Mad Men: A Dissolved Masculinity and the Collapse of Emphasized Femininity
Mad Men: A Dissolved Masculinity and the Collapse of Emphasized Femininity
When Mad Men debuted in 2007, it was the first original programming for the AMC Network. While it was evident from the show’s pilot it was bountiful in quality, it would be hard for anyone to know the exact thematic depths the show would eventually reach. Over the course of six seasons, with half of the final season airing now, the show has touched upon themes of reinvention of self, urban vs suburban living, bigotry, adultery, and much more. But perhaps the most poignant are simply those of masculinity and femininity. However, it is not just masculinity and femininity on a basic level, but rather that of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Michael S. Kimmel discusses these concepts in the introduction to his book, The Gendered Society, writing “the hegemonic definition of masculinity is ‘constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women,” whereas emphasized femininity is “organized around compliance with gender inequality, and is ‘oriented to accommodating the interests and desires of men” (11). These separate but related concepts are found easily within two episodes from the show’s fifth season: “Signal 30” and “The Other Woman.” It is within these two episodes that Mad Men discusses the origins of a shifting hegemonic masculinity and subtle collapse of emphasized femininity.
The concept of masculinity is one that has forever changed throughout the years and will continue to do so. Yet if there has been a through line in the connotation of masculinity, it has been that of a man who is rough, rugged, not afraid to put a woman in her place, and so forth with the ilk. Interestingly, Mad Men takes place during the 1960s, which is the same decade in which James Bond made his big screen debut and became the silver screen interpretation of masculinity — or rather, the hegemonic masculinity. As portrayed by Sean Connery, Bond was seen as a man free from society’s rules, able to travel wherever he wanted and could sleep with whomever he wanted. In many ways, he was the “ideal” man, above all subordinated masculinities, and certainly above women. The trend of Bond’s psyche was one that, only until recently, had been explored just once. With that specific film not being a financial success, it was not until 2006 that another attempt was made to make Bond more emotional, more human than machine. This was only done eight years ago because of a just recent movement in society toward accepting men as having emotions, rather than simply being cold and stoic as the society in the past once believed they must be. This dynamic of a man “needing” to act emotionally in a certain way, and failing to meet those standards, is, in many ways, at the core of Pete Campbell’s struggles in Mad Men.
Every character on the show has his/her own critical flaws that have been internalized, and Pete’s biggest issue is finding his own place in the world amongst the men. He is someone trapped between two generations, both born too early and too late. He is too early for the new younger counterculture generation; or rather those who were more open to gender roles being a falsehood. But he is also too late for those more stoic — the generation who thought men should keep everything bottled up and own the world. The latter generation is represented heavily on the show by Don Draper, a man who is perhaps the closest to resembling the Bond ideal, but of course, no man is an ideal. While he is the closest thing to resembling a central male lead character, and is seen as the “ideal” masculinity on the show, it is not afraid to explore the dark depths that really exist in the shadows. Don is a man who has had multiple extramarital affairs, has stolen a man’s identity, and continuously tries to control women. He is an antihero through and through. Yet, even with all of his rather apparent flaws, he is a man who Pete desperately yearns to gain the respect of, as is the case for Pete with nearly every male character on the show.
Every step Pete takes toward achieving that status of respect is often thrown back in his face. A prime example of this is the aforementioned episode “Signal 30,” which finds him once more trying to assert himself as a man wherever he can. Throughout the course of the episode, he attempts to flirt with a girl in high school, fix a leaking sink, fights a coworker in the office, and eventually buys a prostitute. However, each of these events inevitably becomes a failure on not just a basic moral level, but also on a level of masculinity. By the episode’s end, the girl in high school is swept away by another guy in high school; the sink is fixed by on; Pete’s ashamed by the fight; and Don takes the high road over Campbell after finding out about the prostitute, which is only after Campbell needed the prostitute to call him a “king.” A man forever emasculated by others, the episode is no exception. It is not just the fact that Don is the one to actually fix the Campbell family’s kitchen sink; it is more so the how: After Pete runs off to grab his toolbox — a toolbox that had already failed him once — Don rips his shirt off, gathering a reaction from the three wives in the kitchen, and gets down on the ground to fix the sink with his bare hands. By the time Pete returns, everything is already done, and he is simply left standing with his toolbox in his hands.
This event in the kitchen is just one example, but a prime one, of not just Pete’s lack of masculinity, but also how the hegemonic masculinity remains one of dominance in his time. Yet the importance of this stems from the fact Pete, regardless of his own personal faults, is a part of a newer generation, at least in perspective to Don and his ilk. While he is still a man caught between two ideas of masculinity, he is a personification of that change. In fact, by the season’s end, a monologue from Pete shows that he has an understanding of this. After having an affair with a married woman for months, he has an epiphany that his actions were just a “temporary bandage on a permanent wound.” The father issues embedded within the character — further reinforcing his desire to be a part of the hegemonic masculinity — make him feel as if the extremes he goes to are a necessity. This realization of his is important to understand that the show, as a whole, is examining the hegemonic masculinity so as to critique it and show the need to move past such antiquated ideas. Furthermore, on a more meta level, the show uses Pete as an example to show how American culture has come to accept masculinity as something complex, beyond one only being a “man’s man.” While struggles with masculinity still exist, and will surely exist for some time, gone are the days where a man must be akin to James Bond. Now it is okay to be Pete Campbell, although maybe perhaps with much better morals.
Interestingly, it is the women on the show who, generally speaking, have better morals than their male counterparts. Much in the same way Bond’s arrival in the 1960s reflects the crises of hegemonic masculinity on the show, the rise of second-wave feminism in the same decade often reflects the ways in which emphasized femininity subtly begins to crumble on the show. While first-wave feminism had eventually granted women the right to vote, among other things, second-wave feminism, of course, took the fight into the workplace. This struggle against the male-dominated status quo and emphasized femininity is personified largely within three central female characters on the show: Joan Holloway, Peggy Olsen, and Megan Draper. All three of their character arcs are central to the show exploring both emphasized femininity and further critiquing hegemonic masculinity in multiple forms through the episode “The Other Woman.”
While all three women are of importance, the episode’s main arc is the story of Joan, who is turned into a bargaining tool by the partners at the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce firm to possibly be given a contract with Jaguar. However, the problem for Joan was not just being used for bargaining, but rather that the partners at SCDP wanted to give her away to a high-profile client from Jaguar for sexual relations just to maybe have a shot at grabbing the company’s contract. Joan is a woman who has already gone through her fair share of abuses: being given a title-only promotion; being raped by her husband, who later served her divorce papers after she stood up to him; and she is also a single mother, raising her kid on wages far less than those around her, even if one could argue she does more work than any of the partners in the office. Yet what makes her arc so special to the character, and one of power rather than victimhood, is the concept of choice. When Joan eventually agrees to join into the plan, it is on her own terms, or at least as much as it could be. She is expected to be subordinate to the partners’ proposition. While some of the men act as if they are not entirely okay with going full speed ahead, all of them, with the exception of Don, have no difficulties letting the action happen. The breaking away from emphasized femininity is that Joan could have said no entirely, but she understands the limitations of her world and makes a completely conscious decision to make an opportunity. Furthermore, it illustrates the extent to which hegemonic masculinity is willing to stand above women, while also managing to show that same masculinity is falling apart from both inside and outside sources.
Yet Joan is not the only character in the episode, or the show, to have mixed second-wave and third-wave feminism to a powerful effect. Peggy Olsen, another female character on the show to have gone through plenty of issues, such as secretly having Pete Campbell’s child, is never quite taken as seriously as she should be. Arguably the most creative mind in the office, outside of perhaps Don, Peggy in many ways keeps the advertisement agency afloat, not unlike Joan. Peggy was always Don’s underling, even from the beginning of the series, as she started with the company as his secretary, which is not to say anything poor of Peggy, but rather Don himself. Of course, emphasized femininity dictates that Olsen should forever remain under his foot, regardless of how invaluable to SCDP she ultimately is. Yet the power of choice, as was evidenced with Joan, plays a major role in allowing Peggy to branch out with more power.
After Don literally throws money in Peggy’s face, she starts to look around at other firms for a better position. For her to look around at different firms is an absolute risk, as it threatens the current status quo that is enforced by the hegemonic masculinity. However, the actions that Peggy was forced to take in dealing with her situation are a testament to the power that women were finally getting an idea of in the 1960s as the shackles of emphasized femininity were slowly but surely being dismantled. Don even attempts to win Peggy back over after she announces her departure by once more throwing money at her, albeit in the form of a raise this time. He fails to understand what is happening around him with Peggy and make the mistake to think Peggy wants everything except to be valued. But Peggy chooses to walk away, never even giving a thought to Don’s desperate grabs for her to stay. And once more in the episode, it all comes back to the concept of choice — an active and thought out decision, one that would, in fact, benefit Peggy for a time.
Not unlike how Peggy gained some control over Don by leaving, his wife, Megan, did the same. Originally working with him at the SCDP offices, Don does not want Megan to follow her dreams as an actress. In fact, the shifts in emphasized femininity represented in this episode are as much his doing as they are Megan’s. She is from a much younger generation than Don, on top of being raised in a considerably liberal family. The dynamic between the married couple is constantly one of tension between Don’s hegemonic masculinity that declares she must be exactly as he wants and Megan’s breaking away from emphasized femininity that allows her to be whoever it is she wishes to be. As the power struggle builds to a head as Megan needs to leave New York for a play in Boston, his grasp on Megan attempts to get tighter. However, as is shown elsewhere in the episode, the days of men being absolutely controlling of women are numbered. Don, forever battling his fair share of control issues, cannot understand that Megan is her own person, free to be as she chooses. And for the third time in the episode, it is the power of choice that allows Megan to make a stand for herself, which is not to say it was easy. She wants to stay with her husband, but she also knows that this opportunity with the play is everything. She knows what she needs to do. Whereas women from earlier generations would have been forced to bow down and do as Don says, Megan takes a stand and confronts him. She is the youngest of the central characters on the show, and is thus the most proactive in not being controlled by the men around her. Her free nature acts as a representation of the shifting ideals in America.
These shifting ideals are absolute keys to the future, both in terms of reality and within the show itself. American society has finally started to reach a state in which it is willing to examine its past in order to change the present to fix the future. An unfortunate truth is hegemonic masculinity will never go away, at least so long as hierarchies are set in place to keep any idea of a status quo. Nonetheless, while overly masculine characters such as James Bond, or even Don Draper, will continue to exist, they are no longer the mirror to which other men must rank themselves against. “Signal 30” begins and ends with the same sound: a drop of water falling from a broken faucet. It is a clear motif to indicate how Campbell will always be trapped in a state of flux — never able to move beyond his subordinated masculinity. Yet the simple fact he exists alongside Don, and will continue to so after Don’s death, is a strange uplifting idea that change can come after an earlier generation. In relative terms, it is now considered okay to be of a subordinated masculinity, for a status quo will always be able to be torn down and built anew, if even built again at all. And in some ways, the nearly exact same can be said for the show’s representation of emphasized femininity. The power of and ability to change will forever be possible, which consequently means the end of emphasized femininity will forever be possible. The struggles of femininity are still difficult for women, even half of a century later, but the show is giving a look at gradual change — a change that is more realistic than any other. In fact, all of these changes to hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity presented in “Signal 30” and “The Other Woman” are not revolutionary ideas, nor are they themes the show had never tackled before, but the two episodes are prime illustrations of a future slightly brighter than the past.
Works Cited
Kimmel, Michael S. “Introduction.” The Gendered Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 1–17. Print.
Mad Men: Season Five. Writ. Matthew Weiner. Dir. John Slattery and Phil Abraham. Lionsgate, 2012. DVD.
