On Television – Page 34

True Camaraderie: Don, Peggy, and Something to Prove

Don Draper and Peggy Olson

For me, the most endearing element of Mad Men is the humorous and detailed portrayal of developing friendships. Amidst the drinking, cheating, and general woes of the ad agency is the story of office camaraderie. There have always been back stories on different relationships that developed at Sterling Cooper, such as the friendship between Roger and Joan, but season four spends a great amount of time further delving into those relationships. It paints a picture of a time where business loyalty meant a commitment from both sides.

Now that the operations are smaller, there is an even closer knit of relations in the office. Season four gave us such delights as Don and Lane taking in New Year’s Eve, as well as offering a closer look into the drunken camaraderie between Don and Roger. Indeed, Don is a man of many women and men, but of all his office friendships, none compare to his kinship with Peggy. From early in the show, Don and Peggy had a professional and personal spark. Don gave Peggy an opportunity to nurture her talents, and while their story isn’t always happy, they are able to understand each other in a way that surpasses all other office duos. In spite of their differences, Don and Peggy share a common fight to be where they ought not be. It is in this fight for survival that the two trade-off dishing out tough love and gentle support.

Don and Peggy’s friendship did not develop overnight and there are clear and present power dynamics that complicate affairs. There are the obvious gender roles at play and the fact that Don is Peggy’s superior. Don also has a short temper and a tendency to project onto Peggy a lot of his own feelings of inadequacy. And while Peggy is hurt by Don’s verbal outbursts she is engaged in self reflection, and mostly welcoming of his mentorship.

It seems obvious to me that Don’s interest in Peggy is directly related to his own struggles with entitlement. Don wasn’t born with money or a name. He didn’t inherit his position in the company or marry into an account. He used his creative “genius” to con his way into a job and rise to the top of his field. This both limits him and gives him strength. He has less to lose, and that allows him to take greater risks. Don sees the way Peggy takes risks and admires her dedication to the work they do. In the episode where Marilyn Monroe dies, Don asks Peggy how she is doing and is surprised (if only for a quick side-glance of a moment) when Peggy responds, “It’s a good thing we didn’t go with Marilyn/Jackie ad. We would have had to pull everything indefinitely.” While others in the office mourn the loss of a role model, Peggy’s eyes are clearly focused on her career. She does not falter for a moment because she can’t afford it. Don gets that because he too knows that he can’t quit running. They share a common fear and subsequently, a common strength of self.

From the moment Don appears at Peggy’s bedside, the two have shared a level of intimacy that isn’t mirrored in any other professional relationship on the show. In fact, the only time we’ve seen Don be this honest with someone is in his relationship with Anna, and Don turns to Peggy when mourning that loss. In “The Suitcase,” Peggy is the only one in the office brave enough to confront Don’s destructive path. She walks into his office and, with concern asks, “How long do you intend to go on like this?” Moments later she reassures him that he didn’t lose the only person who knew him. Don and Peggy have provided each other with gentle support in a violent world and that support will surely be needed again as the company hangs by a thread. And even as the future of the agency hands in the balance, Don and Peggy march on. While the other partners and employees of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, & Pryce cry into their highballs, Peggy and Don put their nose to the ground and keep fighting for accounts and taking risks.

As the show progresses, I expect to see more conflict between Don and Peggy’s friendship. Peggy has thus far tolerated Don’s destructive side out of admiration and loyalty. I am curious to see how the quickly changing world of the sixties will effect her perceptions of the friendship. I am also curious to see how Don’s engagement will affect the level of admiration that Peggy has previously given him. In “Tomorrowland,” Don proposes to his secretary and we have yet to see what that means for his developing character, but one thing is clear: neither Peggy nor Joan is the least bit pleased about the engagement. As the progressive movement of the sixties marches on, the unspoken gender issues in the office are coming full head. Don and Peggy share the same drive and are invested in the friendship, but they still stand on different levels of the patriarchal power structure. Can their friendship sustain the changing social climate? What will happen as Peggy continues to embrace the rebellion of the sixties youth movement? I am certain that whatever happens, Don and Peggy will continue to be deeply passionate characters whether they have each other’s support or not. I once wished for the destruction of Don Draper. Now, I only want him to be saved. I’m just not sure that it’s Peggy’s (or any other woman’s) responsibility to save him, and I’m not certain that Don isn’t just chasing another dream.

Katie Becker studied at Luther College where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies. She loves saying what’s on her mind and asking inappropriate questions. She recently found the time to start writing again.

Mad Men Week: Is Mad Men the Most Feminist Show on TV?

Written by Megan Kearns, cross-posted from The Opinioness of the World.

So I arrived very late to the Mad Men party. As a self-proclaimed TV connoisseur and a feminist, I’m picky about the shows I choose to let into my life. But due to the urgings of my boyfriend Jeff and my girlfriends Lauren and Sarah H., I finally succumbed to its siren song and watched, catching up on all 4 seasons. I want my TV shows to possess fully formed female characters, crackling dialogue and twisting plots…if they imbue social commentary, all the better. Much to my delight, (and if you’re already a fan, you know what I’m talking about) Mad Men bursts with all of these. The show about an ad agency in Manhattan in the 1960s is also incredibly meticulous and historically accurate with its cigarettes, mid-day cocktails and skirt-chasing. So what’s a feminist’s take on this show and its sexist themes?

In the Washington Post, Professor Stephanie Coontz passionately writes about feminism and the historical accuracy of Mad Men. She asserts,

Historians are notorious for savaging historical fiction. We’re quick to complain that writers project modern values onto their characters, get the surroundings wrong, cover up the seamy side of an era or exaggerate its evils — and usually, we’re right. But AMC’s hit show “Mad Men”…is a stunning exception. Every historian I know loves the show; it is, quite simply, one of the most historically accurate television series ever produced. And despite the rampant chauvinism of virtually all its male characters (and some of its female ones), it is also one of the most sympathetic to women…But in 1965, feminism wasn’t a cultural option for most women. It would be another year before the National Organization for Women, the group that gave so many women the legal tools to fight discrimination, would be founded. Newspapers still ran separate want ads with separate pay scales for female jobs, seeking “poised, attractive” secretaries and “peppy gal Fridays.”

Coontz calls Mad Men the most feminist show on TV…and I couldn’t agree more. Most shows either don’t have female characters or have them as love interests or sex symbols. Battlestar Galactica delighted me because it had a multitude of female characters. Mad Men does too. But I’ve rarely seen a show that tackled sexism in such an overt way. Murphy Brown and Roseanne did…but that was back in the 80s and 90s. Many shows today ignore that sexism still exists. Now of course Mad Men takes place in the 60s. Yet creator and writer Matthew Weiner told the NY Times that he pulls ideas from many situations that have happened to people in this decade.

Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss), the show’s most brazen feminist, diligently climbed her way up from working as Don’s secretary to the only female copywriter and then to head copywriter with the capacity to fire people. In season 1’s episode “Babylon,” sweet and ambitious Peggy comes up with the “Basket of Kisses” campaign for Belle Jolie lipsticks, as she rightly counters that “no one wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box,” the original campaign for the cosmetics. I love her, even as I sometimes want to shake her for bad decisions (like sleeping with Duck). In the beginning of season 2, we see that she gave up her baby. Peggy continually chooses to focus on her career rather than on getting married and settling down, bucking societal standards. In season 4’s episode “The Beautiful Girls,” Peggy discusses civil rights and feminism with Abe, a friend of a friend, at a bar. She poses,

“But I have to say, most of the things negroes can’t do, I can’t do either. And nobody seems to care…Half of the meetings take place over golf, tennis, and a bunch of clubs where I’m not allowed to be a member or even enter.”

Abe sarcastically responds that maybe we should have a “a civil rights march for women.” Peggy astutely voiced the frustrations many women faced; they simply were not (and still aren’t) treated equally.

Bombshell office manager Joan Harris (formerly Holloway), my fave character along with Pete Campbell (whom I simultaneously love/hate), is played by the phenomenal Christina Hendricks. When I first started watching, I was worried she would merely be eye candy. But I was pleasantly surprised as Joan is intelligent, assertive and articulate. She possesses an impressive lexicon and knowledge of history, as well as doling out fashion tips (not too much cleavage) and social mores (no crying in the break room!). But it was when Joan read TV scripts for Harry in season 2 in the episode “A Night to Remember,” when it was apparent that she excelled at a job beyond managing secretaries. Yet rather than offering her the position, they hire someone else, never giving her, a woman, a second thought. Her reaction to this news broke my heart. In season 4’s episode “The Summer Man,” when Joey and Joan clash, he dismisses Joan to Peggy, not recognizing her value in running the office. A raging chauvinist asshole, Joey issues an offensive insult to Joan,

“What do you do around here besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?”

Swell guy…not sure who’s worse, him or Joan’s husband McRapist. As Coontz writes,

there wasn’t even a word for the sexual harassment the character Joan experiences.

Yet Joan is furious at Peggy when she fires him for his misogynistic remarks. Joan may not be a stereotypical feminist or self-righteous like Peggy. And yes she married a rapist. But she’s a feminist nonetheless; she just maneuvers the terrain differently. Rather than coming at the situation head-on (something I would want to do like Peggy), Joan realizes that will just reinforce the men in the office’s perceptions of women as difficult bitches. Sadly, she may just be right.

Joan’s decision to not go through with her abortion this season stirred up controversy. In an article at RH Reality Check, Sarah Seltzer argues,

“Mad Men” is known for being excruciatingly period-specific. Joan was not at a modern-day abortion clinic and she was not privy to a modern-day abortion debate. She had followed a specific plan which involved breaking the law and risking arrest–which speaks to a strong determination to begin with. There were no protesters and no one to tell her what she did was immoral. Sure, by the standards of her time she was a “loose woman” but there was no pro-life movement calling women selfish babykillers…It’s realistic for her character, the time period, and the plot for Joan to have had the abortion. The show’s writers and the many viewers who think “she didn’t go through with it” are imagining a modern-day conception of abortion fueled by iffy anti-choice tropes found in movies like “Juno” or shows like “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

I agree with Seltzer; too often abortion isn’t shown as an option that rational women decide. But there’s something to be said for storyline and character development, as Eleanor Barkhorn in The Atlantic counters,

The real reason so many fictional characters choose to keep their babies may be much simpler than any of these theories: Babies advance plotlines, whereas abortions end them. As Ted Miller, a spokesperson for NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, “The history of abortion storylines has been mixed. The very personal circumstances are often lost in the pursuit of dramatic or sensationalized storylines.” An abortion can carry a single episode, or a few scenes in a film, while a baby provides fodder for seasons’ worth of material…Sure, Weiner could have found other ways to teach us more about the characters he’s created. But Joan’s decision on Mad Men—and Miranda’s on Sex and the City, and Juno’s in Juno, and so on—show that on screen, advancing the plot is more important than making a political statement.

Obviously Joan is not anti-abortion as she’s had two previous procedures. Barkhorn points out that some say screenwriters don’t want to show abortions as “they don’t want their heroines to appear unsympathetic.” While 1 in 3 women in the U.S. will have an abortion in her lifetime, it’s so rare for a film or TV show to depict that choice. Only a handful of shows have portrayed a character having an abortion including Maude, Private Practice and Friday Night Lights. Barkhorn also points to characters on Sex and the City (Samantha and Carrie) both of whom had abortions in their characters’ past. But when Miranda becomes pregnant and resigned to have an abortion, she backs out at the last moment. While some characters have gone through with abortions, it makes it seem that it’s a decision that young people choose, not successful adult women.

Had Mad Men not shown the conversation with her doctor saying that she wanted to start a family, I would have had a much bigger problem with Joan’s decision to not go through with an abortion. Also, Irin Carmon at Jezebel raised the question as to whether or not Joan’s concern over not being able to conceive after multiple abortions was a reasonable worry in 1965. Turns out, it was. As it was illegal, it wasn’t regulated. Also, sharp implements were used, rather than the suction that is utilized now. There’s also the issue with her age as writer/creator Weiner points out. As a 34-year old woman, she knew her biological clock was ticking. Yet it would have been great for a bold show like Mad Men to show one of their main characters choosing an abortion.

Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono), a psychologist and marketing research analyst, is another strong independent woman on the show we’re introduced to in season 4. Peggy isn’t the only one who puts her work first. Dr. Faye has a conversation in which she tells Don that she chose to focus on her career rather than have children and she doesn’t feel her life is lacking. These are choices that were very real for women in the 60s but women still contend with today. It’s interesting to see just how far we haven’t come. When Dr. Faye says goodbye to Peggy when she leaves the firm in the episode “Blowing Smoke,” Peggy says to her,

“You do your job so well. They respect you and you don’t have to play any games. I didn’t know that was possible.”

To which Dr. Faye replies, “Is that what it looks like?” But obviously Faye did play games as she wore a faux wedding ring just so she wouldn’t have to contend with men’s sexual advances.

But what about the women who do choose marriage and children over a career? Betty Draper (January Jones), now Betty Francis, is the archetypal housewife, and probably the most controversial of the show. In the beginning of the series, many viewers pitied her due to Don’s philandering ways. Besides possessing beauty, Betty is educated, earning a college degree in anthropology (although upper-class women were often expected to go to college with the intent of snaring a husband). Before she married Don, she had a modeling career, making her own money, and traveling around the world. In the episode “Shoot” in season 1, Betty gets a taste of her former independent life as she models again briefly. We also see how much she represses (or rather doesn’t when she starts shooting defenseless birds). Now she’s the character everyone loves to hate. She’s mired in misery, spewing bitterness at everyone around her, especially her children. And speaking of her children, her 10-year-old daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka) has already exhibited her feisty, independent ways…perhaps a feminist in the making.

And of course no commentary on Mad Men would be complete without a mention of charismatic ladies’ man Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the flawed hero and reluctant conscience of the show. Despite the bed-hopping alcoholic’s missteps, he continually does the right thing, even if he doesn’t realize he’s doing so: promoting Peggy to copywriter (even if it is to spite Pete), opposing Betty’s corporal punishment of their children, standing up to big tobacco (even if it is a publicity stunt to garner attention for the firm). He also surrounds himself with intelligent, driven and complex women: Peggy, Anna Draper, Rachel Menken, Midge Daniels, Bobbie Barrett, Dr. Faye Miller, Megan and yes, even frustrating yet tragic Betty. And while we often see them through his broken, tortuous eyes, they certainly hold their own.

Despite the male protagonist and sexist scenes, the show continually passes the Bechdel test, a measure that a film or TV show portrays two women talking to each other and not talking about men. One example is in the season 4 finale “Tomorrowland,” when Betty and housekeeper Carla (sadly, the only character of color on the show) argue about Sally and what it means to be a good mother. But my favorite scene in that episode, and one of the most kick-ass of the whole series, shows Peggy and Joan discussing men marrying their secretaries and how they’re treated at work.

Peggy: “You know I just saved this company. I signed the first new business since Lucky Strike left. But it’s not as important as getting married…again.”

Joan: “Well I was just made Director of Agency Operations, a title, no money of course. And if they poured champagne it must have been while I was pushing a mail cart.”

Peggy: “A pretty face comes along and everything goes out the window.”

Joan: “Well I learned a long time ago to not get all my satisfaction from this job.”

Peggy: “That’s bullshit.”

Then they giggle knowingly.

With their commentary on unequal treatment and pay at work, this conversation could just as easily have taken place in 2005 rather than 1965. In season 4’s episode “The Beautiful Girls” which echoes the theme of the 2nd season (my fave!) which told the stories from the women’s perspectives, at the very end, Joan, Peggy and Dr. Faye all end up in the elevator together. Three different women, different paths but all with the same goals: to be valued for their minds and their work and to achieve success in their careers.

Some aspects of society have obviously changed since the world of Mad Men. Coontz describes how in the 1960s the term sexual harassment wasn’t even coined yet; how Joan being raped by her boyfriend (now husband) Greg was not so uncommon as marital rape wasn’t defined by the courts yet; how Peggy giving up her child for adoption was something many women did; how Faye choosing her career over having children is what many women chose as companies could fire women for getting pregnant; how Betty slapping Sally or using television as a babysitter for Sally and Bobby were routine parenting techniques. Coontz writes,

We should be glad that the writers are resisting the temptation to transform their female characters into contemporary heroines. They’re not, and they cannot be. That is the brilliance of the show’s script. “Mad Men’s” writers are not sexist. The time period was.

With the backlash writer Aaron Sorkin rightly received for the sexist portrayal of women as fuck trophies and sex objects in the film The Social Network, it’s an interesting question as to whether the time period and events portrayed are sexist or if the writers’ depictions are sexist. A writer does choose what to show (and not show). This has been one of the valid criticisms of Mad Men, that there are so few people of color on the show. But with regards to sexism, the writers (7 of the 9 writers are women) continually convey the feelings, attitudes and perspectives of how the female characters contend with their sexist surroundings, which invalidates the notion that the writers are sexist. If they were, they would never depict complex, fully developed characters; they would never let us see the thoughts, hopes and fears of the women on the show.

Some may try to write Mad Men off as chauvinistic but the show begs you to look deeper, analyzing every word, every gesture, to shatter the façade, crack the layers and see what’s actually going on behind the veneer of perfection. The show forces us to examine our flawed history, but also our flawed selves. We are still haunted by the specter of sexism. Women still don’t earn equal pay, and sexist ads clutter up magazines and billboards. Rarely does a show tackle institutional sexism so overtly. Even rarer is the show that not only features a variety of strong, independent women, but actually champions them. Mad Men depicts feminism in many different ways through myriad characters. Beyond being a visually stunning, flawlessly acted show, it should be a reminder, a warning to us that the past is not so distant. We shouldn’t congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come yet; we still have far to go. In the meantime, I’m going to let the intoxication of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce linger…

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime. She contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series) and The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Series). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men

Towards the end of the first season, Peggy Olson goes out on a date set up by her mother. The guy, Carl, drives a potato chip delivery truck, and makes it clear that he doesn’t think too highly of Peggy’s chosen profession. “You don’t look like those girls,” he tells her. Peggy storms off, snapping at Carl, “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”

I don’t agree, at least not when it comes to the main women of Mad Men. Joan and Betty are victims of both their class and their gender, and the only thing they would seem to aspire to is what they know and what they see: the comforts of an middle-to-upper class existence.

One element that has always fascinated me about Mad Men has been the element of class mobility and class-based constraints. The women, in particular, embody the opportunities and limitations of class during the 1960s. Looking at the characters of Peggy, Joan, and Betty, it becomes clear that if the people who live in Manhattan want things they haven’t seen, they are limited in being able to attain those goals by their class and class constraints.

Peggy Olson

From the beginning, Peggy is presented to us as a girl in her dress and her manners. She tells Joan that she attended “Miss Devers Secretarial School,” and while Joan reveals that it is one of the best, it isn’t a college education. We also see her small and simple apartment, later learning she is from the Bronx and, during the second season, Catholic. Her sister’s husband has been hurt on the job and unable to work, and their rather large family is living in a small apartment. All of this indicates that Peggy comes from a working-class background.

The episode mentioned above is an important moment for Peggy; in the same episode, Peggy has a successful pitch for the “Electrolizer.” Peggy is able to somewhat comfortably talk about the fact that the machine is a vibrator. Juxtapose Peggy’s ability to articulate the benefits of the Electrolizer versus Betty’s experience with the washing machine in the same episode. One embraces the freedom the machine can/could provide for women, while the other has to make do.

Betty Draper Francis

Betty came from both class and means; her family is wealthy, and from the descriptions of her mother, quite proper in terms of gender and class norms. Her mother disapproved of her brief career as a model after Betty had graduated from Bryn Mawr College. All of her married friends seemed to have attended one of the “Seven Sister” schools and traveled extensively in Europe.

For her, her marriage is her goal. She was raised to want to look pretty in order to attract an acceptable husband. She might be unhappy in her marriage to Don, but she has no idea how to escape or to fulfill herself. I saw her holding a rifle, smoking a cigarette, and shooting her neighbors birds not as a symbol of a woman rising up to defend her family, but of a woman who couldn’t bear even a reminder of freedom. Like the birds, she, too, would always come home.

Joan Holloway Harris

Joan, too, is the picture of elegance. She has gone to college and has moved up as far as she can professionally, enjoying being single while looking for a husband. She finds (and problematically marries) an aspiring surgeon. While it isn’t clear what kind of background Joan comes from, it is clear that she possesses the proper credentials for a woman who came from class or means.

Joan’s rape has, obviously, generated a lot of debate. I read it, however, as a type of class sacrifice; in order to “keep” her professional and respectable husband, she has to stay silent about her rape. It is never made clear if Joan truly loves Greg, or views him as her last chance at class respectability. Joan also quits her job at Sterling-Cooper once she is married because it is no longer necessary, but also no longer socially acceptable. But it isn’t just that. When she has the opportunity to read scripts and make valuable contributions to the newly-formed television department, Joan doesn’t speak up when an inexperienced man receives her job. Contrasted with Peggy’s courage to ask for Freddy Rumsen’s old office, Joan would seem to be trapped not just by the constraints of her gender, but the constraints of her upper-class upbringing.

One could also read the competition between Joan and Peggy as a competition between two women from different socio-economic class; Peggy doesn’t know the rules, doesn’t “look” the part, and Joan tries to help her “fit in” as an women with middle-class aspiration. But Peggy isn’t interested in marrying up; her ignorance of the rules is her biggest strength as she is not limited by the gender pressures of middle and upper-class expectations.

Peggy, in her quote about wanting things they haven’t seen yet, could be referring to the women that Don Draper consorts with throughout the first two seasons. Midge Daniels is a bohemian, for class seems to hold no allure or power. Rachel Menken has managed to transcend class (and racial/religious) boundaries and become a power-driven professional woman. The same goes for Bobbie Barrett, who manages her husband’s show biz career with savvy and ruthlessness. Each of these women is successful at eschewing the limits placed on them by class expectations.

It is interesting that when Don is faced with a choice between a non-traditional woman (Dr. Faye Miller) and his secretary (Megan), he chooses the latter. Faye and Peggy are, ultimately romantically punished for their non-traditional interpretations of class and gender norms. It remains to be seen how Faye bounces back from Don’s rejection, but Peggy is certainly doing better than either Betty or Joan when it comes to personal and professional success.

Call it the limitations of an upper-class upbringing; sometimes we can only want what it is we see.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family.

Mad Men YouTube Break: The Mad Men School of Seduction

Sexual harassment or seduction? Sometimes it’s a fine line in Mad Men.

In my opinion, the best line award goes to Peggy:

I’m in the persuasion business, and frankly I’m disappointed by your presentation.

Or maybe it goes to Roger, for sheer…weirdness:

I want to suck your blood like Dracula.

What are some of your favorite “lines” from the show?

‘Mad Men’ Week: Hey, Brian McGreevy: Vampire Pam Beats Don Draper Any Day

This cross-post by Tami Winfrey Harris previously appeared at Fangs For The Fantasy and What Tami Said.

Vampire Pam saying, “He can do it; I’m wearing my favorite pumps.”

How much gender fail and homophobia can one pack into a brief online essay? Screenwriter Brian McGreevy takes a break from doing keg stands at the frat house to show us. In a guest blog for Vulture, McGreevy, who is currently adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula for Warner Bros., complains that modern vampire books, film and TV shows have “taken the Romantic vampire and cut off his balls, leaving a pallid emo pansy with the gaseous pretentiousness of a perfume commercial.”

*side eye*

The problem, according to McGreevy, is “the female gaze.” It has given us vampire stories that are mere “pornography for tweens.”

Just as the Frito-Lay Company has created virtually nutrient-free vehicles of corn syrup and salt that make our youth fat, slow, and indiscriminate, the Castrati vampire is a confection that has the same impact on the psycho-dramatic imagination of today’s youth. Think of the message here: What is the consequence of falling in with a Romantic vampire? Death, either yours or his. What is the consequence of falling in with the Castrati vampire? Long and torturous (at least to everyone around you) conversations about feelings. This is not what really happens when you fall in with attractive monsters.McGreevy isn’t feeling Stephanie Meyer’s sparkling undead abstaining teens. But he has equal disdain for the sexed up vamps on True Blood, which, in his words, is “like Tennessee Williams fucked The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” See, blood suckers should be real men “ideal men” like Mad Men’s Don Draper.

McGreevy isn’t feeling Stephanie Meyer’s sparkling undead abstaining teens. But he has equal disdain for the sexed up vamps on True Blood, which, in his words, is “like Tennessee Williams fucked The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” See, blood suckers should be real men “ideal men” like Mad Men’s Don Draper.

What?

Yes, McGreevy reckons Don Draper is a far better vampire than any of Twilight’s or True Blood’s.

Of course I refer to Don Draper on the AMC series Mad Men, the purist’s vampire of choice for our time. This one has teeth. And adding an extra layer to the mystique is his position as an advertising executive. A more elegant embodiment of the metaphor could hardly be asked for: He is an engine of want, creating the illusion of fulfillment while sucking you dry. No is not in his vocabulary. Neither is yes—yes is implicit. He knows this, he is past needing to hear you say it. He knows the private and unmentionable place that cries “yes” when the bottom drops out of an amusement park ride and suddenly you are in free fall, and, like the ideal man, he is listening.

When Mad Men first premiered, much of its appeal was attributed to novelty factor: What a different time it was, when the American male was an unrecognizable breed of scandalous, id-driven malefactor; heedless, rapacious, just waiting to slide off his doe-eyed secretary’s pencil skirt and show off his executive account.

…

Men are predators at heart. Any refutation of this is also a refutation of evolution, or the common sense conclusion of observing a typical 3-year-old boy at unstructured play, his wake of destruction the envy of a Visigoth. It is a killer’s heart that is the motive force of masculinity and predation its spirit. This is not to suggest nature is immutable, or that one ought to act in blind obeisance to it, but that “ought” is not in the vocabulary of want, and choosing is meant to have consequences.

Vampires should be real ideal men. Ideal men are amoral. Ideal men kill and destroy things. Ideal men don’t think; they do. Ideal men don’t take “no” for an answer, especially from women. Ideal men are always rampaging heterosexuals, by the way. We can’t argue with this. McGreevy says it’s evolution.

Of course, if Mad Men is any indication, sometimes, under the weight of all those expectations to be sufficiently rapacious and manly, ideal men become sad, functional alcoholics, living in dim and depressing walk-up apartments, alienated from their children, following the dissolution of their soul-destroying marriages to beautiful “house cats.” Or maybe, like Roger Sterling, who McGreevy quotes to close his piece, ideal men become aging party boys, useless but for a last name that once held some power, and trapped in wedlock with the doe-eyed secretary, who, it turns out, wasn’t such a good idea after all.

There is so much wrong with McGreevy’s diatribe that it is hard to know where to start. Let me identify a few problems:

A person who is working on an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula really ought to have a better understanding of vampirology. McGreevy’s pet version of the vampire is but one of many incarnations. The idea of the vampire can be found all over the world and there is little agreement on what these mythical creatures are like. For instance, Nosferatu, the mother of all vampire films, released in the 1920s, reveals a ratlike creature more monster than man. The idea that Bram Stoker’s is the definitive vampire and that Twilight and True Blood are some affront to the canon is silly—even sillier for someone who is adapting the Stoker story for Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m not sure about the casting for this project, but DiCaprio better not be playing the Count. He’s not fit to carry Gary Oldman’s bat makeup:

McGreevy also conveniently forgets Anne Rice’s vampires. Lestat was in love with Louis, could wear the hell out of some breeches and was also dangerous as fuck. If, as McGreevy states, vampires are stand ins for the ideal man, it’s good to remember that some real men don’t wear tailored suits or chase skirt.

It’s a ridiculous notion, anyway—this “ideal man” business. It’s a good thing that we as a society, save McGreevy, Scott Adams and possibly some members of the men’s rights movement, are letting go of it. Women have undoubtedly been oppressed by the culture of manly manness, but the thing is, so have men—a lot of good men who don’t fit McGreevy’s paradigm. And I would venture to say that most men don’t. And thank goodness for that.

And since when are all vampires MEN? One doesn’t need a penis to be a deadly creature of the night. Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger? Deadly little Claudia in the Rice series? Stoker’s Brides of Dracula and Lucy Westenra? And True Blood’s Pam? Pam would eat Don Draper for lunch. Literally.

To use Lafayette’s vernacular, here’s what I’m putting down: McGreevy’s thoughts on vampires, manliness and gender roles? Hot buttered horsepucky. All of it. If the writer is bringing this sort of regressive ridiculousness to his screenplay, then his version of Stoker’s Dracula is one I can surely miss.

Tami Winfrey Harris writes about race, feminism, politics and pop culture at the blog What Tami Said. Her work has also appeared online at The Guardian’s Comment is Free, Ms. Magazine blog, Newsweek, Change.org, Huffington Post and Racialicious. She is a graduate of the Iowa State University Greenlee School of Journalism. She spends her spare time researching her family history and cultivating a righteous ‘fro. She cross-posted her review of Sucker Punch at Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Boardwalk Empire

With its first season complete and two Golden Globes under its belt (Best TV Drama and Best Actor in a TV Drama), Boardwalk Empire, HBO’s prohibition-era Sopranos/Mad Men hybrid, has gotten plenty of attention. And it’s something feminists should be paying attention to as well. Like Mad Men, the show doesn’t gloss over the sexist elements of the era, but instead exposes them in both stark contrast and comparison to how we view women in our society today.

The Peggy Olsen of the series is found in Margaret Schroeder (played brilliantly by Kelly Macdonald), who is wise beyond her era, yet remains limited by her gender. At the start of the series, we see her suffer physical abuse by her husband (so much so that she miscarries, and not for the first time). When she appeals to a wealthy politician (our protagonist Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi) to find work for her husband, he takes her under his wing, eliminating her abusive husband and setting her up with a job in a fancy dress shop. It is here that we encounter the division of class between the clientele and Margaret, an Irish immigrant whose boss assumes is uneducated and dirty (other ethnic and religious tensions abound in the turf wars between the Irish, Italian, and Greek mobs throughout the season). Soon Nucky takes a romantic interest in Margaret and offers to put her and her children up, though he won’t marry her. Margaret must weigh the costs/benefits of this situation (security for her and her children versus her neighbors thinking she’s a whore), but in the end she doesn’t have much of a choice, like most women in this show and of this era. But despite the boundaries around her, Margaret remains well-read, involved in local politics and with the Women’s Temperance Movement, and takes control of her sexuality (in the 1920s, birth control meant douching with Lysol). It is her struggle for both mere survival and to retain her honor in a time when the odds are against her that make her journey and triumphs so satisfying and enjoyable to watch.

The other female characters are similarly dependent on men, and either try to escape this grip or find power within it. Angela (played by Aleska Palladino), who has a baby with Nucky’s protege Jimmy, dreams of running off to Paris with her lesbian lover, but she feels trapped by Jimmy, who overpowers her in every way. Jimmy’s mother, Gillian (Gretchen Mol), who had Jimmy young by a much older man, offers to take care of Angela’s son for her so that she can have a life of her own. Perhaps Gillian wished someone had offered her the same.

Though Gillian is a grandmother, she is still very young and works as a showgirl (this is an age where the only jobs for women seemed to be as dancers, prostitutes, or nannies – they either worked in childcare or for the pleasure of men). When Jimmy gets into trouble, Gretchen helps the only way she knows how – by seducing his enemy for information. Nucky’s old mistress similarly uses pregnancy as power against a prohibition agent she sleeps with. One could argue that all the women on the show use their sexuality as a type of currency, as there was little other option at the time.

There also remains the notion that women’s reproductive choices were not theirs to control. Nucky chides Margaret for using the Lysol like “any common whore,” the prohibition agent tells his barren wife to pray instead of considering an invasive medical procedure, and Jimmy decides without consulting Angela that they should have more children. This backwards thinking, however, is not far from the discussions happening today in which restrictive laws prohibit women from freely controlling their own bodies.

NYMag had argued that aside from Margaret’s character, all the other women appear to be nude decoration for the HBO premium. Upon further reflection, I’ve realized that the show doesn’t quite yet pass the Bechdel test. For those unfamiliar, to pass the test a show must 1. Have two women, 2. Who talk to each other, 3. About something other than a man. All of Margaret’s conversations are about Nucky. She speaks with Nucky’s mistress about how they’re fighting over Nucky; she speaks with a fellow “concubine” about how to keep Nucky; she even speaks with her temperance leader about whether she should accept Nucky’s offer. Even in a scene with Angela and her lover the two women talk about how they couldn’t be seen together or Nucky would cut off their money. On the one hand, this proves how so very dependent women were forced to be in this time period. On the other hand, the show’s writers could do a better job developing their female characters.

As for me (and the Golden Globes), I think this show has plenty of potential, especially when it comes to its women. What do you think? Do you watch the show? Do you root for Margaret like you do for Peggy and Joan? Leave your comments below!

Amanda ReCupido is a writer and arts publicist living in New York City. She is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess and can be found on Twitter at TheUndomestic.

Ripley’s Pick: Parks and Recreation Seasons 1 & 2

Two seasons of the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation have already aired, and it returns for a third season on NBC next Thursday, January 20th. If you haven’t yet watched Parks and Recreation, you should really consider it–because it’s the best comedy on network television. (Both seasons are available for streaming on Netflix, all episodes are available on hulu, and you can watch the final episodes from season two on nbc.com. See how much I want you to watch?)

A small-town political satire, shot in the same documentary style as The Office, the show is laugh-out-loud funny, smart, and cuttingly feminist (and we know how rare it is for network TV to even pass the Bechdel Test). To compare it to The Office doesn’t really do it justice, however, as The Office really depends on its one-bit-gag of inept office manager Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and other caricatures working together.

Parks and Recreation centers around Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), who is smart and capable, yet who sometimes suffers from grandiose delusions and tragically funny missteps in her position of Deputy Director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana. With her friend Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), boss Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), intern April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza), and rest of the crew, Leslie sets out to build a new park in the small town and climb the political ladder.

Leslie Knope is openly feminist and politically ambitious. Her office is decorated with framed photos of female politicos, including Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, and Janet Reno–along with her mother, who holds a higher political office than she. She struggles to accomplish anything in her bureaucratic position, fit in with the boys’ club of government, and navigate the social world of her small town. The supporting cast is equally good, with nearly all characters fully formed and three-dimensional. One of several great performances is Offerman’s anti-government Ron Swanson, the head of the Parks & Rec department, whose primary goal in his position seems to be the complete privatization and elimination of the department. Equally funny is April the intern, an ironically detached hipster who gradually grows annoyed with her gay boyfriend and comes around to sincerely connecting with her coworkers.

Season One was a short six episodes, while Season Two had twenty-four. At the end of the second season, the government was facing a shutdown due to budget concerns. Season Three (again, premiering next week) begins with the re-opening of the Parks and Recreation department. Here’s a sneak peak at Season Three, featuring guest stars Rob Lowe and Ben Scott. The preview relies heavily on these and other guest stars, and I hope they don’t dominate the series this season, superseding Poehler’s excellent comedic performance.

And here’s a clip from one of my favorite episodes, “Hunting Trip.”

Guest Post: Nurse Jackie as Feminist Id?

This guest post also appears at Professor, What If… and the Ms. Magazine blog.

In the second-season premiere of the Showtime series Nurse Jackie, a feminist id was on full display. According to Mr. Penis Envy, Sigmund Freud, who published The Ego and the Id in 1923, the id acts according to the “pleasure principle,” seeking to avoid pain and experience pleasure with no thought to consequence.

While Jackie (Edie Falco), a hospital emergency-room nurse, does seem aware of consequences (she hides her drug addiction), she in large part functions according to id impulses. According to Freud, the id is ruled by libido, sexual and otherwise, cannot take “no” for an answer and is represented as infantile. It wants what it wants when it wants it. All of which is true of Jackie Peyton.

But, what makes Jackie’s id feminist? While it might seem contradictory to claim that the unthinking part of the self can have feminist tendencies, Jackie’s pleasure-seeking self can be read as a reaction to the confines of the patriarchal world. As a nurse (and a woman), she is supposed to be selfless and outward-directed, nurturing and caring. Who cares about her chronic pain and 24-hour work/life demands? Her feminist id responds “F you” to the nurturing/suffering paradigm, and she ingests drugs to numb the pain of daily life.

In this episode, Jackie’s feminist id refuses to bend over backwards to ameliorate her rather annoying daughter, Grace, while the family is on a beach excursion. She rejects the “super-mom” role, instead rolling her eyes and voicing frustration. Then, when two young men partake in sexist “I’d tap that” banter, she shoves one of them down and storms off. Her husband warns them “Don’t fuck with her,” voicing the “don’t mess with me” aura Jackie exudes most of the time. That’s an aura that women are not supposed to have but, as the scene indicates, her husband can literally voice.

Jackie’s id also ignores her lover Eddie’s texts–why should she have to placate him just because he can’t get over his jealous response to discovering she is married? The show’s representation of him as seeking vengeance because “his woman” is “taken” can be read as a feminist critique of the ownership model of love. If he were angry at the betrayal, that would be one thing, but he is angry that she is not his alone–to which feminist-id Jackie says “F you, dude.”

Her shenanigans with Coop, the doctor who’s enamored with her, also have a feminist pleasure principle at their core. How fun is it that she takes down this ego-inflated ninny and yet he remains hopelessly infatuated? Our super-ego might feel her teasing kisses and sharp barbs are cruel, but our own ids cheer as Jackie skewers Coop’s self-important bravado.

Even the flourish that closes the episode, her delivery of cake for a family dinner, can be read as a feminist id response. Not only is she saying no to all the rules about what and how one should eat, she is again refusing to live up to wife/mother ideals. Perhaps this is a veiled response to husband Kevin’s recent declaration that she is such a great wife because she cooks him breakfast even when she is exhausted.

More generally, id-Jackie reveals that sexual desire is overly regulated and refuses to buy into “you can only love and have sex with one person at a time” paradigm. She proves that the “just say no” response is unrealistic, that our drugs–be they cake, sex or morphine–sometimes are the only things allowing us a tenuous grip on our capacity to be functional beings.

I agree with The Feminist Spectator, that this series is “smart and morally, emotionally and ethically complicated.” We may not be able to fully embrace Jackie’s id behavior, but we can certainly recognize what drives it. And, as Michelle Dean notes at Bitch, “All of the female characters on the show spend considerable time satisfying the Bechdel test–women, speaking to women, about subjects other than men.” These characters offer subtle and provocative critiques of the privilege/oppression matrix, revealing that, given the regulatory practices of society, it’s surprising we are not all popping pills like candy.

I hope that during the rest of this season, Jackie, a wonderful feminist id, will have her cake and eat it too.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if…? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate. She previously contributed a post about The United States of Tara.

Guest Post: Tara is Better Not United

This guest post also appears at Professor, What If… and the Ms. Magazine blog.

As I began watching the second-season premiere of the Showtime series The United States of Tara, I eagerly ask what I always do before an episode starts: “Which ‘alter’ will it be this time?”

Alas, to my dismay, the show’s bubbly focus on a recovered Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) meant that the “alters”–alternate personalities of this 21st century Sybil–were gone, thrown out like the unwanted clothing ceremoniously dumped into a charity bin in the show opener. Instead, we have happy, functioning Tara, and an upbeat musical soundtrack trying to manipulate us to believe that, indeed, all is well in the Tara-verse.

But we soon learn that Tara as one person, no longer suffering from dissociative identity disorder, is not nearly as fun or interesting as she is as five different people. Instead, the “true Tara” now displays some of the most annoying traits of all five of her alters.

She incorporates her Alice-esque alter by donning a 50s-style apron and throwing herself into a dinner party with the neighborhood’s token gay couple. She speaks her mind Buck-style (Buck was a beer-swigging male alter) when a neighbor commits suicide, bragging “The lady with all the personalities is not the most fucked up person on the block.” After the dinner party, her T-proclivities (that was the teenaged alter) come out, and she performs a manic Bollywood number, ending with provocative thrusting in her hubby’s face. Her sister Charmaine assures her new beau that Tara has not actually “transitioned” into the other personality, indicating that perhaps it would be better if she did, while Tara’s husband Max is visibly worried that the new “sane” Tara might be more insane than before.

Given the show’s emphasis on the self as performative, and on the impossibility of performing to societal standards (especially if one is female), this suggestion that Tara’s recovery may not be a step forward is intriguing. Though the show reveals all the difficulties Tara’s disorder causes for her and her family, it also seems to be indicating that the real problem is a society that expects us to perform in very particular, stable and normative ways. These regulatory ideals are so oppressive that we either bind ourselves into limited roles (i.e., Alice-the-50s-housewife) or run the risk of being seen as “crazy”–as “normal” Tara is when she laughs too loud, makes a suicide joke or has too much fun at a dinner party.

The show’s underlying critique of such normative ideals, and the relatively freeing notion of embracing the self as performance, is evident in other characters as well. Marshall, Tara’s closeted gay son, tries hard to be serious, smart and talented, but finds that flaunting his identity by sitting at the “gay-ble”–the school lunch table where gays and their allies sit–is a welcome relief, and results in him joining a campaign at his school aimed to raise queer visibility.

Charmaine, Tara’s sister, struggles with regulatory norms in choosing between a relationship with traditional hunk Neil vs. unattractive and vertically challenged Nick, who is personality-privileged and emotionally supportive. Charmaine tried to follow normative requirements in the past by augmenting her breasts to please her then-husband, a choice that resulted in lopsided and off-center nipples. Now that she has had these “corrected,” she seems to believe she can do better than short, balding Nick.

The character of Tara’s teenaged daughter Kate has thus far been largely challenged around the regulation of her sexuality, as indicated with Tara’s concern that she was not able to “micromanage her daughter’s vagina.” Kate’s struggles with a creepy boss and an abusive boyfriend expose a society populated by males wishing for similar micro-managing power.

Max appears to be the character least affected by social norms. He doesn’t seem to care that his wife is far from typical, worrying only about her health and happiness rather than what others think. He does not condemn or regulate his son’s sexuality nor attempt to micromanage his daughter. If any character seems too good to be true, it’s him. This is perhaps why Max is a bit empty as a character: a sort of dad/husband placeholder who comes off as boring and conventional in a cast of otherwise entertaining family members.

While Robert Abele laments at L.A. Weekly that “United States of Tara plays like surface feminism with an added gloss of snark and a bewilderingly blah sentimentality,” I would counter that the snark is integral to the feminist critique the show enacts. The snark reveals that our “normal” selves are “blah,” and thus we should embrace those aspects of our identity that subvert regulatory norms lest we end up living in a world full of bores.

Diablo Cody, the show’s creator, readily admits that she asks of everything she writes, “How am I going to sneak my subversive feminist message into this?” With Tara, she sneaks in this message beautifully, conveying that societal ideals–be they a stable self, heterosexuality or conventional attractiveness–do not an exciting world (or episode) make.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if…? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.