I admire Don Draper, but I don’t want to be anything like him.
Mad Men debuted on the small screen in the summer of 2007, one month after the finale of The Sopranos, signalling that the high quality of dramatic writing we had seen in David Chase’s mafia epic was not a fluke, but instead the start of a daring, novel and dynamic era in television – what has since been dubbed one of its golden eras.
It’s not hard to see why Mad Men took off the way it did. It both mythologised and lambasted an era of American history where great change was happening in the nation, both at large and within the psychology of every member of its populace. Each episode investigated success and identity as we followed the employees of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, and the fallout that their unhealthy behaviour has on those around them. Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the advertising genius at the centre of the show, is like many of the show’s characters a man of artifice, and we see the emotional toll that constructing a facade can have on an individual.
But with a period show like Mad Men, you can’t avoid the dilemma of romanticisation. The snazzy suits, the daytime drinking, and the constant smoking struck some viewers as an effervescent coolness that they, on some level, were pining to emulate. The razor-sharp dialogue adds to this effect; perfectly crafted exchanges and quips that never feel like they’ve been crafted, a testament to the stellar performances and character writing. But it’s this association with the show’s dialogue as impressive, as cool, that has been floating around my mind as of late, after I revisited one particular scene.
In the ninth episode of season 5, ‘Dark Shadows’, Don is coming back to work after a lapse of creativity and motivation, and is coming up against a junior member of his team, Ginsberg (Ben Feldman) on the pitch for the sugary treat, Sno Ball. Ginsberg’s idea gets praise from the higher ups and a decision is made to bring Don and Ginsberg’s pitches, but Don leaves Ginsberg’s artwork in the cab and only pitches his own idea to the clients. Ginsberg, furious at his efforts being sidelined, confronts Don in the elevator at work, bragging about his talents and trying to point out Don’s insecurities. “I feel bad for you,” he tells Don. “I don’t think about you at all,” Don replies. Brutal.
This characterises a lot of the verbal battles of Mad Men, where the dialogue consists of pointed, acid-tongued exchanges of power. The victor is the one who deals the wittiest, most crushing blow in a decisive final comment. It needs to be completely devastating, but roll off the tongue effortlessly. In this episode, both characters’ flaw is driving them – pride. Don needs assurance he’s still top dog, and Ginsberg is sick of feeling undervalued. But Don’s flat expression really sells who’s in command of the scene. His comment unravels Ginsberg completely, but Don will forget what he said as soon as he steps off the elevator.
My thoughts have been spiralling since I rediscovered this moment, splitting off in a web of associations about how I see my own creative work. Like advertising, film criticism is a business where your ideas are your currency, where you’re rewarded for the striking and memorable, and your success is defined by what you can conjure from your head. It also means that when you don’t land your pitches, you may start to think the problem is with you personally.
At the end of the episode, Don’s wife Megan (Jessica Paré) warns him not to open their windows because of a citywide smog emergency. “The air’s toxic,” she tells him. It’s an unsubtle piece of symbolism; Don’s ego is contributing to an unhealthy work environment made worse by his colleagues. It’s something that will make some viewers think behind the scenes of the show itself. Allegations of sexual harassment and emotional abuse have been made by former writers against creator Matt Weiner, and the same conclusion can be made by the real and fictional situations – no artistic ingenuity is worth abuses of power.
Separate from the show, Megan’s comment made me think about a poisonous, but necessary, platform in my life. I’ve been trying to sort out my relationship with Twitter, or what my friends and I have dubbed, “the brain-hurting website”. My obsessive thought patterns have only been compounded from scrolling through my feed, with its catty subtweeting, inane jealousies, and generalised callouts that, for an anxious mind, feel like direct and personal condemnations. It’s unfortunately necessary for my line of work; I need to network and discover opportunities, as well as host a space to share and promote my writing. But not a day goes by where I don’t actively compare myself to the posts of my mutuals who I think are doing better than me, and I can’t avoid the bigger accounts that make me feel like if I don’t align with their takes, hot or otherwise, the opinions that fuel my writing are somehow wrong. I feel like the website is actively harming the way I do film criticism.
I empathise with Ginsberg in that elevator, feeling completely annihilated by people who only condescend to his level to assert his relative smallness, knocking his confidence in his abilities. And every time someone slights me online, I wish I could strike back with Don’s elevator evisceration, but it rings false in my head. I do think about you, I say to myself. Constantly, unceasingly, obsessively. I have over-thought every aspect of our conversation. I hate conflict, and I wish I could deal with it as easily as Don. His greatest skill is not his ability to win a fight, it’s that the fight appears to not concern him at all.
But if your take on this scene is that Don Draper is the coolest man to walk the Earth, you’ve fallen into the trap of romanticising the show on a superficial level. The fight does concern Don. He does think about Ginsberg. He feels threatened by him, and that’s why he sabotaged the pitch. At Don’s heart is a burning falsehood: his real name is Dick Whitman, and during the Korean war, he stole a dead man’s identity to escape a life of inescapable poverty. Always running through him is a contradiction between the effortlessness of his facade and his churning, panicked heart. Don’s lies make him who he is, and he thinks that if he lives a lie long enough, at some point it will simply become true. To admit the lie is to show weakness.
I think Don would thrive on Twitter, where you must give the appearance of looseness but still be able to defend any thought you share from attack or rebuttal. Don doesn’t know how to detach, to go off-grid, to be at ease. His exhausting existence is why I on some level admire him; not because he’s a good person, but because he finds a way to get through each and every hellish day.
I’ve always been open about my feelings; to friends, strangers, and unknown readers of my writing. It’s hard, and sometimes you open up to the wrong people, but I wouldn’t be nearly as capable of dealing with my mental illness if I had kept everything bottled up. I become stronger by allowing myself to be vulnerable. Film criticism may be a cut-throat industry, and Twitter may not have a positive impact on my critical faculties, but the problem is more with my perspective.
The people around me are not out to get me, they needn’t be seen as my competitors, and their successes do not undermine or pose a challenge to mine. And as every good editor will tell you, commissions don’t operate on meritocracy. There are many more factors than just having a good idea that dictate who gets what opportunities: timing, relevancy, the desires of a certain readership. A rejection of my ideas is not a personal condemnation of my talents. Like Madison Avenue, Twitter is a platform of appearances, where you compare your true self to the unreal artifice of others. It’s where the complex is made simple and essentialist, and the encouragement of discussion means there’s too often a spiteful, toxic atmosphere.
I’m restricting the amount and ways I spend my time on Twitter daily. The less it impacts the development of my writing, the better, and I can feel my anxiety loosen its grip on me as I recalibrate where I get affirmations of my writing’s quality. There’s no way to win anything on Twitter, you can’t throw down a prepared final line to ruin your opponent. You’re better off not engaging at all. Someday I will remember something from my past, an online argument or an insecurity about myself, and my anxiety will say, “think about this more.”
And I’ll say, “I don’t think about you at all.”
