April5 marks the beginning of the end for MadMen, andviewers anxiously await a final coda to creator Matthew Weiner’stale. Will advertising executive Don Draper’s tumultuous peaks andvalleys experiences of the 1960s conclude with happiness or tragedy?
The1960 film, TheApartment,and presidential history during that decade, may hint at an answer.
MadMen creatorMatthew Weiner has citedthis Academy Award winning movie as an important inspiration forhis serial drama. Since TheApartmentended on a positive note with the main character finding love,viewers might expect a similar conclusion to Weiner’s production.More significantly, TheApartment standsas a cultural symbol of the youthful optimism for social change thatmany Americans associate with the 1960s. Along with the defeat ofRichard Nixon by the youthful, vigorous John Kennedy in the 1960presidential election, TheApartment’sdirector, Billy Wilder, helped create today’s conventional wisdomthat the year 1960 represented a break from the staid conformitycharacteristic of the 1950s.
InTheApartment,Director Wilder presents protagonist C.C. “Bud” Baxter as ayoung, bored number-cruncher (played by Jack Lemmon) in theaccounting division of a corporation known as Consolidated LifeInsurance. There are two primary settings where the charactersinteract—the vast 19thfloor of seemingly endless rows of desks in the skyscraper whereBaxter works, and Baxter’s small apartment in New York City.
Thestory’s problem emerges when Consolidated Life’s personneldirector Jeffrey Sheldrake asks Baxter if the rumors are true thatmarried senior executives have borrowed Baxter’s apartment toconduct secret extramarital affairs. Sheldrake’s intent, we soondiscover, is not to reprimand Baxter, but to borrow his key so thatSheldrake may have exclusive privileges to bring his own mistressesto Baxter’s den of iniquity.
AlthoughSheldrake rewards the junior executive with a 27thfloor private office and a bowler hat to boot, Baxter soon regretsthe decision when he finds himself having to choose between hiscareer and his love for Fran Kubelik, an elevator operator (played byShirley MacLaine) in his company’s building. When Baxter discoversthat Kubelik is one of Sheldrake’s conquests, he must either clingto his newfound place on the corporate ladder or fight for thisdamsel in distress. In witnessing Baxter’sdecision to abandon the company in exchange for romantic love, werecognize a rejection of the 1950s culture of conformity whichsociologists,novelists, and journalists portrayed in books such as ThePower Elite,TheMan in the Grey Flannel Suit,and TheOrganization Man.
TheApartmentconcludes with Baxter’s rejection of conformist and debasedcorporate culture, but MadMenpresents Don Draper as still engaged in the struggle to maintainindividual autonomy in the complacent, risk-averse, and conformistwhite-collar world. In order to carry the drama forward through the1960s, Weiner created a character more complex than Wilder’sBaxter. Viewers balance Don’s misogyny against his elevation of hissecretary Peggy Olson to a position of copy editor. His infidelity isplaced in the context of his troubled past growing up in awhor*house. In the Darwinian jungle of corporate America,furthermore, Draper’s ambition and authoritarianism appear somehownecessary for a man who began without inherited wealth or businesscontacts.
InSeason One, Weiner used the Nixon-Kennedy presidential contest as aHegalian thesis-antithesis recasting of TheApartment’stheme. Nixon hires Draper’s advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, tohelp publicize his 1960 presidential campaign. The upstart Kennedy’svictory appears as a tragic defeat for the company’s corporateelite that seeks to perpetuate the conformist 1950s. The image of atriumphant Kennedy symbolizes the hope for change in the new decade,and Draper appears to represent this icon of youthful optimism. Inone episode, a character describes the youthful, handsome, anddecisive Draper as Kennedyesque—distinct from the common corporatetype--saying “You’re JFK!”
ButDraper identifies more with Nixon. Somewhat surprisingly, Weiner’sprotagonist thinks Nixon’s defeat says more about how thecandidate’s handlers failed to present his background than aboutthe spirit of the age. When Draper sees Nixon, he says, he seeshimself—a self-made man of the people. Draper’s self-image is notas a member of the power elite, but neither as an idealist. He is aworking class man pursuing the American Dream. While many of the MadMen characters—including Draper—appear to admire Kennedy, thepresident’s tragic assassination in 1963 casts a pall over theebullient optimism which Draper, his family, and work associatesembodied in the first three seasons.
Giventhat the program is concluding during 1969—Nixon’s first year aspresident--WashingtonPostopinion writer Alyssa Rosenberg has positedthat Nixon was “the key to understanding Don Draper.”In Rosenberg’s view, Nixon’s ability to come back from multiplepolitical defeats—including the 1960 presidential campaign and afailed 1962 bid for governor of California—appeared as the modelfor Draper’s similar skill at surviving setbacks by reinventinghimself.
TheKennedy-Nixon dialectic certainly serves as one way of understandingthe tension between hope and cynicism in MadMen,but another politician--Ronald Reagan—may provide the model thatWeiner has in mind for Draper’s ultimate fate. Draper’screative genius and macho cool seems more similar to Reagan’sHollywood confidence and calm than to Nixon’s calculatedprofessionalism. While Nixon and Draper certainly reinventedthemselves multiple times, Draper does not seem to share the darkside that Nixon’s closest aides identified in the former president.
Reagan’ssunny optimism wedded to “tough love” conservatism seems toembody the synthesis that Draper will need to embrace in the yearsfollowing the Kennedy and Nixon administrations. Similarto Reagan, who was elected governor of California in 1967 (and againin 1971), Draper survived by balancing artistic and practicalresponses to challenges. Hollywood plays an important role inDraper’s professional and personal lives. Reagan’s divorce andremarriage serve as another parallel with Draper (and not withKennedy or Nixon). Finally, Reagan’s penchant for concealing hisinner self appears akin to the mysterious Draper, who hides his trueidentity as Dick Whitman from even his closest friends, who are few.
IfTheApartmentserved as a Muse for Weiner’s MadMen,viewers can expect Don Draper to walk off the screen this year facinga sunny future. Just as Billy Wilder’s film portrayed theprotagonists as rejecting 1950s corporate conformity, MadMenbegan in 1960 with a theme of individual liberation. TheApartmentdid not require C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik tosacrifice the ideal of romantic love,and MadMenhas vindicated that choice by celebrating the 1960s office culture asa space of social revolution.
Butas 1969 draws to a close, Draper will need to engage with the rise ofcorporate power during the Age of Reagan, as historian Sean Wilentzhas characterized the 1974-2008 United States. Indeed, one of thesubtexts of MadMenhas been the rising importance of work in the lives of Americans.Weiner’s narrative has shown how corporate America’s adoption ofthe 1960s liberation movements strengthened rather than weakenedcapitalism’s roots in the United States. In many cases, Don Draperand his colleagues Pete, Ron, Joan, and Peggy formed closerrelationships with their colleagues and their firm than with theirown wives, husbands, and children. Weiner surely knows that theshow’s fans want those bonds to last a lifetime.
