[Editor’s note: JMS has been covering Mad Men for The Weblog’s “Spoiler Alert Thursday” since last year. I have been consistently impressed with her posts and recently invited her to post them on AUFS so that they could reach a larger audience. Her posts on previous episodes of this season can be found on The Weblog: 1, 2, and 3.]
This episode of Mad Men is bookended by a pair of strikingly self-conscious images. We open on a scene in Don’s office, where Don is reviewing the new restrictions on cigarette advertising. They’re not allowed to film smokers from low angles anymore, because it supposedly makes them look superhuman, he says … while smoking, and with the camera filming him from a low angle. Except of course that it’s just a joke — he doesn’t look superhuman at all. He looks old and sad and beat, like he has since the start of this season.
And then the show ends with an image that very deliberately underscores the emotional content of the episode. Peggy and Pete are both leaving the office, each with their respective lunch parties. Pete is with the SCDP partners and the Vick’s people — all men, all in dark somber suits, all business. A gang of girls and boys arrive to pick up Peggy. They’re giggling and teasing, and wearing stylish coats and caps, in bright colors and loud patterns. Peggy and Pete exchange a long look. They grew up together in a way, but now they’re headed in different directions. Peggy is entering the second half of the sixties having found her home with the arty, pot-smoking, sexually adventurous kids of the youthquake, and Pete is establishing himself as a husband, a father, and a cutthroat corporate man.
Pete’s transformation is interesting. He’s always been a cutthroat, but what made him somewhat endearing in earlier seasons was that he was such a failure at it. Now we see him succeeding. He was held back before by the fact that he still cared what everyone else thought of him — he wanted Don to like him, and he sought Cooper’s good opinion. Now he doesn’t give a shit, and this liberates him. Surprisingly, he’s kind of a better person for it in some ways — he’s genuinely happy with Trudy, and he’s sincere and sensitive with Peggy.
OK, Allison. She appears completely deranged in this episode — she’s weepy, distraught, and even violent, and her makeup and hair are all askew — but of course she’s practically the only sane person on the show, and it’s being surrounded by the gaslighting creeps at SCDP that is driving her up the wall. There’s this nice moment where she insists to Don that this really happened, a statement that is completely antithetical to the carefully-preserved world views of Don, Joan, Peggy and Pete, who seem uniformly dedicated to maintaining a state of perpetual denial. Don’s reaction, naturally, is to immediately and instinctively shift from denying that their affair ever happened, to denying that he ever denied that their affair ever happened.
An und für sich 
A couple articles I read about this episode pointed out that John Slattery (Roger Sterling) directed, and I think he did a really excellent job. I hadn’t noticed that the supposedly “superhuman” camera angle on Don, which is really funny. I’m already kind of tired of how pathetic Don is. It seems clear in retrospect that his daring move of starting the new agency was not really parallel to stealing the Don Draper identity — it was a “hail Mary” pass to try to make sure things stayed the same. Now I’m wondering if the season premier will have encapsulated the logic of the whole season, with Don failing for most of it up until he finally pulls himself together — or if that was actually an encapsulation of season 3 and no such catharsis is forthcoming.
The last scene — with the upswelling music and the obvious visual symbolism — reminded me a little of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which Lane and Don talked about in the last episode. In this episode, there are a couple of references to Godard, and I wonder if the opening image isn’t meant to remind the viewer maybe of Contempt, with the film technique slyly undermining the stated content of the scene?
Adding to Adam’s comment, and without denying the theme of Don’s desire to change-to-stay-the-same, I find it interesting that there is a counterpole here. Namely, in the last instance he always insists on the need to break with the old and go with the new. His re-interview was catalyzed by his refusal to do the old-style add for that bra company — he would lose the account in order to be free to do something new. And he had those fascinating, almost Humean (why presume that the future will resemble the past?), comments to the social scientist about how she was constitutively unable to register new attitudes in her group of women. The possibility of identifying (or really of generating) new attitudes was foreclosed a priori by the presuppositions of the investigation (note how they kept having her talk about her “hypothesis” and its possible confirmation). Advertising, and the sixties, are not about confirming hypotheses about attitudes but engendering new ones.
What i’m trying to say, i guess, is that my money is on a storyline in which Don comes to own this absolute commitment to the new, to the future.
Damn it, my comment got lost. I mentioned that the Pete/Peggy pregnancy issue is actually kind of the reverse of Umbrellas of Cherbourg, then said that Don’s desire for the new is constantly held back by his sense of loss — this plays out almost literally when he is, in the words of a tweet from Brad, “cockblocked by cancer” when trying to seduce Anna’s niece. So if it is going to be a plotline about him embracing his desire for change, it might be a more radical change than we can foresee right now.
It would require an active forgetting of his loss (_willing_ to lose what is lost), much as changing into Don Draper required an active forgetting of Dick Whitman.
Perhaps Glen has already provided him with something of a model.
And he had those fascinating, almost Humean (why presume that the future will resemble the past?), comments to the social scientist
I don’t think this was Humean at all. His point wasn’t that tomorrow the women in the pool might just turn out to have different attitudes, but that he is in the business of creating the attitudes they will have, which he will then tell them how to fulfill, rather than telling them how to fulfill the attitudes they already do have.
Ben: but obviously such creation of attitudes is not possible unless Hume is right; the necessity of resemblance must be lacking for him to do what he does. Am i missing something?
JMS, Can you specify what you mean by Godard references? Do you mean literally mentioning Godard or titles of his films, or more subtle parallels?
Ben: but obviously such creation of attitudes is not possible unless Hume is right;
One might just as easily say that the (willful) creation of such attitudes is not possible unless Hume is wrong, because the use of the techniques of advertising relies on lawlike or at least inductively grounded rules regarding what works and what doesn’t.
If “Hume being right” comes down to “the future isn’t necessarily like the past”, then sure, if anything ever changes, Hume must be right.
I just meant that Harry mentions a girl on the subway in a Jean Seberg-style striped shirt, which she wore in Breathless, right? and then Peggy goes to the downtown art party wearing a chic, horizontally striped sweater, which was an unusual look for her, and also seemed reminiscent of Seberg.
On the contrary, the willful creation of new attitudes relies on the invention of rules, as opposed to the recognition of pre-existing or necessary rules to be followed.
Your latter comment makes an obvious point. I guess i should state what i thought was obvious, then, which is that I wasn’t claiming that the event of change proves Hume, but that Don’s insistence on the contingency of attitudes indicates a self-awareness that is Humean. (Seriously, that wasn’t clear? I get the sense you’re being a bit of grammarian.)
Wow, and then Peggy gets involved with a guy who’s been in trouble with the law! Truly, this is the French New Wave season of Mad Men.
No, I really don’t see why this (either the contingency of attitudes or the self-awareness) ought to be called Humean at all, and I don’t understand your first sentence, either. Why does my creating a new attitude in you also require the invention of a new rule? Surely I might have learned through long experience with people that they respond in such and such a fashion to such and such prompting, and I then turn this hard-won knowledge to use in manipulating you. I don’t even understand how the relevant sort of rule could be invented. I’m sorry if I seem to be being a bit of a grammarian (I guess; I’m not sure what the significance of that is), but I really don’t know what the significance of the invocation of Hume is here.
But, Ben, wouldn’t the recognition of the new attitude by the one being manipulated (i.e,. as a new attitude) require for them, if not the manipulator, a new rule; that is to say, in order for them (the manipulated) to know and experience this new attitude as such?
I see the significance of the invocation of Hume in the challenge made to the social scientist. You interject that this is not the case, because a properly Humean awareness requires a strict skepticism of the uniformity of nature. The only way in which Don could be Humean would be for him to claim that the women could have entirely different attitudes tomorrow. But, I understand you saying, Don is not claiming this, he is claiming that the attitudes they have tomorrow will be the attitudes that he trains them to have. What i do not share, however, is the strict separation of skepticism regarding the uniformity of nature from the capacity to engender new attitudes. I’m contending that awareness of the former tends to give way to more energetic experimentation with the latter. And thus that Don’s affirmation of the latter implies affirmation of the former. You want to claim that Don’s very attempt to engender new attitudes contravenes and Humeanism insofar as it relies on hard-won knowledge from the past having relevance for what happens the future. I get this. But what was interesting about Don’s remark was that he didn’t valorize his own induction over against the scientist’s induction, rather he criticized the scientist’s confidence in induction, and then said that “maybe” he could bring about new attitudes. But there was no certainty — in other words, i took Don more as a skeptic who would wager on something else happening, something that the scientist could not see.
Scientist: “I can’t change the truth”
Don: “How do you know that’s the truth? A new idea is something they don’t know yet, so of course it’s not going to come up as an option. Put my new campaign on tv for a year, hold your group again, and maybe it’ll show up.” [i think i give more weight than you do to the “maybe” here]
“You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.”
But, Ben, wouldn’t the recognition of the new attitude by the one being manipulated (i.e,. as a new attitude) require for them, if not the manipulator, a new rule; that is to say, in order for them (the manipulated) to know and experience this new attitude as such?
Maybe (“henceforth I will gaze at myself in the mirror while using Pond’s Cold Cream!”) but I was envisaging “rules” in the sense of lawlike generalizations—”sex sells” for instance (we all remember when Don castigates Peggy for invoking that slogan, but I don’t pretend to be an advertiser!).
[i think i give more weight than you do to the “maybe” here]
Probably you do, because I think it indicates at most that Don is aware that he isn’t doing anything like simply implanting new attitudes in the minds of the viewers of his ads. Maybe it will work, maybe not. (I don’t think Don is actually in possession of real nomological truths regarding effective advertising.)
But what was interesting about Don’s remark was that he didn’t valorize his own induction over against the scientist’s induction, rather he criticized the scientist’s confidence in induction
Well, he couldn’t really oppose his expertise to the scientist’s conclusions because they concern different things. “Such and such methods are effective at changing others’ opinions” is beside the point, in response to the scientist’s claims, in the absence of actual advertising. And it’s Don’s adduction of the fact that he will shortly be about spreading the gospel of Pond’s constitutes the actual criticism of the scientist. He isn’t, as I see it, criticizing he confidence in induction (in general) at all. Or he shouldn’t have been.
It’s not that the scientist could be expected to have a snappy comeback to “why think the future will be like the past?” (other perhaps than “why not think that?”), it’s that Don has positive reasons which she’s overlooked for thinking that the future won’t be like the past in this one particular respect, both with regard to why the looked-for phenomenon didn’t occur in the past (it’s a “new idea”; it won’t pop up of itself) and to why it will occur, or at least has a shot at occuring, in the future (he’s going to tell people). And she has no answer to that—she has no argument that advertising is ineffective.
I’m contending that awareness of the former [skepticism regarding nature] tends to give way to more energetic experimentation with the latter [broadly, manipulation].
I tend to think that if you were really skeptical regarding natural uniformity the result would be inactivity or random activity; at the very least a significant reduction in what one took oneself to be able intentionally to do. What would you (think yourself to) be in a position to exploit in pursuit of your ends? How would you think yourself capable of engendering new attitudes in others, on what would you go?
And thus that Don’s affirmation of the latter implies affirmation of the former.
Aren’t you just affirming the consequent, in that case?
I suppose what I find most interesting in this scene is the potential difference between “manipulator-subjectivity” and “scientist-subjectivity.” It is no doubt possible to see, as you do, a commonality of aims between them, insofar as neither adheres to a radical skepticism regarding the uniformity of nature. My proposal, though, is that scheme obscures something that is actually there.
It is as if you think that when Don claims, “You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved,” he’s either contradicting himself (since his manipulation depends on the very same assumption, and since he’s not randomly active/inactive), or he’s just being fanciful given that he knows about the effectiveness of his upcoming ad campaign. But i think this is a reductive interpretation. The simple binary between inactivity and confidence in induction can’t account for the significance of the difference between Don and the scientist. Don may not be inactive, but neither is he attempting to discern truths representative of reality. He is rather attempting to manipulate reality, but without any hard and fast knowledge about reality as such. To put it somewhat vaguely, Don’s “maybe” is more transcendental than empirical, and it’s this kind of maybe that the scientist cannot think. It’s also the kind of maybe that one might make use of, in the wake of Hume, as a means of avoiding inactivity. Faking and making reality, without ever claiming to have adequately known reality. (This, by the way, is the relation I had in mind between the former and latter propositions; apologies for connotations of the “thus,” but i proposed the relation speculatively rather than deductively.)
Is that Humean? I think so. At the very least, it’s a way of being post-Humean.