Mad Men

It’s not that the female characters aren’t fleshed out either, but
very few of them even attempt to challenge the male dominance that was an accepted
part of life in the early sixties. However, they do get their own way by various
ways and means, mostly sexually, an arena where the men positively flounder.
As a TV drama Mad Men is at its most uncomfortable when history intrudes
on the mythical advertising world they inhabit, especially when race is the
issue. The announcement of Martin Luther King’s assassination comes during
an advertising awards show and guest speaker Paul Newman’s overtly political
spiel is interrupted by a question from the floor that spills the news of the
atrocity. The reaction of the exclusively white advertising audience is of concern
and well, more concern, but the awards show eventually resumes as nobody knows
what else to do.
The sirens wailing in the background and live TV pictures of buildings on fire
in Washington are as specific as it gets about the incendiary situation on the
streets. Joan trying to embrace a black employee typifies the discomfort in
the office – but then it all simply evaporates and the focus returns to
the machinations going on in the imaginary advertising world.
The end result is that the historical events that you know actually happened
don’t seem to have the verisimilitude of the fantasy they intrude on.
Luckily we don’t rely on Mad Men for a view on history –
yet.
While it could be argued that men are almost entirely responsible for creating
society as we know it, the lust for power still drives men to dominate every
position on offer and share as little as possible with the female of the species.
Mad Men’s Peggy Olson could probably be perceived as a prototype
feminist. Peggy’s a woman with brains and ambition who keeps on butting
her head against unreasonable male demands and strictures. The irony is that
when she finally has the opportunity to be in charge herself, she naturally
models herself on the only style she’s ever known – the male style
– and is dismayed to find that her (male) subordinates hate her.
Women have so much to offer this society yet they are constantly repudiated
and belittled by the current crop of Mad Men. Our own Mad Abbott fairly frothed
at the mouth recently when attacking Professor Gillian Triggs in the Australian
Parliament. He was rightly called for serial misogyny by the previous but one
PM but it seems he just can’t help himself. There’s an article in
The
Age on that subject I’ve been asked to direct you to and you can draw
your own conclusions.
I will say that it very much depends on your upbringing as to how you perceive
women’s role in society. Dick and I in our formative years had the good
fortune (by default) to be raised by two women, our mother and grandmother respectively,
and I’m sure that coloured our perceptions about women holding the reins
of power. I know men who have been reared in patriarchal families who cannot
tolerate the notion, let alone the actuality of female doctors, lawyers, judges
etc.
It’s left up to our schools to change those perceptions, but I fear that
sometimes they don’t get very far because of the child’s upbringing.
That the country’s Parliament provides such a bad example is unhelpful.
It’s tempting to think we’ve moved on since the era of Mad Men,
but I fear that not a lot has changed