| August 31, 2009 | Some of the Best "Mad Men" Are Women |
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A few days ago my friend Allyson updated her Facebook status to say that she has been disappointed in "Mad Men" so far this season. And she is not the only one. In some ways I understand where the sentiment is coming from, but I don't agree. While the episodes have been slightly slower paced this season (less Don Draper affairs and binge drinking, for sure), the character development -- particularly the female characters -- has been the best on television. Plus, this season the show is building toward an event that will have a monstrous impact on everyone -- president JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963. (Did you catch the date on Roger Sterling's daughter's wedding invitations? They showed it in close-up. It's Nov, 23, 1963 -- the day after JFK was assassinated -- so it's very unlikely the wedding is going to happen.) The character development in Season 3 has been fascinating, particularly the main female characters: Peggy Olson, Joan Holloway, and Betty Draper as well as closeted gay adman Salvatore Romano who did finally have a tryst with a guy. (Read New York mag's Aug 17 interview with Brian Batt who plays Sal for some insights on Sal's love life.) People keep commenting that Peggy is slowly becoming the female version of Don Draper with everything that entails. But what does it mean for a woman to be Don Draper? In an interview posted today in the Canadian National Post, Elizabeth Moss who plays Peggy said of "Mad Men" Season Three:
Though she is ambitious and also has a dark secret and "gets" what it means to sell a great creative idea, there's no question that Peggy is different than Don. She's more awkward -- certainly painful to watch in some scenes like the one when she sang into the mirror doing that Ann Margaret "Bye Bye Birdie" routine. But what makes her fascinating is that, despite her awkwardness and perhaps naivete, she still exudes confidence in her career and even a strange confidence in her strange sexual dalliances with Pete Campbell and the random guy she picked up at the bar this season. In this Times Online piece "Mad Men: The real Mad women," Mary Wells Lawrence (one of the 1960s adwomen who provided real-life inspiration for the character of Peggy Olson) -- now in her eighties -- says "Mad Men" is not an accurate representation about what things were really like in the ad agencies of the 1960s. I particularly love the quote where she says: "We weren't lusting after each other. We were lusting after ourselves. We were all crazy about ourselves. Crazy about the talent that we all felt we had. When you are that self-centered, you don't have room for romance with anyone else." (Reminds me of Vassar College. But for some reason, also makes me want to read Wells Lawrence's autobiography "A Big Life in Advertising".) It's surprising that a show called "Mad Men," has some of the best written and complex female characters on television, but it shouldn't be when you realize that the majority of the show's writers are women. This Wall Street Journal article "The Women Behind 'Mad Men'" says that seven of the nine members of the "Mad Men" writing team are women and women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. This is pretty amazing, especially if you consider the fact that "of the roughly 13,400 members of Directors Guild of America, only about 1,000 (7%) are listed as female directors." With its slick '60s style and constant cocktail consumption, it seems like it would be easy for me and probably most people to feel a little nostalgic for the days of "Mad Men," but despite the fab outfits, I'm not nostalgic for the sad options available, particularly for the women of 1963, but also for everyone. I'm very curious to see how the women's movement and the civil rights movement will affect these characters. "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner said something I liked that about Season 3 in his June 2009 Rolling Stone interview:
Labels: allyson, americanculture, madmen, nostalgia, tv, women posted by Jess Barron @ 2:44 PM 
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