Blog Post #1 – ‘Mad Men’ and Gender Roles

Program creator, Matthew Weiner, formed the adult fiction drama, Mad Men, in 2007. The period drama television series embodies the 1960s American culture, exposes the life of employees of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency in New York City, with the focal point being set on Don Draper, and the personal and professional people surrounded in his life. This series falls into the popular culture and television stream as the program catches the audience’s attention by sharing the intimate details of the character’s lives, public and private lifestyle choices and all, as they continue to watch to discover how their life unfolds. Although this was filmed in the 21st century, the program does an excellent job of setting the scene in the 1960s “combining imagery taken from glamorous cinema and glossy magazines with literary naturalism” (Pollen, 2015) and utilising conservative costumes for most characters as well as lighting, colour and the employment of grain to create the overall 20th century aesthetic.

However, what caught my attention the most in this series, from episode 1, was the constant degrading of women, and the many uproars of gender politics that would not be considered acceptable in today’s society. In the last 50 years, there has been a large adaptation amongst societal values and social norms in regards to gender roles, and the large dominance of men in the business world was confrontational. “The New York advertising world of the early 1960s and its suburban backdrop are etched in caricature; false self functioning dominates the scene. Men go to work, drink too much, seduce their secretaries; women stay home with their children or abandon femininity by trying to break into the male-dominated business world.” (Slochower, 2011). Majority of the female characters come across as weak and inferior, as male characters come across as strong and powerful as Mad Men displays the societal expectations amongst men and women in the 1960s era.

Women are perceived to have the goal of becoming the “homemaker”, the “housewife”, “a mother”, whereas men are the hardworking businessmen, the “breadwinner”, and the “boss”. If women do not follow the path of marriage and motherhood, they are automatically categorised as available to any man wanting to call an offer. Women are undermined for the career capabilities at Sterling Copper Advertising Agency, all the secretaries are female, and all the executives and directors are men. However, this is considered an acceptable environment upon both halves during this era. On Peggy’s first day, she was told by another woman to “evaluate where [her] strengths and weakness are”, referring to her body, as most men are not looking for a secretary but “in the middle of a waitress and a mother”.

Therefore, the women who attempt to fight free from these stereotypes are struggling to expand further than the barriers men and society have created for them. When Don Draper is introduced to a new business client, he automatically assumes that they are a man, until he is corrected that “she” is waiting in the meeting room. He also does not favour that she challenges his suggestions, in result to this he becomes aggressive, and leaves the meeting as he demands that he would never “let a woman talk to” him like that. However, although I am shocked to be viewing these situations, I can’t help but continue to watch and enjoy the show. “Mad Men is routinely prefigured in popular media discourse for articulating nostalgia for an imagined period beginning in early 1960s America, a period of widespread societal change and turbulence, but also the twilight for 1950s attitudes and behaviours prior to the Civil Rights and feminist movements.” (Glen Donnar, 2015). The complex narrative may present viewers with a range of challenges amongst the gender politics of the 1960s, however, it displays hope as some female characters fight against conforming to the idealistic standards of a woman of that time.

References:

  1. Donnar, Glen 2015, “A Less Than Nostalgic Reflection on 9/11: Mad Men’s Re-imagining of the Mediated Experience of the Kennedy Assassination”
  1. Mad Men 2007, television program, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, AMC, America, July 19

 

  1. Pollen, A 2015 ‘Mad men, mad world: sex, politics, style and the 1960s’, Visual Studies, vol. 30, no.1, pp.114-115
  1. Slochower, J 2011, ‘Gender, Splitting and Non-Recognition in Mad Men’, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 71, no.4, pp. 381-386.