More on Mad Men

I watched season 2 and part of season 3 of Mad Men (henceforth known as MM), planning on writing some grand opus on gender issues in the TV series. As so often happens however, if you don't write observations as you watch the show, it is hard to culturally analzye it later on. I would like to point out a few things however:

1. Sal's marriage: Sal, who is gay, is portrayed as being disrespectful to his wife. I do think however, there might have been men who liked their wives as friends, and had good friendships with their wives. Some of them may even have had wives who knew of their true sexual preferences. Also, Sal is a walking stereotype: He loves art and cooking. Many gay men love art and cooking, but many gay men don't. Furthermore, the scene where has the random hookup is confusing: Given that a) Sal expressed no interest in the hotel employee b) there was a hug risk to admitting one was gay/coming on to a man in the 1960s, how would the employee know that Sal was gay and that Sal was interested? At first I thought the random hookup scene gave into stereotypes of gay men as licentious, but then I realized - since in the 1960s, you could not openly have a gay partner, if you wanted to not be a social outcast, living a life as "single" man or a married man, while pursuing either one-night liasions with a series of men or even a secret affair with one man, were pretty much your only option. This made me wonder if part of the "gay = licentious" stereotype stems from a time where hetero-normative society forced gay men to be licentious, by not providing them with a socially acceptable way to be in a long-term relationship. I do give MM credit for portraying a realistic make-out scene between two men.

2. The frustration of the housewives is well portrayed. You have these smart women, used to going out and having fun, and having good sex, who all of a sudden have nothing intellectually stimulating to do all day, and who are not being taken out - or maybe not even given good sex - by their husbands on a regular basis, since their husbands are at work all day, and even the night-time business bar meeting scene seems to be mostly reserved for the men and for "fun" women who are no their wives, though there are exceptions. There certainly are "couple" business evenings as well, just that a) there are less of them b) even then, some of them are dinner evenings inside the couple's home, which is a lot of work for the hostess. I wonder how accurate this is. It seems that in the Madison Ave world of MM, cheating is a non-issue, because it is so socially acceptable. I am sure cheating was more openly accepted in that milieu, but I refuse to believe there was absolutely no moral/social stigma at all, or that all men cheated, which MM makes it seem like.

3. There is one lesbian (so far) in MM, and she too is a stereotype: She basically follows Joan in order to be with her, even though she knows that to Joan this is just a friendship. She dates men. She comes across as desperate. I want to see a strong lesbian figure, who either a) pursued the scene - God knows it existed in NY in the 1960s b) does move in with Joan do to romantic feelings, but because she landed a kick-ass job in NY - not because she followed Joan to NY c) lives a happily single life enjoying the non-sexual things and good friends, knowing she can't have everything she wants, but not letting that disappointment define her life

4. Just in general, MM seems to not believe in a mutually enjoyable, respectful, intellectually challenging, fun relationship between men and women, whether sexual or platonic, with, perhaps, the exceptions of Don-Peggi and Don-Anna. Part of this is due to the fact that women had more limited opportunities than men, which did not allow them to self-actualize in the same way, and it is hard to have mutually enjoyable, respectful, intellectually challenging, fun relationships when one person is extremely self-actualized and the other is not - which is the point of "Venus in Furs", by Leopold Von Sacher-Massach, the guy who gave "masochism" its name. I think MM goes beyond historic realism however, into the realm of - msogyny may be the wrong word, because I do not think it's intentional - I think it is well-meaning, an earnest fear of not being faithful to the 1960s - but anyhow, I believe a) there were women who transcended the limited opportunities given to them, in order to become self-actualized - not just those who escaped house-wifery, but even those who read and wrote a lot, and found hobbies and ways of being happy within the confines of house-wifery b) there were men who escaped the boundaries by really striving to understand and respect women. These men and women, despite the odds, were able to have healthy relationships - and I wish at least one couple on MM had a healthy relationship, for the sake of, if nothing else, historical accuracy.