I've been holding back on Mad Men talk because I have a fairly lengthy piece I'm thinking about posting about Don Draper, passing and the black experience. But save that for another day. I want to know what people thought of that rape scene. I'm a guy who thinks Hollywood is too violent. Not like "Think about the children!" violent. I don't buy that crap. My concern is story, story, story, story. I think movies and TV often lean on sensational acts of violence and sex to camouflage their story flaws. Rape scenes especially disturb me. I made the mistake of watching Derailed a gratuitously violent movie with a senseless rape scene in it. I wish I could have those hours of my life back. I basically agree with Anthony Lane (my favorite critic working, and a master of language) on this:
We have, it is clear, reached the lively dead end of a process that was initiated by a fretful Martin Scorsese and inflamed, with less embarrassed glee, by Tarantino: the process of knowing everything about violence and nothing about suffering.That said, if I love you as a story-teller, I will watch you do anything. I can take viscous violence as story-telling. I can't take it for show. Anyway, I thought the rape of Joan was one of the must agonizing scenes I've watched in recent memory--agonizing in a great way. Kenyatta on the other hand was extremely disturbed by it--in a bad way. Something about it really bothered her--she feels like they're actively punishing Joan. I would be more sympathetic to that if there weren't other women on the show, and other women who were sexual. I think they're saying something about the limits of sex as power. I can't help but to juxtapose Joan (and to some extent Bobby) with Peggy, who has grown in stature and is on the brink of passing all the junior people in the office.
It's like in the past women were limited in how they could show power--limited to ways that basically affirmed what a men were comfortable with. Joan is threatening to men in a way that can be squelched--as we regrettably saw. But Peggy scares--or is starting to scare--the hell out of the men in the office, and they have no idea what to do about it. How can they stop her, short of killing her? Isn't this about the limits of an "old" sort of power as compared with a "new" power that women have access to? And yet what gives Peggy her foot in the door is her insights as women--remember Belle Jolie?
A lot of this is me just talking. I'd love to hear from some women fans of the show. I could be off my rocker. But I do love the show. This will not be popular, but I think it's first two seasons are as good as the first two seasons of The Wire.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Punishing Joan for what? If Mad Men is about anything, it's about how the world punishes us all, the very pain of existence. Don sums it up in the first season when he informs the beatnik friends of his lover that the universe is indifferent. It's not about punishing or rewarding, it's about the absence of such value judgments. Mad Men is the realization of the existentialism that The Sopranos touched upon but never fully embraced.
As an aside, we may only get two seasons: the initial contracts only called for two, and Jon Hamm could move into film and be a big time star at this point. AMC is going to have to pay huge, huge money to keep this show on the air. HBO might pick it up, but I'm not holding my breath. The reason they're wrapping it up is in case they don't get to have any more of it.
As for the comparison to The Wire, they're both amazing shows and can share the top honors for me. Both of them represent the ability of television to be a medium on par with literary fiction in the depth and breadth with which they can analyze both society and the human soul.
My two cents.
I'm a fan! I was not disturbed by that rape scene with the same intensity as you. I thought it was subtle and a truthful portrayal. I think its important for people to see it go down like that because I don't think most of us are as sensitive to a woman's ownership of her body as you. I thought that Joan was being punished for thinking that her path to success (thru men) would come without a cost. I don't think it was just a punishment for being sexual. She's not a free sexual spirit, she's strategic. It also said much about her fiancee.
Since we're talking about women, I'm more curious of Betty's strange decisions. She seems to be locking herself into a prison of self-righteousness.
I've never watched Mad Men, but I think "viscous violence" is an evocative, interesting bit of language even though I suspect you meant "vicious violence."
As a female fan, I was also stunned by the scene and found it very powerful. The fact that he chose the office as the place to do this really highlighted the aggression of the act. I felt he was punishing her for being sexual and for having relationships before him. It's as if he wanted to make her disassociate sexuality with her work despite the fact that they have been inextricably linked. I started out not liking Joan so much and now I really sympathize with her.
I didn't watch The Wire so can't compare but I think Mad Men is one of the best shows, period. The writing, the attention to detail, the immersion in the times is far superior to most of what television offers.
Joan's cruel and catty because her situation is so precarious. The only thing in her life that she's proud of is her job, and that always seems on the verge of being taken away from her. She has power, but that power is unofficial and may be retracted (by Roger) for any reason or no reason at all. Very few of the advertising execs are even aware that she's responsible for keeping their office running.
You're not supposed to hate Joan. You're supposed to feel sorry for her. Which is why the rape scene was so heartbreaking: the fact that her way to get out from under Sterling Cooper really wasn't a way out at all.
Not a fan of the show (not active distaste, simply haven't caught it), but I do agree with the sentiment that we rely entirely too much on violence and base sexuality to cover for our poor standards for writing and storytelling in our visual media. It's always been a facet of our media culture, but as the complexity of our stories has increased from the relatively simplistic 30's and 40's to today, so has our use of these crutches.
Not much to be done about it so far as I can see, beyond holding our taste to a proper standard and hoping that others increasingly do the same.
wait, what do you mean when you say "and to some extent Bobby" when you compare Joan and Peggy. Maybe i've missed something but i dont see how Betty and Don's son is related to this
"wait, what do you mean when you say "and to some extent Bobby" when you compare Joan and Peggy. Maybe i've missed something but i dont see how Betty and Don's son is related to this"
i'm pretty sure TNC was talking about Jimmy Barrett's wife, who Don had the affair with earlier this season, and who seemed to have found a middle ground between Joan and Peggy's approach to power..
HERESY!!! allthough I can somewhat see the parallels between Mad Men and the Wire, they are two very diferent shows. I would argue that though the acting on Mad Men is great, compared to the wire it just doesn't stand up. In a lot of ways the only show that I compare the wire too would be Sopranos.
I was disturbed deeply by the scene, and, to be honest, turned the channel. Although the scene was not explicit in its detail (nudity, clothes flying off, etc), I couldn't let my mind 'finish' out the scene so to speak. I had to change the channel to get my mind to visualize something else. However, my timing was too 'good'; I switched back as he was waiting for her to 'clean' up so they could go to dinner. To me, THAT was the most powerful piece of the scene.
I kept wanting her to hit him, to bite his ear and rip his flesh off, to knee him in the balls, something. But as they walked out of the office to dinner, I realized that this show is SOO ABOVE most of what is on television right now. This show is historically accurate almost to a fault.
As a historian, I teach college students about the burgeoning women's movement in the late 50s and 60s and of course, we discuss Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique.'To me, this show embodies those ideas from Friedan and parts of the post WWII culture--from the skewed advertising models they create geared toward women and men, to the 'sexualized' Joan, to the repressed Peggy, and to the unfulfilled, empty, bitter Betty, who doesn't understand why she feels the way she does.
But the men reflect the ideas of that time as well. As white collar jobs replaced blue collar jobs as a way to define success, men sought to renew or reconfigure their masculinity. Thus, gender roles hardened and solidified, pushing women and men in 'weak' and 'strong' categories. Violence, in this category is rape, is a way to reinforce whatever power you think you should have. Joan's sexuality and boldness pushes that button and her finance has to assert his role in society.
I do not teach US history so much anymore (It is not my specialty) but I have recommended the show to my colleague who does teach this time period and is especially interested in gender. I told her just last week: 'Students will get this show. They will understand EXACTLY what you are talking about."
I didn't view the rape scene as an attempt by the show to punish Joan for her promiscuity; rather, it was an attempt by her fiance to punish Joan for her "sin" of having had previous sexual experience with other men (obviously, the guy has an extreme madonna/whore complex that manifests itself in horribly disturbing ways).First of all, our sympathies in the scene are with Joan, and not her fiance. Second, the rape is not depicted in a way that could be viewed as erotic or sensual. It is very clear that Joan is being subjected to an act of violence and violation, and not one of ravishment. Finally, it is clear that Joan has done nothing to deserve this, and the problem is with her fiance and his madonna/whore psychological issues.
RE: josh
Mad Men is a much, much deeper show than The Sopranos, and doesn't take the liberty of leaving big, gaping plot holes for you to fill in. The story is captivating and it's a fun show to watch, but it doesn't try to say nearly as much about the world.
It’s hard to deny that TV, cinema, and video have a significant impact on us. (Otherwise, corporations have wasted trillions of shareholder dollars on advertising.) And it’s not like our society doesn’t have a violence problem, particularly against women.
It seems that something should be done, but any remedy invariably treads on the hallowed ground of free expression.
The 1981 US Supreme Court case Schad v. Mount Ephraim*, involving a NJ adult bookstore, approved restrictions, not as to the content of the expression, but as to ‘reasonable time, place and manner’ in which the content can be expressed.
It’s not a bright line, but it can provide a useful case-by-case analytical tool.
* http://www.law.cornell.edu/ supct...52_0061_ZO.html
On the most recent episode: I don't think that the authors are punishing the Joan character, and I agree with Whitey about the universe not strictly speaking punishing her, either. Instead, Joan's in that position--and feels too helpless to do anything about it--because of choices she made all throughout her life and the show thus far. (Note: I am NOT saying this was her fault.)
Joan has had important insights on how she can be powerful in the world, an equal of sorts to men, or at least someone who can talk to them in a different way than most women (think Roger) and certainly commands their attention with her looks, and their respect with her repartee and strict adherence to the office's honor code (not telling on your boss). Because of these insights she's had better material things than Peggy, the young execs, and her fiancee, e.g., going to East Hampton with the doctor for S1E1, staying at the best hotels and eating at the best restaurants with Roger. The authors are at pains to show us all the opportunities she passed up in order to maintain her dignity. She lives by a code of honor, turning down Kinsey because he talked, and turning down Roger because she'd prefer not to be his mistress or his second wife. However, she crucially bought into the notion that what she has done is all a woman can do, and that sex and a certain kind of honor are the only routes to power. So, she finds "a keeper," as even Peggy unironically calls him, and tries to do the right thing for a woman, as she understands it, only to find out that the honorable woman's role doesn't encompass that vast extent of womanly power she had earlier discovered and embraced. Plus, she had the bad luck to pick a guy so threatened by her power--professional and otherwise--that he had to mark her as his territory, in the most brutal fashion a male animal knows how to do. I wonder whether she'll stick with him; the authors are too good to give us the easy happy answer, and I have my doubts that they'll give us the easy horrific one.
Disagree totally, Ta-Nahisi, about the Wire comparison, for reasons that I partly give here.
I was trying to write something, but eltoro said it a lot better than I was doing.
I thought the scene was powerful. It fit in with what I believe is the overall theme of the series - why the sixties had to happened.
In film and TV we often see the revolution of the Sixties depicted, but rarely do we see the explanation for what happened short of the trite, "it was the end of innocence." What Mad Men does better than any piece of art I can remember is show you just how screwed up things used to be for women, minorities and homosexuals. It takes the notion that we were a better country before all these damn hippies came along and destroyed our moral fiber and simply rips it to shreds. Age of innocence my ass.
It's also given me a greater insight into the older women supporters of Hillary. The women of Mad Men, especially the younger ones, will go on to be the first wave of feminists. When I watch the show I picture all the female characters present day. I imagine Peggy and Joan both would be PUMA supporters. And after the indignities I have watched them suffer through at the hands of lesser men - I don't blame them.
Ta-Nehisi,
Dooh! I missed your spoiler warning and read the post without seeing the episode yet. That said I just started with this show at the begining of this season and love it. I can't wait to catch up on season one. I haven't seen the wire, but I think it is every bit as good as my other favorite show "Battlestar Galactica".
I just recently discovered your blog via Megan Mcardles blog and I want to thank you for putting out such a reliably thought provoking product. You made my favorites list pretty quick. I particularly want to thank you for your thoughtful posts on race. We don't always see exactly eye to eye, but that is one of the reasons I like your work so much. You always make me reevaluate my position or make me consider something I had not considered before. Your thoughtful meditations on race are particularly meaningful to me. I am a white guy of about your same age who has been married to a black woman for about 2 1/2 years now. I am supremely lucky as white guys go to have an African-American as smart and thoughtful as my wife who is willing to discuss race and her perspective on it with me. However she is just one person with one perspective and it is great to have you posting your thoughts in such an honest and frank way. I greatly enjoy being challenged by you and your commentators (who have impressed me as intelligent and thoughtful, I guess like attracts like). Thanks...
I admit that as a woman, I have a love-hate relationship with Joan. I hate that she relies so heavily on her sexuality as a source of power, but I know that she has few other options. I hate her cattiness and occasional cruelty, but I understand the social insecurity that motivates it. I hate how absolutely conventional she is and more than that I can't stand is how many of Joan's fans see her, and not Peggy or Betty, as a powerful, subversive figure. But I love her intelligence and wit and lack of sentimentality. I love her complexity. I love her potential.
I'll just say I agree with a lot of what others have written and add that when I watched it a second time on Tivo I knew even before i got to the rape scene that I would be skipping over it.
Its very powerful, but I didn't feel like I needed to see it twice.
Honestly, I wasn't as disturbed by the scene as I should have been, because I had trouble suspending my disbelief. The actress who plays Joan is a big woman; I found myself thinking, "She can take this little bastard! Fight!" Which is in no way meant to diminish rape, or suggest that women who do not fight are in any way complicit. Simply that the scene, as shot, looked awkward to me.
But I also get that she would not have fought, for many reasons. Not the least of which was that for her office mates to see her in that position would have been even more devastating than learning the truth about what her fairytale ending would really be like.
And no one in 1960 believed a husband/finance could rape his wife/intended.
ah yeah, of course, my bad
Re: lisa
Indeed, if they had been married, in most states what transpired wouldn't have been legally cognizable as rape in 1960. Husbands, by definition, couldn't rape wives.
I felt sick to my stomach watching that scene, to the point where I had to look away. That scene was about violence but it was also about suffering.
I know what you mean, rumble. She's a complicated, fascinating character - and think how easily she could have been nothing but a va-va-voom secretary in a lesser TV series. I think about how heartbroken she was when the job of reading scripts was taken away from her. She had so much professional potential there, and it was just snatched away as casually as could be. I love her and she frustrates me.
Aside from the rape scene, I think last week's was an amazing episode. Seeing Don in a setting where he's himself, authentically and honestly, was so beautiful. He was so relaxed that it made me absurdly happy for him, and I love the real Don Draper's ex-wife (I'm blanking on her name).
I also thought it was brilliant, and similarly got a sense of the juxtaposition between Joan and Peggy that TNC mentioned. That moment when Joan saw Peggy walk into her new office killed. We've seen throughout the show how smart and hyper-competent Joan is, and it really feels like it was only a difference of timing, tactics, and simple physical appearances that led to Peggy getting her own office and Joan being raped on Don Draper's floor. Times were changing, and yet Joan missed it, and worse, knows she missed it.
What an incredible show.
Pretty late to this discussion. Not much else to add, although the part of the scene that go me was right before they cut away, it showed Joan just staring away and focusing on an object while waiting for it to be over. I can't imagine what that would be like, or what other women who have had similar experiences must have thought while watching it. Powerful, powerful stuff.
I do absolutely love the fact that the writers have decided to show Joan as such a more complex character this season. She is absolutely fascninatiing. Its clear to me that she is jealous of Peggy and what Peggy has been able to do on her own merits. You could tell Joan loved the chance to do real work for Harry earlier in the season and how crushed she was when they hired him a new assistant.
As far as the Wire comparison, I've been starting to feel the same way, TNC. I think the difference for me is I don't care about the characters in Mad Men as much as I cared about the characters in The Wire. Maybe that will come with time, but I think that might have to do with how immmediate The Wire felt. As if were taking place as you were watching it.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say I wouldn't mind seeing a Mad Men thread once a week. But hey, I know you don't appreciate the content suggestion, so I'll just shut up now!
If there's one thing I MUST thank Mad Men for, it is for making me understand my mother's generation. To someone like me, lipstick feminists or whatever the hell you want to call us, it's a little hard to always empathize with the first wave. There's a part of you that recognizes the anger and the hope, but there's a bigger part that often just wants to say: Chill out. It's not that bad.
Mad Men reminds me it was precisely that bad and that too in living memory. I'm 27 and was brought up in a country that is still conservative in its attitudes towards women, but as an urban, upper middle class woman, I've never felt like a second class citizen in any of the countries in which I have lived. So there is a tendency I think, to look back at how bad things used to be and think, "But that was another era!" No, it wasn't - it was during my mother's lifetime and she's not exactly over the hill.
What struck me is Joan's expression as she is attacked. It makes me wonder if this had happened to her before and whether she thought this was somehow what she deserved. And what I appreciated about this scene is how clearly it was about power, not sex. That's pretty uncommon on TV or film.
Margaret,
Yeah, you beat me to about everything I was thinking. I also agree about seeing Don in a different setting. It was the most relaxed, happy, yet vulnerable he has appeared the entire series. I guess that has to do with the fact that Mrs. Draper #2 is the only person who truly knows him.
IMO, "writers punishing the character for her sexuality" isn't going on here. While that was certainly true of a lot of pre-1960s films, the only recent work of merit where I can recall such sentiment is The Sopranos.
Chase so resented (what he saw as) his audience's idolization of Tony Soprano, that he spent the last 3 seasons of the show flipping the bird at that audience, through abuse of characters both major and minor.
Question: Why does Joan settle for this joker? She's been portrayed as a somewhat exceptional woman, if limited by circumstances. She's always been assertive about her needs, and able to move (with limits) in a man's world.
Why, "at her age," does she suddenly decide to turn into Betty Draper, looking for her Don? The fiance has never been potrayed as anything other than a stereotypical "catch." She could've had him a dozen times over, a decade earlier.
Either I'm misssing something about the Nature of Woman, or this is a flaw in the show's characterization of Joanie.
Deleted. Stay on topic please.
The rape scene was sad and emotionally brutal. The look in Joan's eyes reminded me of Janet Leigh's as she was laying on the floor after being murdered in Psycho.
I think Joan is caught in a changing time. She is too modern to just want to be a well-behaved wife and too old fashioned to assert herself in the workplace like Peggy. I don't know if Joan is being punished for this, but she is suffering for it. She is suffering for being a sexual woman, for being an atrractive woman, and for being a smart woman.
In some ways, I think Joan being passed over for the job in the television department was almost as sad and difficult as the rape scene. Joan proved she could do the work, was good at the work, and good with clients. Yet, she wasn't even considered for the positions. Her work and her skills were invisible to her colleagues, just as her professional pride and her wanting or not wanting to have sex was invisible or meaningless to her fiance. Men see what they want in Joan, but almost no one sees the real Joan. Part of the problem may be that Joan doesn't even know who the real Joan is at this point.
Although the show is titled Mad Men, Joan and the other female characters are as complex and fascinating as any of the men on the show.
Ta-Nehisi - please post your ideas about passing and don. It's a very interesting connection.
Stacy: Yeah, not only is she the only person who knows his true identity, she's also about as good a friend as anyone could hope for. So basically decent and good and sensible. Even reading Tarot cards, she sounded grounded. When he asked "Can I take a shower and lie down?" after he first arrived, my boyfriend said "That's a weird request." But to me, it reminded me of my best friends and how comfortable I feel in their company even if I haven't seen them for years. Their friendship is obviously deeply intimate, and I think it's to Weiner's credit that he's able to establish that almost immediately.
Seeing Don in a setting where he's himself, authentically and honestly, was so beautiful.
Almost child-like, I thought.
It's a weird relationship he has with her. I hope we see more about how that came to be.
Female fan here. I had to look through my fingers at that scene. I think there's certainly an element of exposing the limits of sex as power, but to me the primary motivation is to tear the mask off the rotting corpse of these idealized but entirely fake relationships.
Don and Betty, Pete and Trudy, Roger and Mona, Sal and Kitty (the dinner scene with Cosgrove made me cringe almost as much as the rape): they are all roses of societal expectation riddled with cancres of emotional reality.
Joan has achieved the pinnacle of her social ideal by "snagging" a doctor, but the ugly reality of their relationship is that he's so sexually insecure, so intimidated by her skills (professional and sexual), so completely clueless about what she wants and needs, that her greatest coup turns out to be a life sentence. It's not just a regular prison either, but some soul-and-body destroying Midnight Express shit.
You can really feel that when Joan, eyes blank and heavy, goes through the motions of claiming her false social victory as Peggy claims her genuine professional one.
The primary difference between The Wire and Mad Men is plot vs. character.
The Wire had indelible, fascinating, great characters - but those characters served a story. Mad Men is really just about the characters. Every week we peel back another layer of the Draper onion. (And Joan, and Betty, and Peggy, and Pete...)
This was almost too much to watch, but watch it, I did. It made me so angry! Too many of my friends have described encounters like that.
But putting on my feminist theory hat, I read the assault as Joan becoming a conduit for her fiance to f*ck (can we say that here?) Cooper. Classic homosocial triangulation. I would say that homosociality describes a lot of the male relationships in this show (like Don-Bobbi-Jimmy and Peter-Peggy-Don.)
To me, most of the women are completely incidental except how they allow men to relate to one another as rivals or partners. They are either objects used in the course of a rivalry or prizes at the end of a competition.
Peggy and Betty, however, are interesting. You can see Betty doing some triangulation of her own with her manipulation of her friend; she buries her desire for the young man at the riding club but experiences it vicariously at the revelation of their affair. (This is not to ignore the suppressed aggression and anger swirling around in Betty.)
Peggy, unlike Joan, decides not to trade on the 'natural' capital that is hers - her body - but learns how to apply the lessons her male colleagues are unwittingly teaching her to her advantage. I love her flat affect and discipline.
Back to Joan: what I especially liked about that scene was how it was concluded the next day when Peggy admires Joan's fiancee. You can see Joan hesitate and withdraw from the compliment; then, immediately, she turns back to Peggy and accepts it, reinforcing her own elevated status through him. It's a moment of quiet, smart acting and a very very subtle illustration of the various compromises it takes to be a socially acceptable 'woman.'
I've found this show to be really smart in its handling of gender and power; the episode where Don realizes that he, like women, is an object of a gaze, albeit a feminine one? Incredible!
(And if you haven't seen the 1959 movie Mad Men is modeled on, The Best of Everything, you really should. Abortion, alcoholism, stalking, sexual harassment, divorce, attempted suicide - it's awesome. Crazy, but awesome.)
The rape scene was quietly disturbing mostly because this is her fiancé. Also, because she couldn't stop it.
Initially, though, I thought that Joan was being punished. Mostly because for my generation ,I'm 24, it's been the same: you are the braniac, or the sex pot.
When the sex pots are harmed, it's expected. If Peggy were raped, I think my initial reaction would have been complete sympathy, as opposed to believing that this was yet another pop culture example of a sexual woman being punished for her promiscuity.
Very good, and very disturbing scene. Reminded me a lot of the scene in Hitchcock's Marnie when Sean Connery rapes Tippi Hedren after he marries her. The same 1,000 yard stare on the face of the victim as she tries to disassociate from the experience.
There was an episode earlier in the season when Joan, by happenstance, ends up becoming more involved in the creative process at the agency and is enlivened by her slightly transformed role and increased responsibility. Soon enough, her new powers were removed and witnessing her disappointment, though expressed subtly, was a heartbreaking moment.
I bring that up because I think it makes sense to think of that scene as connected to the rape scene and to her later conversation with Peggy as she helps her set up her (Peggy's) new office. Its all a story about how events are beginning to demonstrate to Joan, in rather stark fashion, the constricting limits of the world she has created for herself.
I guess a way of expressing that would be that she is being "punished." But I don't think that is quite the right formulation. She, like a few others on the show, exist within the moment where the veil that is the social construction that they always assumed was fundamental and unchangeable reality is beginning to be pierced. We are watching, in other words, the moments of repressed tension just before an explosion and people are liable to get hurt. But the people that get hurt are not necessarily being punished.
I'm the schmuck who posted the joke about McCain in Waterloo. Probably could've picked a better comment section to do so. Carry on.
Yes - the Sal-Kitty-Cosgrove dinner! Yet another scene of triangulation (but of a different kind.)
I have to say I'm also fascinated by Don's total existential bender he's on. It's so Updike.
"You can really feel that when Joan, eyes blank and heavy, goes through the motions of claiming her false social victory as Peggy claims her genuine professional one."
Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly what I couldn't put into words. Perfect.
It's interesting how different Dick's body language and facial expressions were in the flashback with the 'real' Mrs. Drapers. He was indeed wide-eyed and sweet. Contrast that with his body language and even his tone of voice at Sterling Cooper. I know some people have bagged on Jon Hamm's acting ability but I thought this episode demonstrated that's he acutally very, very good in this role.
Also, it's interesting that Don/Dick's most fullfilling relationships with women are the ones that don't involve sexuality. The first Mrs. is almost like a mother to him, Peggy's like a little sister he can mold and mentor, and his daughter allows him to give and receive unconditional love. It's been said before, but it seems that what he's looking for from these women is the warmth, empathy, and intimacy that was denied to him as a child from the female role models from that formative period in his life.
Question: Why does Joan settle for this joker? She's been portrayed as a somewhat exceptional woman, if limited by circumstances. She's always been assertive about her needs, and able to move (with limits) in a man's world.
Because she is past thirty and looks fade, or so went the thinking.
One of the reasons I found that scene so devastating is that Kitty so clearly sees how insignificant she is to Sal, and Sal knows what he's doing to her but can't see a way around it beyond being a nice roommate and doing the dishes. Meanwhile, Cosgrove is getting a major hinky vibe from Sal but just represses it and moves on.
I could talk about Mad Men "all day and all of the night," per Ray Davies. I thought nothing could top The Sopranos for character design and story line, but Mad Men had me at hello.
The richness of character development is like a Viennese pastry, each layer gently guiding us to the sweet cream filling, but, sufficiently substantial in its essence to deliver maximum satisfaction. The lines between character as representative of era and era as represented within character are so exquisitely blurred, that each deftly escapes criticism, yet engenders, rather the obsessive scrutiny only a fan-in-love can deliver.Don is both cold, detached and philandering, yet deeply loves Betty and his children more than the era allows him to express. I have been a Sloan Wilson fan forever and the books The Best of Everything and Man in the Gray Flannel Suit are intrintic prerequisites to this show.
I have only one minor complaint: Don Drapers' ties are too wide for the era, his suits look out of place in the Brooks Brothers, button-down era for men that was early 60's pre-Mod. A study of the Dick Van Dyke Show's Botany 500 attire might provide a worthwhile field trip for the costume designers.
In response to the first comment and other interested parties: There will be a third season of Mad Men, but negotiations are ongoing as to whether Matthew Weiner will continue as the show runner. It is hard to imagine the show changing hands, so let's hope he stays. More info: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117994192.html?categoryid=14&cs=1
As for the rape, I think Joan was being punished by her fiance for his own sexual insecurity highlighted in the earlier "I'm sorry that I don't always know what you want" bedroom scene and again with the obvious awkward tension between her and Roger, and Roger's rudeness to him while being introduced. In the earlier scene she tried to initiate sex and he rejects her. Then after the encounter with Roger in the office, he rapes her, saying "Isn't this what you want?" She isn't being punished by the show or the viewer, she is obviously the victim and the act is meant to be viewed with disgust.
"A study of the Dick Van Dyke Show's Botany 500 attire might provide a worthwhile field trip for the costume designers."
After reading about how much how much detail is put into the set and costume design of this show, I find it very hard to believe that the costume designers have this wrong. I can't say for certain, but this is what they do for a living. And they work for a show where this is crucial. I also heard Matthew Weiner is a real freak about it.
Joan's rape is different from other violent sexual acts shown on screen because it was tastefully done in its own way. There was no gratuitous nudity. There was no excess violence -- it was just the act shown in almost clinical fashion. What happened was disturbing but truthful. Finally, Joan (and we the viewers) look away. She's trying to escape and focus on something else and the camera does too. So in the end she's not exploited by the audience and director as well.
Contrast that with, say, the sodomy scene in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino just throws up a gratuitous scene of sexual violence so he can burn an image into our brains. Now THAT'S torture porn and that's why I loathe him so much.
joan's fiance isn't only threatened by her sexuality; he's made comments in the past that leave no doubt he wants her to quit working and become a housewife in Connecticut once they get married. thus the choice of the office as site for the rape; he's attacking her professional identity as well as her personal power.
Why, "at her age," does she suddenly decide to turn into Betty Draper, looking for her Don? The fiance has never been potrayed as anything other than a stereotypical "catch." She could've had him a dozen times over, a decade earlier.
In addition to the "over-thirty" thing someone else mentioned upthread, I think it's also that she fell for Roger and it clouded her view of the Goal i.e. Marry Well. From her very first talk with Peggy, it's clear she's really working towards that. Plus, I think she wanted the best possible, not just what was available.
I think the evolution of Joan has been fascinating. In the first season of the show, she seemed more like the foil to Peggy--sexual/non-sexual; happy as secretary/working up to operating in a man's world; the Marilyn to Peggy's Sandra Dee (or Irene Dunne as Don sees her).
This season, Joan sees Peggy's success and how that could be an opening for her, but she is cruelly denied the tv oppotunity. However, I think it is important to note how ambivalent and muddled characters can be (much more like real people than characters on a television show). When Peggy asks Joan for advice on how to compete with men (in the episode where the Playtex bra Jackie/Marilyn is initially developed), Joan can't help her because that hasn't been something Joan is interested in. Now, after being denied advancement at the office and raped, Joan sees her sexuality as something of a prison (I don't think the show punishes her; this is a comment on society). I also think this was heightened by the Marilyn dying episode where we see how a woman who is defined by her sexuality is destroyed by society and herself. The danger for Joan is that she really may be a Marilyn, and that her society won't let her be anything else. But the great thing about the show is that it never gives any character a clear path. It's not like Joan is wrong and Peggy is right. Peggy's insane denial of her sexuality (her denial of the pregnancy and her reluctance to see/interact with what is presumably her child) is any healthier. There really aren't any good options for most of these characters.
COATES! What are you doing? You can't put in a spoiler alert but then title the entry "Classic example of a date rape"! That, in itself, IS THE SPOILER. Even though I tried not to look past it, my brain must be attuned to the words "Mad Men," because they snuck into my eyeballs before I could stop it. So if I already know "date rape" + "Man Men" ... game over, man.
I love ya, but c'mon!
You're right, your assessment of anything attaining parity with The Wire is, indeed, not popular.
TNC,
As a fan of poetry, what do you know or think of "Meditations on an Emergency." What is the significance of this book, and why would Don send it to Mrs. Draper #2? I don't know much about it. Just curious.
Sorry, make that "Meditations in an Emergency."
Question: Why does Joan settle for this joker? She's been portrayed as a somewhat exceptional woman, if limited by circumstances. She's always been assertive about her needs, and able to move (with limits) in a man's world.
She feels that she's at the height of her power and competence, and that time is ticking down relatively rapidly at this point. She's got to move up or get stuck. She's just got to.
I absolutely love Mad Men. I love it in a way I have not loved a television show in many years. It's the highlight of my Sundays. I'm going to be pretty sad after this week's season finale.
All that being said, the Joan scene with her fiancee haunts me. Her face on that floor... I can't get it out of my head. Maybe it's because what happened to her is sadly familiar to me. This kind of thing didn't stop in 1962, after all.
I don't feel as if they're punishing Joan, though. I think they're fleshing out a storyline, and of course it is my sincere hope that Joan doesn't marry that monster, and that she becomes Joan again. Remember, she was once the independent Queen Bee of Sterling-Cooper, telling the secretaries that if they played their cards right, they'd end up with a house in the country.
Now that Joan is thisclose to "achieving" what she thought she wanted, she's having second thoughts. And remember how thrilled she was when she was working in the Television Department, and how heartbreaking it was to her when she was pushed aside for a new hire (a man)?
I hope Joan is inspired, not threatened by, Peggy. I want Joan to be happy, I want Joan to have a career, I want Joan to meet and marry a very good man, and I want her to buy that house in the country herself.
I enjoyed comments from Matt J and SJB because I am very facsinated by this show's history lesson. Now I clearly understand why black women and white women don't relate to the feminist movement in the same manner. I was completely shocked by the way women were treated on this show but I also notice that black people are invisible ( up until the civil rights activisim goes mainstream). Black women never had the opportunity to be exploited in the manner that is depicted here. In some ways we were exploited in a much more severe way but in others we experienced an independence not shared by white women. Of course that independence wasn't a choice but due to survival.
I am intrigued by this conversation and the bigger discussion that Mad Men has been prompting at a number of outlets.
On this particular topic, I would suggest that the interlude between Don and Bobbi from the second or third episode of this season was more disturbing than the rape of Joan (though the portrayal of rape is always disturbing) because of our connection to Don (who was the aggressor and who's actions certainly constituted sexual violation of Bobbi in a public venue). We have little connection to Joan's fiancee (though we do have a distinct connection to Joan and we have seen her happy, most strikingly in her trysts with Roger Sterling), and my impression is that the writers have given us a general distaste for the man even before this incident (he was never around, she was often making excuses about why he couldn't be places, etc.).
Within this season, we have seen two acts of distinct and quite unpleasant sexual aggression by two male characters, one of whom we are generally more sympathetic towards (Don) and one of whom we generally are not well disposed towards. At the same time, our dispositions towards the two women involved, Joan and Bobbi, are also different, we tend to like Joan (and perhaps feel sorry for her and the situation in which she finds herself) and we generally don't like Bobbi though there may be a certain amount of respect directed towards her and how she has learned to use her sexual power within a man's world.
Just my two cents.
DB Cooper is spot on about The Wire vs. Mad Men. It is difficult to make direct comparisons between the two shows because they are trying to do very different things. That being said, my preference is strongly for The Wire because it had a fantastically interesting plot, great characters and something to say (even if it could be argued that it was a wee bit pedantic). When watching Mad Men, I sometimes find myself wondering, who cares? Don Draper may be a complex character, but he is also almost completely irredeemable and since the show revolves around him, it limits its overall appeal.
Guys, thanks. All your comments are really good. Stacy, I've actually never read that Frank O'Hara book, though I do love his poetry.
RE: Ethan
Don Draper is neither redeemable or irredeemable. You're missing the point. Mad Men is all about the utter ruthlessness of life. There's no redemption or lack thereof. As Draper says in season one, "the universe is indifferent." Good or bad is irrelevant.
Whitey,
Ha! Fair enough. I hadn't exactly thought about the show from that point of view. That being said, I find that a bit overwhelmingly pessimistic. The show tests my ability to stomach that kind of negativity and selfishness on a week in week out basis.
"I have only one minor complaint: Don Drapers' ties are too wide for the era, his suits look out of place in the Brooks Brothers, button-down era for men that was early 60's pre-Mod. A study of the Dick Van Dyke Show's Botany 500 attire might provide a worthwhile field trip for the costume designers."
To play devil's advocate: this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Draper clearly stands out from the men around him, and while he's not necessarily "modern", I can see where it might be good to have him stand out with his clothing as well as his overall demeanor, similarly to the way Japanese anime utilizes a blonde character to show how he's the one who is meant to stand out. Just throwing it out there.
Ethan,
It ain't positive or negative. It just is. That's what I take from it, anyway.
The Sopranos, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly negative.
(And if you haven't seen the 1959 movie Mad Men is modeled on, The Best of Everything, you really should. Abortion, alcoholism, stalking, sexual harassment, divorce, attempted suicide - it's awesome. Crazy, but awesome.)
Also a pretty fantastic book by Rona Jaffe. (I want to see the film!!)
Being a Hendricks fangirl from way back on "Firefly," I am now terrified to start watching "Mad Men," though. (I'll get over it.)
TNC, you turned me on to Mad Men through your white spokesman contest, so thank you. (was there ever a winner?) The characters are so complex it's a wonderful show.
The threatening aspect of Joan's sexuality has already been revealed in her cruel treatment of Kinsey. She seems to take every opportunity to make him feel inadequate. Do we know what exactly happened between them? She went out of her way to sabotage his relationship with the black woman at his party. She was then cruel to him again on election night. We really haven't seen Kinsey give any cause for the degree of malice she seems to harbor for him.
Am I the only one who thinks Jon Hamm looks exactly like Toby McGuire?
Am I the only one who thinks Jon Hamm looks exactly like Toby McGuire?
Not a resemblance that would have occurred to me but I see what you mean. Oddly when I see Hamm I often think he would make a very good Clark Kent/Superman. He just has that very classic look. McGuire does as well. Either one of them could just as easily be in a Capra movie.
Ta-Nehisi,
What I find interesting about your hip-hop references is not that you are betraying your blackness, so much as you are betraying your age. Tribe? Wu? What are you, mid-thirties? How about throwing out some Flo-Rida references, or, I dunno, T.I.?
Yeah, I don't listen to that stuff either.
To Just Karl:
You stated that Joan harbors special enmity for Kinsey. I do not agree. If you remember, they broke up because Kinsey was indiscreet. *He* betrayed Joan. As for his interracial relationship, Joan just pointed out the obvious. Kinsey was using his black girlfriend to improve his Bohemian hipster image. And Kinsey, in retalitaion, posted her driver's license for all to see, exposing her true age, 30. He may as well have posted a nude picture of her.
As for Joan's rape, I think we can compare this to a couple of other scenes this season. First let's take Don forcibly finger-f***ing Bobbie at the restaurant to maintain his dominance over her. Or when Don left Bobbie tied to the hotel bed. Finally, let's look at Don's negative reaction to Betty's bikini (following his witnessing of her conversation with the man from her riding club).
In the first two situations, when Don is made uncomfortable by a woman, he dominates them physically to regain control. In the last situation with the bikini, Don is disturbed to find that the mother of his children could be the object of another man's desire, so he tears her down verbally. This is what the men on this show do when women step out of their place-- they tear them down physically or emotionally.
Their wives are keepers of the home, mothers, and their bodies belong only to them. Their mistresses are there for comfort and sex. If either type of woman steps beyond the boundaries of those proscribed roles, the men react. Violently.
It was weird watching that scene. Joan's distancing herself from it was on point.The scene w/ the two of them in bed didn't register as a prelude for what happened. It was the first time I saw him in the show and it was WTF.
Peggy's evolvement is more interesting. She has truly learned from the crowd(The Catholic church sells a lot of things is truly a damning line). The gay guy cutting her hair, I thought was a more interesting take on her sexuality. I've always thought one of the most erotic scene's ever in a movie is when Jason(Damon) washes and cuts Marie(Polente) hair. She responds to the tenderness, the fact he truly cares w/ the intimate response. He in turn just watches in the morning surprised by his own response; I am not spying/casing. Contrast it w/ his response to Nicolette in the third movie.
Peggy reacts the same way. The joy of having someone care for her(he gives up? Dylan) as a person not for her soul. The Priest, as Torquemada, is really vile. His view of life on earth as finding out why people suffer and how he can facilate it to save their soul makes him even more dangerous.
As to Don. It's become like he's gone on walkabout. He is no longer interested in his power and loyalty. It's another reinvention but this time to no/what end.
I don't think Joan's sexuality has anything to do with her treatment of Kinsey. That's her razor-sharp intuition about people's motivations and refusal to look the other way she's wielding, not her sex appeal.
Kinsey is a wannabe and a fraud and Joan sees right through his urbane facade. When Kinsey tries to weasel out of the Freedom Ride, he proves Joan was absolutely right about him, just as she was about that calculating secretary, Jane.
Perhaps I missed the fact that it was Kinsey who xeroxed her drivers license, I assumed it was one of the other secretaries. Still, her anger at his indiscretion seems overblown to me. Why should he want to hide his relationship with her? It's not like either one was married, as is/was Cooper. Joan uses her sexuality to get the things she wants as we've seen in the scenes where she double dates with her roommate. I guess I don't understand why she would have had the relationship with the pathetic Kinsey to begin with. Her contempt for him seems out of place.
Also, I don't think we've seen any evidence that Kinsey's relationship with the black woman is a fraud, though obviously that is Joan's view. Any sane person would be apprehensive about the Freedom Rides. I seem to recall from history that the bus John Lewis was riding in was fire bombed with Molotov cocktails after being pulled over by the police. So, it's hard to hold that against the guy.
I'm a woman, I'm a fan of the show, and I thought the rape of Joan was a powerfully disturbing scene. It was extremely difficult for me to watch. (Most rape scenes are, of course. You should have seen me during The Accused.)
But to say that the SHOW is punishing Joan? I don't get that. Dr Fiance was punishing Joan, absolutely--for her sexual dominance (BOY, did he not like her on top: literally or metaphorically), for her experience (he may not know that she was involved with Roger, but he clearly found Roger's intimate knowledge of Joan's culinary preferences threatening), for her competence. But to assume that the show agrees with Dr Fiance? I just don't get that.
I've read a lot of comments from women in which they say, "Well, clearly Joan can't marry this guy now." That's a very modern reaction, but it's certainly not a contemporary one. While women still have a long ways to go, we sometimes forget how very far we've come. Joan is of a Certain Age, and she wants to settle down and be taken care of, so much so that she is willing to be all kittenish and submissive around her man (I'm thinking of their at-home dinner a couple of episodes back; Joan was almost unrecognizable). In 1962, for a woman of that Certain Age to toss away a promising prospect was not exactly routine. As for what happened on the floor of Don's office: Dr Fiance wouldn't have seen it as rape (I doubt he would even have seen it as his ploy to reassert his dominance, because he is an ASSHOLE), the courts wouldn't have seen it as rape, and I'm not even 100% sure that Our Joan saw it as rape. It was something over which she had no control, and to which she had to submit in order to secure her larger goal.
I can't even tell you how happy I am not to live in such times. But it was the reminder of that trap that caught so many women that made the scene as powerfully discomfitting as it was.
Remember he pretended to his girlfriend that work forced him to bag on the Freedom Ride. He was horrified when Don pulled that excuse out from under him.
Also, his lecture about Marxism on the bus was just dripping with fraudulence. There wasn't a person on that bus who didn't think he was full of shit, and in fact, when he comes back, we found out that she dumped him two days into the trip.
Ease up on Kinsey. Yes he is a bit of a poser and yes he lied about why he got on the bus, but... he got on the bus. I got the vibe that his experiences in Mississippi changed him or at least de-poserized him.
Re: The Best of Everything, you must read the book. The book is rich in detail as well as character description like Mad Men. The movie fits into that ilk of 50s maudlin melodramas like Peyton Place, Back Street,Immitation of Life.While the genre is fun in a kitch kind of way, the quality of the movies suffers under McCarthyistic cleansing, wherein depth of character only went so far.That book stayed in my psyche one summer as I ended up re-reading it.
As to the tie discussion I instigated, I get that they may be making Draper unique, but it still doesn;t fit with his east coast preppy status. The music might be more early 6s too. "What'll I do?" might have been better replaced by Earl Grant,"At the End of a Rainbow," even Tony Bennett--"Once Upon a Time." I feel 90% immersed in the early 60s; I want that 10%! I want Peter Paul and Mary,Steve and Eydie, the Twist,or Bossa Nova,Vaughn Meeder, Tonight Show clips and you bet your Groucho...
Good gracious, passing? Now I must watch this show. I am a serious fan of classic American movies about the corporate world, from "The Apartment" to "Executive Suite" to "The Best of Everything." I give these movies a pass because of the tenor the time in which they were made, but as much as I wanted to I just could not watch "Mad Men" knowing that I would not see any Black people or any notion that we even existed in that milieu, which of course we did. I didn't read your whole post because, of course, of the spoiler effect, but now I can't wait to see it. Thanks much.
I'm not a fan of Mad Men and didn't see the scene, but I do agree with that Anthony Lane quote and that is what I thought of "Burn After Reading". Totally.
RE: bg rhule
The Twist is in the first season.
RE: anna perez
Give Mad Men a chance. I don't think it's a matter of the show deserving a pass or not, as it uses the rare appearance of black folks as an opportunity to show the blatant prejudices of the time. It's really not fair to lump it in with films from the early-'60s that simply ignored the existence of African Americans.
JenJen:
Joan is not going to buy her own house in the country. Not Joan, and not in 1962.
I'm dying to read your thoughts on Don Draper and passing.
A few thoughts: the first is that this season has really been an extended riff on women's lot and their choices as the 1950s are slowly ending. The disintegration of the Draper marriage has put Betty in what she sees as an untenable position, potential divorcee. The only comparisons she has are all, to her imagination, loose women: her neighbor (whose son she has more or less taken away as to prove she cannot even hold onto a boy, let alone a husband) and her former roommate whom Don tells her is a "party girl."
Peggy has gone from being a victim to a kind of clearinghouse for advice. From her mother to Bobbie to Joan to the priest EVERYONE seems to think they know what's best for Peggy. It is gratifying to see in this past episode that she is finally talking instead of passively letting things happen and occasionally taking a chance. Peggy is, in a sense, the new Don--she even sounded like him in the pitch, able to to boil everything down to its archetype.
Where does that leave Joan? Her battle with Kinsey is beyond ironic (the Kinsey reports on male and female sexuality were published in 1948 and 1953, respectively, and I do not think his name is an accident). She loathes him as he represents a kind of intellectual/ideological bully who is at heart just as base as all of the other men. It's human nature, man and woman. His antipathy toward her is petty and vicious, but that's human nature too. She is losing her fiefdom to conveniences like the Xerox machine, and losing her sexual power to the vicissitudes of age. To watch her former lover with a 20-year-old is a slap in the face worse than any Kinsey could deliver, and her tears upon the death of Marilyn were appropriate and moving: this is a woman who would worship at that altar.
OK, to the rape: it was punishment for her sexual knowlege and experience and desire. That is clear. The old saw that rape is about power, not sex, kept coming to mind as I watched it, because another kind of assault would not nearly as been as fitting a punishment for what had transpired between them earlier in the episode. What made it more troubling was that it happened at the office. Not only did that play up how much her fiance resents her sexual history, but that both her body and her fiefdom have been invaded by this man she has chosen to be her ticket out of Sterling Cooper. If only she could hold out for the Helen Gurley Brown era--Joan is built for Sex and the Single Girl, not The Best of Everything.
I don't have anything new to say. But I've enjoyed this thread so much I'll throw my repetitive two cents in.
The scene floored me. But I've been squirming for weeks over all the little clues that presaged it. Joan as a strong, powerful woman at the office who shrinks into a wee wifey at home. Joan as an extremely capable woman who actually enjoyed her work when she pitched in to read scripts, only for the responsibility to be ripped from her when they found a man to do it. It tells me that she appears powerful only so long as she keeps to her strictly prescribed role.
Her interaction with Peggy fascinates me. They are like two different species. I have to believe something (further) is going to happen there.
And Jane - I don't have a bead on her at all. Does Roger really want her for anything other than her youth? Is she selling out or isn't she? I suspect she has a core of iron that we are going to see as the engagement progresses.
The question the show leaves me with is "What are the writers trying to say?" It's so consistently a downer I couldn't believe that they are seeking only to be merely descriptive. Matt J may have answered that for me. The show certainly gives me insight into my mother - but it gives me even more into my father.
Thank you so much for writing this, TNC. This is why you're quickly becoming my favorite politics/culture writer out there.
Like many above, I didn't see the scene as a punishment of Joan by the writers. I see Mad Men in part as a scathing critique of a particular society in a particular time that, despite its claims to superiority over all others, was actually rather twisted. Matthew Weiner (ironically, like David Simon of The Wire and our host, also from Baltimore) is Jewish-American and doesn't seem to me to hide his contempt for the pretensions and falsities of the WASP ruling class of the time. He hasn't been afraid to attack that society for its presuppositions to sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, which I respect him for (though he does seem to have a love for New York and a respect for the WASP aesthetic of the time. After all, who can hate the martini glass?).
Aside from some of what Peggy does, I don't think the show ever says that what a character is doing is moral. The show seems more like an anthropological unveiling of that time's and place's seedy underbelly. The rape scene, to me, portrays how life simply was for a woman back then. The idea of date rape didn't exist as a concept in people's minds. Rape was only seen as an act between strangers that was often blamed on the woman (after all, it wasn't really until the case dramatized in The Accused that Americans really started to fully understand why rape is inherently evil).
Usually I can't sit through scenes of sexual assault because they make me ill, but I couldn't stop watching the Mad Men scene because it really hit home for me how precarious the position of women was back then, never being able to feel safe with anyone. It made me wonder how many older women I know ended up staying with men who had raped them out of social expectation and not being able to articulate that their husband/boyfriend was evil for what he did. Think of how back in the 90s many men were angry at Loretta Bobbitt and ignored the fact she did what she did to her husband in retaliation for rape. A Republican Congressman from Texas in the past 20 years introduced a bill to legalize spousal rape. Britain's courts only criminalized spousal rape sometime between 1987-1992.
It also made me wonder when forty years from now, what aspects of our society we're not fully cognizant of will be attacked in that time's version of Mad Men.
I think the biggest similarity between Mad Men and The Wire is how they show how institutions and society are rigged. In The Wire, the police bureaucracy screws over good cops wanting good police work, the drug ganglords screw over those below them, and suburbanites and the "tough on crime/drugs" politicians they elect screw over poor blacks and Latinos in the inner city. On Mad Men, society is structured so that (with the exception of Peggy, and even then only to a limited extent) only well-educated and well-connected WASP men from the right families can truly succeed. This societal structure even screws over a hard-working, ambitious white guy like Dick Wittman, who has to steal a WASP male's identity in order to succeed and climb the social ladder.
Wow this thread is just too good:
"It fit in with what I believe is the overall theme of the series - why the sixties had to happened."
Right on. Now that I think about it, Mad Men is our own version of "The Cherry Orchard."
"they are all roses of societal expectation riddled with cancres of emotional reality."
"thus the choice of the office as site for the rape; he's attacking her professional identity as well as her personal power."
"Her battle with Kinsey is beyond ironic (the Kinsey reports on male and female sexuality were published in 1948 and 1953, respectively, and I do not think his name is an accident)."
Damn you, why didn't I think of that?
I agree that Mad Men should be compared to The Wire as a TV series.
For the specific scene, I think the flowers are the most powerful thing in it. At the beginning, she holds the flowers of her fiance proudly. Before she goes in the office, she puts them on her desk gently. But by the time it's all over, she completely forgets about them and leaves them at the (relative) scene of the crime. Those flowers symbolize her love for him and the power she felt she had in the relationship: both left behind.
I'm surprised that I did not see mentioned in the comments the prior interaction between fiance Greg and boss Roger, which was a catalyst to the date-rape. Greg, who earlier in the episode rebuffed Joan's advances at home, appears compelled to reestablish his sexual dominance in the office. Why the change of libido?
Roger escalates the tension of ego after being introduced to Greg, by telling Greg information about Joan that Greg doesn't know (that Joan dislikes French food). Greg is visibly thrown by this, and then leads Joan into the office.
Clearly, Joan is the powerless victim here. Unfortunately, the history of sexual tension in her relationship with Roger is a factor, which Roger selfishly exploits, and impacts Greg's descent into hell.
As much as this is about feminism, it's also about the masculine competitive drive taken to its logical destructively darwinian ends. Anyone who subscribes to natural (AND sexual) selection must concede this.
Mad Men is as great as The Wire, but they are very different. The Wire is like Balzac -- a portrait of society at every stratum, with vision and empathy into what drives each of the segments of the Baltimore civi world to do what they do. Character was important, but mostly for how it fit into the social fabric. It reinforced the belief that worst-case scenarios are really only the logical and unavoidable result of social contradictions and skewed incentives.
Mad Men is about a whole 'nother thing: The crippling effects of American mid-century society on the souls of its participants. This is a culture still in shock over WWII and the Cold War, but barely able to look at what nihilists it has turned them all into. Don is the hero because he is the most self-aware, but he is also literally living the lie while knowing the truth. That Joanie's fiance is a rapist and abuser was basically unexpected. He seemed kind of paternalisticly creepy, but I don't recall having the sense he could do this kind of thing. But he did, and now Joanie is responsible for her reactions to this manifestly evil act. So far, she seems to be willing to let him get away with it the same way all the other characters get by -- by cleaving her soul, distancing herself from her righteous anger.
The other thing Mad Men hits hard (and this incident plays into) is the characters' loneliness and isolation, and it shows how society has basically set us up to be without social resources when we need them most. Who does Betty have to talk to who can help her? Peggy? Joan? Even Don and Roger? Maybe after a few drinks they can almost communicate, but not well. Otherwise, they're all on their own, living in their divided consciousness. And, of course, there is no cop Joanie can call. Not in that world.
Speaking of period details, one things that always struck me as possibly off is all the wine that is drunk (particularly by Betty). All I'd ever heard before was that wine in the US at that time was for ethnics and bums. Sal might enjoy a glass around his people in Baltimore; Betty Draper not so much.
Of course my people all grew up on the opposite coast, so who knows.
I was once in a relationship with a woman who intended to be a virgin on her wedding day, and wanted her husband to be too. (What were we doing together? Good God, who knows?) She had antennae like Joan's fiance, wondering if any way that I ever touched her was something I'd "learned" from someone else, paranoid that we'd meet someone I'd been with, and alert for any sign that I was cheating on her. Roles reversed, and I could easily imagine that sort of insecurity leading into rape, as in this episode.
I like Mad Men, but find some of the over-the-top story lines and selective non-method acting a little disorienting.
This show is not even close to The Wire, but that's because seasons 3 and 4 of The Wire asre so amazingly good; worthy, as others have said, of a great novel.
On to Joan. Nice to see the sexy voluptuous type -- notice the scene at the club with the models (none skinny) and Joan with the Marilyn look. We also saw this narrow-waisted, big-hip look in How to Succeed in Business ...
I agree with an earlier comment that being passed over for the job of reviewing the TV scripts was heart-breaking, although a little cliche. Peggy's rise, by contrast, I find rather convincing.
I think Joan is expected, and expects, to "go home" when married. So I do not believe that the rape is an attack on her job. Work is a place where she has had these relationships that the finacee senses, so I viewed it as showing dominance generally and marking his territory on her body, like a fox or wolf urinating. He's proving he's the boss.
The scene is great entertainment, to use the term broadly -- brutal, thought-provoking, and heart-breaking, and all without disturbing graphic images. (Tarantino in his best, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, each have that one gratuitous scene that detreacts from the films.)
As soon as he was pushing Joan to the floor, I realized what was happening, as if right along with her and felt the powerlessness. We can't use modern judgment to read this. It would be satisfying to see her to kick him and flounce out, but that would be a much lesser show. She won't because the stakes are too high for her. A single woman over 30 was on the slow slide to complete irrelevance, and this man is her last, best chance to achieve a good wife identity.
The fiance most certainly would never consider what he did rape (nor would she - just a fact of life she would have to endure). It was simply that she was "his" and he considered her body available. He also would never have the self-awareness to understand that it was the combination threat of her sexual experience, her turf, and her powerful ex-lover that kicked off the desire to possess her as a way to put her in her place and regain status. The brokenness in her as she fixed herself up and later making the best of it to Peggy was agonizing.
I thought the casual sexual harassment was a smack in the face about how much life has changed for women, but...wow.
Caveat -
No, "anyone 'subscribing' to natural and sexual selection" (are they different) doesn't have to accept that. There's been no quantum leap in evolution since 1962, yet what's largely seen as acceptable behavior in the world of the show is universally condemned by people reading this. Funny how that works.
Vail Beach makes an interesting point the about isolation of the times. True, but ironic, since we're told that NOW is the time we're isolated by our iPods, Tivos, and non-league bowling.
(The sometime exception is Betty, who is periodically candid with her friends).
lt:
Natural selection is about genetic bias (towards survival); sexual selection is about mating bias (also towards survival). My point is that both genetic aggressiveness AND mating competition each will naturally promote males to step ahead of each other in consummation of intercourse.
I fail to see where I've gone off the reservation on this, as much as the outcome makes people squirm.
I have to admit that I choked on the word "rape" when reading it to describe this scene. While I allow that it's use is technically correct ("woman saying no to sex" + "man taking sex anyway" = "rape"), I can't get past the extenuating circumstances: Joan could have fought Greg off, but she didn't. She could have cried out, but she didn't do that either. In these decisions, she became morally complicit in what happened.
Joan's calculation here is easy to apprehend: as previous commenters have pointed out, much more is at stake for her than her virtue and honor (or whatever passes for "virtue" and "honor" in the parlance of the day). If she fights, she almost certainly forfeits the relationship; if she cries out, she forfeits the illusion of sexual invincibility on which rests her status as Sterling-Cooper's alpha female. Given this dilemma, Joan makes a choice: submission. As in all true dilemmas, the choice is double-edged, and one of those edges is that neither she nor the audience can deploy the word "rape" with the same moral force with which we deploy it against, say, the rapist in "The Accused".
Regarding Greg: given the preceding interaction with Roger Sterling, the commenters who discern his desire to "mark his territory" have it exactly right. And, as a guy, I kind of get it, even though it was wrong.
A previous commenter referred to the old saw, "rape is about power, not sex." The saw I've heard many times is "rape is about violence, not sex."
I suspect this had a historical role in legitimizing rape as a bonafide crime, but in fact, it is not true. I'm an emergency physician and have attended to many many rape patients. It's about sex, and often intoxication. Associated violence or threats of violence are very very rare.
Back to the scene, and history of rape: Joan did not recognize the act as rape. Of course, she would not cry out nor fight him.
When I watched that scene and how Joan just resignedly stared off to the side (as she had no choice because he was holding her down by the side of her jaw, I had the sense that this was not new for her.
What was she thinking? Perhaps that it will be over soon.
I totally don't think that this in any way would be a deal breaker for her. However, I can see his jealousy increasing later on and possibly hitting her. That might be her dealbreaker but I doubt he would try that until she quits her job and moves her away to the suburbs.
Joan and Kinsey probably would be the best together. They "get" each other despite their mutual apparent anger and spiteful exchanges.
The rape scene was deeply disturbing, and it's one of the only realistic rape scenes I've seen--though marital rape is no longer legal, it still happens, but you wouldn't know it from the way rape is depicted onscreen (i.e. the stranger-in-the-bushes approach, though 85% of rape survivors knew their victims). The part where Joan focuses on the table legs across the room brought me to a jolt of tears: Many women who have been in a comparable situation and who did not choose physical resistance have done exactly that. Tuning out seemed like the best available option to her at the moment.
What others have said about her fiance, not the show, punishing Joan for her choices. That seemed pretty clear to me.
To loosely quote Gloria Steinem, there's always been sexual harassment, domestic violence and rape--it's just that now there's a name for it. Before it was just called life. What I love most about Mad Men is the way in which it shows that, sharing with us how much the feminist movement was absolutely necessary. Joan may well go on and marry her fiance. Because that's what you do when you don't have better models to follow. As jz-md pointed out, she didn't recognize it as rape, putting physical resistance to his actions in the realm of "unacceptable" instead of in the realm of "self-defense."
In classic narratives, the bad women are always punished for their transgressions. Whether this is sexual, intellectual, or emotional, any woman who threatens the power hierarchy where man is naturally higher is punished.
However, if you think that Joan is being punished for her sexual transgressions, but Peggy is not, or if you leave Betty out of this equation entirely, I think you're missing some very critical twists Mad Men puts on the classic narrative, particularly in this scene. No woman has gone unpunished, including Peggy. Peggy had the ultimate classic narrative punishment -- we're talking Biblical here -- of getting pregnant. And if you think that will continue to be something swept under the rug...I think you would be wrong.
And while Joan was raped for violating her fiancee's sense of personal power, the narrative doesn't set male power up to be the unquestioned absolute that it is in classic narrative. All of the men struggle with their sense of masculinity and power. In fact, I would argue that the struggle for power -- to control your job, your home, your wife, your children, your husband, your neighbors your co-workers, your life, yourself -- is the central tension in the show, between all the characters and within each character.
The entire purpose of advertising is to convince people that they have power or control over what they purchase, and in doing so, they have power and control over their lives. Every moment of this show is a constant fight for control -- and it's not just the women who have failed to achieve it.