Mad Men Season One: Confronting the Fabrication of Social Norms

Spoilers for Mad Men Season One.


Mad Men is an excellent, very artistic and expressive show.  It works both as an examination of the culture of its time period and a fantastic character study.  What is most interesting to me, however, is how the show confronts the inherent falseness of social norms dictating the course of our lives.


Advertising is a useful vehicle for the show to address this idea.  Ads to this day reinforce, manipulate and create norms in our society.  Don Draper is often the face of this on the show.  In the episode "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," he tells his mistress, "The reason you haven't felt [love] is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one." 


Don's acceptance of this reveals the irony in his life.  He can sell the feelings and ideas millions of Americans in order to convince them to but products, then he comes home to his own "ideal" family that is plagued by a sense of anomie, or a mismatch between individual circumstances and larger social mores.  Betty Draper feels a crushing sense of loss due to her mother's death, but she is unable to confront these feelings directly due to her social position as a housewife, since she must put the desires of her husband and her duties as a mother first.  From this she feels unconnected from everyone else, leading her to attempt to connect to a nine year old boy who can't possibly understand.  Society tells her that her life is perfect and will bring happiness, but this is a lie, and deep down, she knows this.  She seeks excitement through a modeling job, and when this falls through for her, she is compelled to shoot Don's gun at her neighbour's pigeons.  The scene is delightfully absurd and strongly communicates Betty's disconnect from society.

For the men in this time, work is the ultimate priority, the true raison d'être of their lives.  Roger Sterling was very successful in this regard, even at the expense of his own health.  When he has multiple heart attacks while trying to maintain his rich and successful lifestyle, it poignantly portrays how directly this attitude (that society fosters) comes directly in conflict with our most basic needs as living beings.  


One of the central plots of the season is the discovery of Don Draper's past, and how he came to be the sly creative director we see him as.  He was born Dick Whitman, the son of a prostitute who had a terrible home life that he longed to escape.  And so he did, by enlisting in the Korean War.  When his commanding officer, Lt. Donald Draper was killed, Dick assumed his identity and abandoned his family to live a new life, becoming a powerful ad executive.


This whole plotline really reinforces the absurdity of social status.  As Dick Whitman, this man was destined for a life of mediocrity and hardship, but the very same man is accepted and championed by the society that shunned him due to his parentage, and all it took was a different name.  Because of this, he is forced to run away from any and all ties to his past, even shunning his own brother.  By doing this, he maintains the illusion that he fits within society's narrow constraints of someone worthy of being respected.  In the end, he ends up truly losing his own identity, his "self," and becomes Donald Draper.

The ubiquitous smoke throughout the series serves as an apt visual metaphor for how the norms of society cloud one's judgement and vision of what is truly important in life.  To people in Don Draper's world, smoking isn't just something you do, it's a way of life.  Smoking is sold as representing independence, freedom and happiness.  Because of this, nearly every character on the show is continually puffing away, be they pregnant, a powerful executive or a young person finding their way in the world.  But as the title of the first episode puts very plainly, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."  And in the very last episode of the season, "The Wheel," Don Draper, having lost his old identity, his true self, shows pictures of his children during an ad pitch, while he sells the idea of nostalgia.  The pictures are never fully visible; they are covered by a dense smokescreen that clouds the vision of one of the few meaningful relationships left in his life.  Don has trapped himself behind this smokescreen, it surrounds him everywhere, and he feeds of it like an addict, to give meaning to his life.  But in the end, it's just smoke.