“Mad Men” — Retro Gone Wrong
Comments(0) “Write what you know” is the old caveat for storytellers — and if you don’t heed that, then you’d better be a damned good researcher.
Matthew Weiner — producer and creator of “Mad Men,” a new original series on AMC about the advertising biz in Manhattan circa 1960 – apparently didn’t do either. The first show aired last Thursday and was disappointing, to say the least. It utterly failed to capture the zeitgeist of an era where everybody from street sweeper to CEO sought the appearance (if not the actuality) of Respectability like it was the Holy Grail.
In this Hollywoodized version of mid-20th century American yuppie life, we’re treated to a relentless barrage of mind-numbing, shopworn cliches and shallow stereotypes. The Ad Execs are all ruthless bastards with bottles of booze hidden in their desk drawers, and they’re damn proud of it. After a long day of hard drinking, they make surprise late-night booty calls on the newly hired and unsuspecting clericals. The Suburban Women to whom they are married are mindless, personality-less Stepford Wives. The Mistress in whose arms they seek comfort is sardonic and cynical. The Jewish Businesswoman they have to deal with is big-nosed and rude. The Colored Waiter in the upscale restaurant where they dine sounds like Uncle Remus and shuffles like Stepin Fetchit.
If that isn’t insulting enough to our intelligence, the script is riddled with wildly incongruous “Sex and the City”-style conversations that no button-down minded, close-mouthed citizen of the “Father Knows Best” era would have dreamed of having. The head of the steno pool wears a cocktail dress to work and tells The New Girl in the Office (who for some reason is attired like she’s going to a sock hop, not her First Big Job in the Big City): “Go home, cut two holes in a paper bag, put it over your head, get undressed and evaluate your assets.” Another female office guru advises her to shorten her skirts and show off her ankles. Regarding a co-worker’s upcoming nuptials, an Exec remarks, “I hear she’s a nice girl.” The other Exec retorts, “Who wants that?”
Anybody who lived through the 50s and 60s (or even knew anybody who did) can recognize the one-dimensional, cop-out, sensationalist approach to a complicated post-WW II generation. Weiner, who is 42, admitted in a recent interview that his research amounted to “[talking] to some people who are in advertising now.” He attempted to locate some fossils who’d worked on Madison Avenue four decades ago, but insists that “most of the guys who had the job my hero has in the show are dead.”
Frankly, I don’t think Weiner looked very hard or wanted to find them very badly. I know several septuagenarians who were NYC ad agency execs and they would paint a very different picture than the one Weiner does. Men really did want to marry Nice Girls (the War To End All Wars had taught them more than they ever wanted to know about certain diseases.) Women — whether nice or not, whether shop girl or stenographer or corporate executive — went to great lengths to maintain the image of Ivory Soap and Breck Shampoo squeaky-clean shiny propriety. The ad biz was just a business, like any other: a lot of hard work, long hours, impossible deadlines, difficult people, tiresome meetings, idiot bosses, creative stultification, cut-throat competition and very little glamour or recognition — just a gold watch upon retirement, like every other Man in a Gray Flannel Suit got back in the day. But that, of course, wouldn’t make very exciting material for a nighttime soap opera.
Or would it?
–phoebe kate