The Mad House

by Dennis Green

I’d been studiously avoiding the hit TV show, “Mad Men,” for all the right reasons. I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties, worked in advertising for almost 30 years, and was partner and creative director in my own boutique ad agency for 20. The very notion of this replication made me cringe.

And then I caught a few scenes from the show late one night on Oprah, clips she showed when she had two of the stars as her featured guests. And sure enough, it was god-awful.

The most obvious hallmark of its in-authenticity, for me, are its fabled use of drinking and smoking, which permeate the show, and these characters’ work lives. As someone who started smoking cigarettes at the age of 10, in 1950, in the fifth grade — and shook hands with John Barleycorn a few years later — I know my way around a shot glass and a pack of smokes, I’ll tell ya.

(And I quit smoking cigarettes 20 years ago, but that’s another story…)

So what’s the problem? Well, in those “Mad Men” scenes, I saw that everyone — from the actors to the writers to the directors and the producers of the show — is just so damned self-conscious about the drinking and the smoking that they become stylized, little archaic rituals from a bygone era, and they’re not that, and never will be. People still smoke and drink, and in some countries do so at the office.

And back in the day, cocktails and a ciggies hanging off your lip were something we did unconsciously, something we took for granted, the way kids use their cell phones today.

But on that show, people are constantly flicking their ashes and blowing great clouds of smoke, like little girls playing “Grown Up” and serving tea. Likewise, they make a great show of the jiggers and the highball glasses, as if Prohibition is still in effect, instead of casually knocking back a few with lunch.

Consequently, I fear the show is designed to resemble a kind of archeological dig — “Oh, let’s work in a funny 1960 hairdo! How about an IBM Selectric TYPEWRITER! What a hoot! A museum piece..!”

Most of the actors on the show weren’t even born yet in 1960, so they can be forgiven, but somebody responsible for the look and feel of the series has to be a grownup of a certain age, no?

For let me tell you, 1960 was only 50 years ago, half a century, half a lifetime if we’re lucky, not a different era, not a time gone by. John Kennedy, whose peccadilloes far exceeded Tiger’s, was running for president, and the Beatles were playing those sessions in Hamburg. Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters were just revving up the bus, and Timothy Leary was turning on Harvard lab assistants to the joys of LSD.

We were on the cusp of a Cultural Revolution, but James Dean, Jack Kerouac and Brando had been at it for years.

And when James Dean smoked a cigarette, he didn’t flick the ashes off, but just let them fall where they may. So Mad Men, get hip, and stop being such a caricature of your times. Otherwise, you may be honored in the Old Fossils Hall of Fame.

©2009 Dennis Green