"Mad Men," Season Six, Episode 1, "The Doorway," (Part 2)

The two-hour premiere for season six of “Mad Men, “The Doorway” featured too many themes to discuss in one post.  In particular, the episode included a number of pop culture references from the late 1960s that require explication.

Peggy has to change a headphone ad because a comedian makes a joke about the Vietnam War on “The Tonight Show” that links the ad with crimes committed by American soldiers.  Though “Mad Men” executive producer Matthew Weiner told TV Guide that the actual joke is fictional, the plotline reveals how important the program, then hosted by Johnny Carson, was to American culture during the period.  Indeed, “The Tonight Show” garnered a much larger percentage of the television audience in the late 1960s that it does today, even though Jay Leno still leads David Letterman and others in the ratings race.   Younger readers who have grown up with multiple channel options probably don’t realize that Carson dominated late night from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s as competitors ranging from Dick Cavett to Pat Sajak fell by the wayside, one by one.  As Weiner himself observed, “I can’t even explain it to young people what a universal experience it was [when] people watched [Tonight].(TV Guide website, April 8, 2013) For more on Carson and his “Tonight Show” reign, see href>http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2012/05/johnny-carson-and-late-night-tv-today.html>  

Ostensibly, the client wants the ad changed because it is going to be aired in an expensive slot during Super Bowl II in January 1968.  I know Weiner says the show is not a history lesson, but “The Doorway” offers a very presentist look at the big game, which had not yet achieved the national holiday stature it attained in the 1970s.  Indeed, many believe the Super Bowl ad wars did not truly get underway until Apple introduced the Macintosh during Super Bowl XVIII in 1984 with a groundbreaking spot based on George Orwell’s novel set in that year.  See href>http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-super-bowls-history.html>

Finally, Roger’s daughter asks him to help her husband start a business in a new field—refrigeration.  Immediately, I thought of the scene from “The Graduate,” where Mr. McGwire tells Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) about the great future in “plastics.”  I think Weiner was making a deliberate comparison since the classic film debuted in 1967, when “The Doorway” begins.

For more, see

Href>http://www.tvguide.com/News/Mad-Men-Premiere-1063737.aspx?rss=news&partnerid=spi&profileid=05

"Mad Men," Season Six, Episode 1, "The Doorway"

“Mad Men” is back and enters the realm of 1968, the most eventful year of the 1960s.  As it does, the show’s clothing and aesthetic have clearly evolved from the 1950sish feel of season 1 to reflect the cultural and social changes that marked the decade.  The first episode of season 6, “The Doorway,” also continues the program’s commentary on key events of the period such as the Vietnam War and the decline of New York City.

Appearances clearly mark the time as several characters are sporting facial hair, which was stigmatized at the outset of the decade, but became more and more common in the era.  Gone are the days when only Paul Kinsey had a beard; now, Ginsburg, Stan, and Abe Drexler all have some, along with the hippies in Greenwich Village.

The drug culture emerges in full flower as several characters use marijuana in the episode, including Megan and the young employees of the booming Sterling Cooper.  More and more people tried marijuana as the decade progressed.  As late as 1960, only 4 percent of college students had tried it.  By 1972, 50 percent had used it.

As always, gender is central in “Mad Men,” as a precocious 15 year-old family friend named Sandy lectures Betty on the downsides of domesticity and expresses a desire to move to some kind of hippie commune in the city.  Meanwhile, Peggy seems like Don circa season 1, ripping into the workers under her for their poor work.  She appears very self-confident and the epitome of a 1970s career woman, a far cry from season 1 and 1960.

Vietnam makes two important appearances as Don meets a soldier on R&R while vacationing in Honolulu.  The soldier notes that everyone in Hawaii has been friendly and that “after all the shit that went on last summer stateside I was looking for a fight,” a likely reference to the growing antiwar movement at home.  By the end of 1967 and three years of an Americanized war in Southeast Asia, a majority believed the war was a mistake and protests were spreading from university campuses to the rest of the country.

In addition, Peggy has to change an ad campaign after it turns out it resembles a comedy routine on “The Tonight Show” that referenced American soldiers cutting off the ears of the Viet Cong.  Over the course of the war, some Americans turned against the conflict because of stories about crimes committed by U.S. soldiers. The most significant atrocity, the My Lai massacre, where a U.S. Army unit killed 300 to 500 Vietnamese civilians in March 1968, would not be exposed until 1969.

The decline of New York City, symbolized by rising crime and urban decay, comes further into view.  After Sandy reminds Betty that she lived in the city while working as a model, she replies, “It was different back then.  There weren’t all the riots and robberies.”  Indeed, crime had increased dramatically in NYC over the decade.  When Sandy makes good on her promise to go to the city, Betty travels to Greenwich Village to find her.  While much of the area is very gentrified today, it was a much different picture at this time, with decaying buildings and other symbols of urban blight.

Of course, the Village had long served as a home for artists and political radicals.  After finding the commune, Betty talks to some of the kids staying there and encounters a Jerry Rubin/Abbie Hoffman wannabe.  Mocking her search for Sandy, he says “Why can’t you leave her be.  It kills you to be out of control.”  Betty responds, “Someone needs to control this mess,” reflecting the growing generation gap.  “We have to take everything the establishment throws away.  That’s all that’s left,” he lectures her, adding, “We don’t like your life any more than you do.”

Toward the conclusion of the episode, one of Don’s neighbors jocularly relates a story about the police arresting gay people in the bathroom of a Bloomingdales store.  Except for one minor character, I believe this is the first significant mention of homosexuality in “Mad Men” since Sal left during season 3 and a reminder that even New York City was in many ways a center of homophobia at this time.  The modern gay rights movement did not really gain momentum until the Stonewall Riot of 1969, which took place in Greenwich Village.  Perhaps this will be referenced again next season.

As the episode ends on New Years Eve 1967, Don reads a newspaper with the headline, “World Bids Adieu to a Violent Year.”  Indeed, it had been a difficult year with major race riots in Newark and Detroit while the Vietnam War dragged on with no “light at the end of the tunnel.”  With an even more divisive year beginning and Don Draper fixated on the fact that he was once Dick Whitman, who know what season 6 holds?

The first iteration of this post left out the fact that the character of Sal was a vehicle for referencing and discussing gay issues and the closet during the 1960s. Thanks to readers for reminding me about this. It was very late when finished the post

Preview of "Mad Men," Season Six

With season six of  “Mad Men” premiering on Sunday, I have a few thoughts regarding the events that will shape it.  Though executive producer Matt Weiner has frequently noted that the show is not a history lesson, it is very likely that the new season will take place in 1968, as it would be surprising to produce a show about the 1960s while omitting its most eventful year.  While we can’t anticipate the personal challenges that await Don Draper and the other characters, we do know the major historical events that are to follow.

Vietnam took center stage at the outset of the fateful year.  Throughout the fall of 1967, the Johnson Administration repeatedly suggested the U.S. military was making progress against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army and that the nation could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”  The communist allies, however, punctured this optimism when they launched a massive attack in January 1968 called the Tet Offensive.  Though the U.S. military eventually repelled it, the communists’ ability to launch a nationwide attack weakened public support for the war at home and destroyed Johnson’s remaining credibility.

In the aftermath of Tet, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota garnered 42 percent of the vote running as an anti-war candidate against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.  Though McCarthy lost, his strong performance revealed how much the war had weakened LBJ.  Robert Kennedy, who had been the first choice of the anti-war forces, then entered the race, setting off one of the most dramatic primary battles in American history.  With his popularity crumbling, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election on March 31.

A week later, James Early Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.  King had been preparing for his Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a march on Washington D.C. to demand greater funding for anti-poverty programs, which had been diminished by the diversion of resources to the war.  In accordance with his new emphasis on economic inequality, King accepted an invitation to support the sanitation strike in Memphis, where garbage workers were fighting for better pay and work conditions.  After his assassination, riots broke out in 125 cities across the country, adding to the national sense of disorder.

RFK and McCarthy continued to battle it out in the Democratic primaries.  Echoing the 2008 race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, RFK’s support came largely from blue-collar whites while McCarthy’s backing came primarily from upscale constituencies.  Many viewed Kennedy as the only person who could still speak to both sides of the cultural divide in America, as he retained credibility with working-class whites as well as minorities.  After winning the crucial California primary over McCarthy on June 6, RFK was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles.

Even if Kennedy had lived, he would have faced an uphill battle to win the Democratic nomination.  At this time, only a small number of delegates were allocated through primaries and caucuses, as party officials still controlled the nominating process.  Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, the choice of the establishment, was virtually certain to win the nomination.

With no real possibility of an anti-war nominee, the radical faction of the peace movement mobilized to protest at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.  Mayor Richard Daley and the city government refused to provide marching permits and confrontations with the local police ensued.  Eventually, police and the protesters squared off outside the convention hall and a national television audience watched the cops use tear gas and violence against the militants.  Humphrey received the nomination inside, but it was clear the violence outside had seriously damaged his candidacy.

The fall campaign witnessed a presidential race between Humphrey, Republican nominee Richard Nixon, and the independent candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace.  Both Nixon and Wallace campaigned strongly on the theme of “law and order,” declaring they would clamp down on rising crime, urban riots, and anti-war demonstrators.  As I pointed out in a previous post, it is important to remember than many Americans disdained and resisted the social changes of the 1960s.  See http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2012/03/mad-men-season-5-premiere-part-2.html

Well behind at the outset of the general election campaign, Humphrey began to gain traction in September after he made a speech calling for more aggressive action to achieve peace in Vietnam, distancing himself from the unpopular Johnson.  His campaign started to reduce Nixon’s lead, particularly as labor unions worked to move frustrated blue-collar voters away from supporting Wallace and back into their traditional home in the Democratic Party.  In the end, though, Nixon edged out Humphrey for a narrow victory in the November election.

The year ended on an upbeat note as Apollo 8, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, sent back incredible images of Earth on Christmas Eve.  Nevertheless, 1968 was a turbulent and divisive year and its repercussions would echo for decades to come.  It will be interesting to see how Don, Peggy, Joan, and Roger navigate its travails.

"Emperor"

I modestly recommend “Emperor,” a historical film about the early days of the American occupation of Japan.  Starring Matthew Fox (“Lost”) and Tommy Lee Jones, the movie portrays an under examined topic, the U.S. decision not to try Emperor Hirohito for war crimes after the end of the Pacific War. While Nazi crimes have frequently drawn Hollywood’s attention from “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961) onward, Imperial Japan has received much less screen time.

Fox plays Bonner Fellers, a Japanese specialist who goes to Tokyo with General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) following the surrender.  Though the film dramatically narrows the time frame concerning the decision to try Hirohito from a couple of years to ten days, “Emperor” provides a reasonably accurate portrayal of American concerns as they sought to rebuild the country.  Despite tremendous popular anger in America toward the emperor over the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government’s early planning for the occupation sought to drive a “wedge” between Hirohito and the Japanese government, placing blame on Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and the militarists (Dower, 278-301).  As portrayed in the film, Fellers and MacArthur were deeply concerned that communists could exploit the postwar devastation of the country to gain a political foothold and believed preserving the monarchy would help stabilize the country.  In the movie as in reality, the U.S. does not try Hirohito and he plays an important symbolic rule during the occupation.

Though Fellers concludes in the film that it isn’t possible to know the emperor’s role in planning Pearl Harbor, Hirohito had knowledge of the attack beforehand (Dower, 292.)  The film also shows Hirohito’s crucial role in ending the war as despite the devastation wrought by the atomic bombs, the Japanese war cabinet split on whether to surrender after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It required the emperor’s radio broadcast of surrender to ensure an end to the bloody conflict.

The film accurately shows the devastation wrought by the American aerial bombing of Japan.  Fellers references the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9—10, 1945, which killed 100,000 people, more than those killed in Hiroshima.  Indeed, one reason the U.S. military chose Hiroshima as a target for the bomb was because it was one of the few cities still relatively intact where the United States could demonstrate the power of their new weapon.

Though the film focuses on Fellers, Jones captures the vainglorious nature of MacArthur, who is seen preening for the cameras and media attention.  But it also shows the general discussing his plans to make Japan a model for transition for military rule.  Indeed, the U.S. occupation became one of the most successful in history, as MacArthur midwifed a new constitution and government that included an elected parliament, women’s suffrage, and stronger labor unions.  The document also forbade Japan from using its military forces abroad and the country emerged as a stable, prosperous democracy and ally that would become strong enough to challenge American economic supremacy by the 1980s.

As I saw the film the week of the 10^th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, it was impossible to watch without comparing the two postwar occupations.  Paul Bremer, whom President Bush appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the initial invasion, was no MacArthur and made a series of disastrous decisions, from dissolving the Iraqi Army to barring all former Baath Party members from the new government, fueling the insurgency that would bring the country to the brink of civil war.  Granted, MacArthur had certain advantages, as Japan was an organic country while European colonialists carved out Iraq’s borders at Versailles.  Furthermore, despite the militarism of the 1920s, Japan’s history included a longer tradition of democratic institutions than Iraq’s.  Though Bremer may have faced a more daunting challenge than MacArthur, the differences in the outcome of the two occupations remains quite stark.

“Emperor” does not delve as deeply into the issues surrounding Japanese war crimes as it could have and is marred by a weak love story.  Still, I think it is a worthwhile film that depicts a period that has been long been neglected in popular culture.

Sources: John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York, 1999)