Posted on 10/29/2009 3:28:11 PM PDT by cold666pack
Harry Stein What Mad Men Gets Wrong The fifties, a decade of forgotten loyalty, honor, and patriotism
The ongoing frenzy over Mad Men, which recently landed the Emmy for best drama series for the second straight year, has me thinking about my father-in-law and his group of cronies in Monterey, California. I wrote a book about these guys some years back, called The Girl Watchers Club. For over 30 years, they got together every week to shoot the breeze about their jobs, their families, and the world at large and, invariably, to reminisce about the war in which they’d all served. Though they were perhaps a few years older than the sharks who populate Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper Ad Agency—as every devotee of the show knows, lead character Don Draper’s war was Korea, not World War II—the era in which the show is set was their time also, the period when they were most fully involved in nurturing their careers and raising their young families and otherwise building an America very different from the one we know today. And though the creators of Mad Men are obsessed with period accuracy—so much so, according to Vanity Fair, that even the books on Draper’s office shelves match the time—for many of us who recall those recent yet oddly unfamiliar days, the show gets some of the biggest things all wrong.
No mystery there, since in its depiction of the fifties and early sixties, Mad Men faithfully reflects the dominant liberal view of that era as a time of rampant materialism, spiritless conformity, and reflexive bigotry. The corollary is that we were redeemed—liberated—not just by the civil rights movement but by the antiwar, feminist, and sexual-liberation crusades that followed. So ubiquitous is this view that its adherents can scarcely mention Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, or Leave It to Beaver, even in print, without sneering. Almost any graduate of today’s public schools will tell you, and plenty of their aging antiwar moms and dads will agree, that their grandparents were racist, sexist, and shockingly homophobic, and that’s before you even get to the hypocrisy that characterized their interpersonal relations.
In this view, needless to say, we are so much better than all that today. As New York Times op-ed columnist Timothy Egan summed it up in his paean to Mad Men, the half-century from then to now has been a steady “march toward a more tolerant, equitable, less socially inauthentic society.” And sure, there is plenty of basis for that judgment. My father-in-law, Moe Turner, used to beat himself up over how, growing up in Arkansas under the American version of apartheid, he’d been so blind to the evil playing out daily before his eyes. Nor can excuses be made for any number of other social attitudes that prevailed back then. But what Moe and his buddies also understood was how much about that despised time was good and worthy, and how much we have lost with its passing.
Start with family life. Back then, under 8 percent of American children were born out of wedlock annually. Today, that figure is close to 40 percent overall and fully 70 percent in the black community—which, for all the other hardships it faced 50 years ago, saw only 20 percent of black kids born to a single mother. Then, too, the divorce rate has more than quadrupled since 1960, today standing in the vicinity of 50 percent.
Of course, for many liberals, the low divorce rates of old are just more evidence of that era’s hypocrisy. One iconic scene in Mad Men has serial adulterer Draper watching Leave It to Beaver with the kids while his wife gets some payback with a pickup in a bar bathroom. But the Girl Watchers, all of them long married, would tell you that sticking through the tough times wasn’t just what you did back then; it was the essence of the thing, what made it work. And, yes, if it came to that, people often did stay together for the children, and there was honor in that also. It’s no accident that the term “latchkey kid” was not coined until decades later.
In fact, we kids growing up in the fifties were better off in all sorts of ways. Mad Men has lots of fun showing the Drapers heedlessly clouding their children in secondhand smoke and letting them run around in dry-cleaner cellophane. But in that less fearful and blissfully P.C.-free age, we also learned independence and resilience by roaming the neighborhood unsupervised and playing dodgeball at recess. And though it’s hard to imagine in a time when eight-year-olds are robbed of innocence by everything from Miley Cyrus to the smutty double entendres of Two and a Half Men, our TV shows—Wagon Train and, yes, Beaver—offered lessons in bravery, honesty, and doing the right thing. In school, our teachers and history texts stressed America’s founding ideals and the remarkable individuals who’d struggled to bring them to life, and we came of age with a straightforward, uncynical love of country wholly alien to children today. (My friends and I used to take particular pride in the fact that the U.S. had never lost a war—the War of 1812 and the Korean War counted as ties.) But how could it be otherwise, when our parents, the Greatest-Generation-to-be, felt the same way?
For the Girl Watchers, the loss of national faith during the Vietnam War was a source of both confusion and regret. “There was perfectly good reason to dislike the war,” a crusty old guy named Boyd Huff said of this most alarming change of all. “What I could never understand was . . . how so many young people could doubt the fundamental goodness of the country.”
It IS a fantastic article, thank you. I have long felt there is much common sense in “staying together for the children” in many cases(obviously, not abusive ones). Sometimes people are in a mid-life crisis (our parents were working too hard to pay bills and raise families to have many of those) and will come out of it, sometimes it’s just the natural consequence of the “I want it all and I want it now” generation. There is MUCH to be said for the concept of just being together at the end, especially after years of shared living.
Yep, they get ‘em young with the pictures of cute little furry mammals, and whales, birds, etc. It’s just a skip from there to “Mother Earth”, and then down the primrose path to all liberal ideologies. They don’t care spit about saving the planet, it’s a hook for socialist and globalist agendas. Some of the fruitcakes wind up worshipping “Gaia”, and call the Bible a “fairytale”?!
bump from another Mad Men junkie....
I gave up TV so don’t personally know what Madmen is about
other that it’s about Madison Ave and the lives of ad men
and sales.
But I would be interested in hearing what Zig Zigler
has to say about it. His scathing critic of “Death of
a Salesman” changed my whole perspective of what was and
is considered by liberals a great play. He said it set
sales back fifty years and took the salesman from being
one of the builders of America to scorn and ridicule.
He hated it.
So I’m wondering if this isn’t just another subtle attack
on those who made america what it is today.
I watch TV at my mom’s house when I go over to do repairs,
I am shocked at the propaganda sloganeering that I hear
slipped into what were and should be simple commercial
announcements. Case in point, a car commercial that ends
with the phrase “Change is Good!”, and the car company
GM, I’m just surprised Obama wasn’t in it himself.
I agree with the other posters that the article was very good. I never watched Mad Men for the very reason that I can’t stand the way the American left (i.e. Hollywood) portrays the 50’s. It may have had it’s problems with regard to racial equality, but the scumminess of subsequent decades (no thanks to Hollywood) would not measure up well against the 50’s in any honest comparison. It was a better America in most regards.
The article touched on one of my pet peeves.
I can’t even begin to remember the number of times I have seen TV sitcoms of the 50’s mocked as stupid and how the characters are clueless idiots. They act as if the Mothers are Stepford wives and everyone lives in some type of fairytale world. Of course there are also the slurs about racism, sexism, etc.
The fact is those shows were far more realistic that what has been on for the last 30 or so years. In modern shows, the Husband/Father is always a complete moron, sometimes a likable buffoon or sometimes just a weakling.
“Leave it to Beaver” in fact was in many ways exactly like our family growing up. It also dealt with many problems such as alcoholism, divorce etc. They just didn’t beat you over the head with heavy handed propaganda.
The kids acted like real kids not some wise cracking know-it-all. Most of today’s TV kids are simply evil. Cute but in fact really mean.
I quit watching TV too, and the smart-aleck know-it-all kids and weak or moronic men were just part of the reason. I really came to see the truth of the “garbage in, garbage out” slogan. Almost all TV is garbage, it’s just not worth the bother to pick through it anymore.
And I’ve had the same thought about the TV families of the 50s-in my experience, they were closer to real life than any of the dysfunctional families (that includes the token dads in “regular” families) and smart-aleck or precocious kids I’ve ever seen in TV families since then.
mark for wife
I agree. Black America sold it's soul.
Ahh one of the the holy trinities of idiotic leftists:
I mean who would argue against any of these things? The problem lies in what they mean by tolerance, equity and authenticity.
In their world view it usually works out to mean tolerance = acceptance and not just acceptance but approval and equality, i.e. no moral judgments allowed.
Equitable means not just fairness or equality of opportunity but equality of outcome. Think Harrison Bergeron or, "From each according to his ability to each according to his need"
Authentic usually means shameless, flagrant, immodest, etc. Social mores are stifling chains that should be thrown off lest we be hypocrites....the horror.
What about Eddie Haskell?
They also learn how America is not the greatest country in the world. That would be marginalizing every other deserving country in their eyes. They also learn there is no good religion, except the religion of environmentalism.
I think it is pretty authentic in many ways. It does not demean salesmen, but it does demean those that don’t sell a product. Don Draper sells ideas, much like Republicans like to fancy themselves the party of ideas. Don is respected amongst his peers, other ad men, for his skill at spin, but amongst everyone else, the fact that he’s an ad guy is not all that respectable, i think his respect could be comparable to that we extend ambulance chasers even.
The author may be right in saying that the attitudes depicted in Mad Men do not reflect those of most Americans in the early 60’s. But remember that the characters in Mad Men are not your average crowd. First of all, they live in New York City, or at least its suburbs, rather than Albuquerque or Omaha. They have more money to spend, more education, mostly from Ivy League schools. Most important, the Sterling Cooper ad men (and lady) are the quintessential cynics and hucksters. They are the slickest of the slick, their minds focused tirelessly on how to trick consumers into buying their client’s product. They are expected to pull rabbits out of hats on a daily basis. But talent and performances like that don’t come without a price, which is why creative people are often so morally bankrupt—and so miserable.
looks like you put a lot of thought into that brilliant comment.
I would suggest you watch the show, not only because it’s thought-provoking and eerily true in it’s costumes, settings and style, but more so to see that although many of the story lines are fairly benign, there’s an underlying theme of ever man is an island. I grew up in the 70’s in the midwest, and even though it’s set 20 years earlier, I noticed a lot of the same mores and attitudes in my youth. There was a lot of racism and sexism back in the 70’s just as they show it existed in the 50s. To deny we have made a lot of progress in that aspect is delusional.
bookmark
Hey, Eddie Haskell was my hero.
Actually he sort of proves the stereotype in that Eddie was also supposed to be a creep.
Actually racism and sexism are far worse today than in the 50’s. It is just that it is now anti-White and anti-Male. That is supposed to make it OK.
I concur with the fact that there’s a lot more racism towards whites and males, but things have gotten a lot better for blacks, browns, asians, women, gays, etc.
Well they have gotten better in that they are now given preference over White Males but many are in fact worse off either despite or maybe because of it.
The Black illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed as has Black crime. Women can now kill their unborn children at will. Yeah it is a far better world.
“why creative people are often so morally bankrupt—and so miserable.”
channeling Hollywood as an entity eh? But besides the major principles in the show, Don, Roger, Pete (cuz he was born with a silver spoon) no one else is really rich in my opinion. They happen to work in NY, but like today, the underlings in a lot of these big firms make chump change compared to the bosses. No class envy here, just statin the facts.
My father and uncles were up to their necks in the ad biz when I was a kid in the 50s, and I hung out at my father’s art studio on visitation Sundays. Later I too went into the ad biz.
The agency in MAD MEN doesn’t seem anything like the reality I lived through. Dittos for the ad agency in THIRTY-SOMETHING years ago. The TV ad agencies appear to be imagined by people who have not actually worked in one. It’s all just a fantasy framework for soap opera.
That’s a shame. It would be good to do a faithful period piece. There’s nothing better than to draw out truths from a byegone time.
As for the peace and stability of the 50’s, it will come again. Young people hunger and crave for those times today. The hard part is making your own little 50’s shangri-la. :)
It's easy to pick any time in the past, freeze it, and pick it to hell in contrast with current standards and norms. It's a lesson right out of Alinsky, isn't it?
I'm from that era. Mad Men is so full of distortions, inaccuracies and little incidents obviously included just to make snarky PC points I simply can't stand to watch it. Life then simply wasn't like that.
Race relations were well on their way to being mended in the '50s. My generation (the Silent one) was well on its way to making all needed changes in the spirit of MLK. But the New Left (Neo Communist) radicals took over the Democrat Party and set out to divide country and conquer it for Communism.
The emergence of Obama is simply the culmination of a series of Marxist divisions in American culture that began back then. Nothing in this country has really been decent since the Kennedy assassination and the beginning of the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkely in the mid-60s.
I’m just shy of 50. I’ve been spending this past week visiting my old hometown of Cleveland. I haven’t visited this time in 3 years. It was bad enough then, and has gotten much worse.
My old neighborhood has been trashed by blacks. Simple as that—they have ruined the entire city, which has become a cesspool. I’m not sugar-coating it. One hears of the “vibrancy” of diversity, whatever that means. My neighborhood was a well-kept place full of nice neat modest homes where people didn’t need to lock their doors, to a trash stewn, graffitti emblazoned sewer where sullen black youth in hoodies drift aimlessly like ghosts, smoking blunts with dope inside walking down the sidewalks, or screaming to another lowlife down the block.
Little bungalows have security system signs and wrought iron bars on doors and windows. “Beware of Dog” signs are commonplace. The factory on one corner, where as kids we’d cut though as a short cut going to/from school with no problems, now has a spike tipped fence with signs stating camera surveillance is on 24/7.
The high school I graduated from, where 30 some years ago, my classmates included kids from lower-midddle class households who are now, to name what some of my friends are now doing: doctors, lawyers, engineers, a colonel in the Air Force, executives, two professors, A PhD who is a top administartor at the Cleveland Clinic, etc is now a decrepit hulk of a building-still a high school, rated poorly, and with Cleveland Police cars stationed at the front, and in the rear parking lot.
The public library, where I got my first library card and where my parents got my love of reading started now sports a security guard inside.
Things were so much better (and more vibrant, BTW) that’s it’s not even funny. they can take “diversity” and shove it up their ass. I think people were smarter in the ‘50s—they knew what was what.
wow, sad to hear that. I grew up in Maple Hts. and i know everything you say is 100% accurate. My old neighborhood is not the place i grew up in.
I’m a West Sider, but I remember Maple Hts well. My cousin’s wife was from there. It was a lot of Eastern European people, many who came ovewr after WW@ as “displaced persons”(DP’s) refugees—there were some Germans and Italians, etc.
Those little bungalows were neat as a pin. The little postage stamp lawns were like Augusta National. Good, hard-working respectable people. You know what I’m talking about-I’m describing your people, no doubt.
I’m not exaggerating or making it up. I almost wish I was a brain dead 18 year old. That way I wouldn’t know what we’ve lost.
I don’t think I’m ever coming back hear. Christ knows what it’s going to be like.
Pardon my typos—— I meant “came over after WW2”
I was a little bemused by Rush’s comments about Mad Men yesterday on his radio show. He seemed to be chiding the infatuation over the show and the main character (as he said, mostly by women) while at the same time he was exposing his own fascination with it. And while he kept saying the show was fiction, and implied that it was foolish on the part of the fans to attach any reality to it, he also repeatedly said how realistic and true to the times that the show is. It was very scattered and stream of consciousness.
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