Sunday, July 27, 2008

Mad about "Mad Men"

In this morning's Washington Post, Robin Givhan has a highly ambivalent appraisal of Mad Men, who's second season begins tonight at 10:00 on AMC. While nailing some of the most compelling aspects of the show, it is according to her, "racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic" and I agree that it is, if judged by today's standards. The people of the time who held the attitudes presented in "Mad Men" certainly didn't consider themselves so - they simply held the prevailing attitudes of the time. Ms. Givhan understands this, though she still wishes it were not so; she says it "would be good for the soul to see a black woman in the secretarial pool or to see a black actor getting to have one of those three-martini lunches." Two points. First, if you're aim is to improve your soul than I'd suggest you visit your local priest or minister, say a prayer, or open the Bible. You'll get much better results than by watching a television program. Second, if "Mad Men" were to make such accommodations to modern-day opinion than it wouldn't be "Mad Men" anymore but some other show - a normal television show. It would lose part of what makes it so compelling. As I suggested in my Friday morning post about the show, one of its strengths is the way it conveys the prevailing attitudes of the day in context without judgement or comment - it's just the way things were. Ms. Givhan gets this:
"Mad Men" isn't satire. You don't get the feeling that the show, in its willingness to relegate black characters to elevator operators and lunch cart attendants, is attempting to self-consciously ridicule this historic truth but merely to represent it accurately. When the men call the secretaries "girls" and the women respond, the moments aren't played for irony. Instead it's meant to be a glimpse of life through a time machine.

The show's depiction of this sort of prejudice isn't unique. But the tone is striking. Typically, popular culture depicts racists and sexists as evil characters in need of redemption: red-faced men with hick accents, pinch-faced women with cruel mouths, or sleazy lotharios who exude the hygiene of a petri dish. These men are handsome and charming.

Just so. We, in our supposed enlightened age, have the nagging tendency to judge other eras by the standards of our own. We think we're the be-all-and-end-all, that we've arrived at some universal truths that other eras were blind to. Nonsense. Fifty years from now people will look back on our own age and chuckle, or be outraged, that we behaved and believed as we do - perhaps not about race, or sex, but they'll find something. I myself am fairly certain future generations will look back on us as a silly and frivolous people, who allowed their national identity to be diluted, and their standing in the world to be diminished, due to their acceptance of the doctrines of political correctness. But that's a story for another day. The makers of "Mad Men" reject the kind of thinking that says we must judge previous eras through the prism of modern opinion. Ms. Givhan understands this but it still seems to stick in her craw.

Look, I have no problem if "Mad Men" decides to take up the subject of race, to add, as Ms. Givhan suggests, a black secretary or a black man as one of the advertising men. We're dealing with the 1960's here, not the 1860's - it's not like these things were unheard of at the time. The statistics show that blacks made tremendous strides within middle-class America in the 1950's. Even in the pre-civil rights era and without the government's help, many if not most Americans had already come to the conclusion that the treatment of blacks in America was an outrage and must be changed; that blacks were as American as the rest of us (more so than most if judged by the time their ancestors arrived in this country) and deserved an equal place at the table. For "Mad Men" to acknowledge this reality with a black character would be historically accurate and would not go against the grain of the show; after all, they acknowledged the advancement of women in the workplace with the promotion of Peggy, Don Draper's secretary, to junior copywriter in season one's final episode. But, like the promotion of Peggy, the advancement of blacks in this white man's world would need to be done in the context of the show and in the same spirit the rest of the show operates. Otherwise it would fail. If it does becomes satire, or irony, or (even worse) a morality play, I'm done. I've seen it before and I've had enough of it. The day "Mad Men" starts asking forgiveness for its era's perceived sins is the day I stop watching.

As for you, watch it tonight. If season two can live up to the entertainment standards set in season one, you're in for a refreshing treat.

No comments: