needle a different firm. Obviously they have the right to their artistic vision, but no one is wrong to question why this is the particular artistic vision they're pursuing.

I love Peggy and I've enjoyed her story but this is a very particular way of showing how these equality movements made inroads. Instead of showing (except obliquely through office windows and rumors) how people were fighting to break their way in, they primarily show when the company is forced or agrees to let people in

the majority of the show takes place in the advertising agency. it doesnt seem unnatural that such things are presented in the way they are.

It seems unnatural because it actually makes no sense.

no sense in the narrative of the show or no sense in that it is not realistic because it's not historically accurate? the latter being not very important, imo.

altho the show is at pains to explain that the particular agency is especially conservative. kinsey saying in the first season that there are women copywriters at other firms. when ginsberg is hired it's explained that every agency has a "jew" copywriter and that one "even" has a "coloured" copywriter.

Both? It's extremely poor character development both for Peggy and Dawn and deprives them of drive and agency and makes them flatter and more boring as characters. And it's not historically accurate. The two things are not mutually exclusive. x-post

And you don't see how that's kind of lazy and gross?

Anyone else pick up hints that Ginsberg's father is schizophrenic? The Mars story.. Holocaust.. Randomly showing up at the office to 'make xeroxes for his case'.

You realize that it was a deliberate decision to set it at such a conservative agency, and to make it similarly conservative when they broke off into their own agency? And of course, the 'historical circumstances' only don't matter when they contradict the vision of the show. If history had shown that there were no black copywriters in 1966 I'm sure the rallying cry would go up that the show is just trying to be historically accurate. Why can't viewers hold the writers accountable for the parts of history that they choose to utilize? Would it have been so out of character if after breaking off to form SCDP they had broader hiring practices? Could've easily fit into the world of the show, imho. Hell, with a little tweaking they could've hired a black copywriter after the ad fiasco and it would've been totally believable. if you don't believe the writers should be criticized for these choices, you are sorta invalidated the entire field of art criticism in general.

What are they saying, how are they saying it, and what do you feel about what they're saying? All fair questions, imho.

But I get that for whatever reason there will always be ppl defending this show against these sorts of critiques.

You realize that it was a deliberate decision to set it at such a conservative agency, and to make it similarly conservative when they broke off into their own agency?

i do realise this. i just don't realise why it is incumbent on them not to do this.

Afaic they have free will and agency to make whatever choices they wanted, just as I have the free will and agency to criticize them for choices I feel are poorly made. Why is this a substantially poorer thing about which to criticize them than, say, writing an episode you found boring? If anything I find the political critiques much more resonant and important than criticisms of aesthetics or pace.

If anything I find the political critiques much more resonant and important than criticisms of aesthetics or pace

this is where we differ completely i guess.

^^^

FWIW I think Melissa's reading of Peggy is doing the character a massive disservice, that because she's not on a politicised frontline that she lacks drive of her agency of her own. You're being really reductive about the character to fit your critique.

Actually one of the interesting things about Peggy's character is that she's actually very uncomfortable on a politicised frontline, the discussion about eg civil rights from last season. The whole point of Mad Men is that it's viewing the changes of the 60s through a conservative lens through the eyes of people who are seeing the world they're used to slipping away, which is kind of the opposite of the way we're used to looking at them with the benefit of decades of hindsight. (The interesting thing about Don is that he's caught between these two impulses).

If it was a show about people forcing their way up from the bottom it would be completely different, although by no means less interesting, but other writers have done that.

it's a shame that mad men, unlike all other tv ever, has failed to perfectly represent an exact time in history.

lol, this is like when ppl argue on the politics threads that the only complaint against obama is that he's not perfect.

I think the thing to me is that there's no way a person with Peggy's story ever existed, so I find her inherently uninteresting on the level of watching her career arc play out. She's a bizarre character to me. Inarticulate, flat, disinterested in the world, petulant, almost actively bad at her job whenever we get to see her do it. Elisabeth Moss doesn't help the flatness to me. If I had to name a single reason that Mad Men does not appeal to me, I would cite Peggy. She doesn't make any sense to me for a character in her position. She seems like a writerly creation through and through, designed to buck expectation for what people would expect out of a character like her, without much critical thought put into what expectations for her character actually made sense for her context and which ones could be interestingly subverted. x-post

there's no way a person with Peggy's story ever existed

Why not?

God knows Mad Men has its flaws but that post confirms my suspicion that you're complaining about the writers choosing to present her as a conflicted and imperfect human being rather than a feminist strawwoman.