Mad Men: Don Draper
Jun. 20th, 2012 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupThis is the last, really! Betty will have to wait for another day (and a couple more episodes, probably, because I am IMPATIENT). Again, spoilers through 1.07.
Y'all, I do not understand Don Draper's purpose in this narrative.
Every other character who's been given even a quarter of Don's development has clearly been positioned to explore some aspect of the role of gender in their culture. Betty is a deconstruction of the perfect housewife, Pete is a deconstruction (I believe) of the ambitious young businessman, Joan exploits her gender, and Peggy (though we haven't seen much of her lately) is still learning to negotiate the expectations and limitations implied by hers.
So what's Don a deconstruction or example of? I... have no idea.
What strikes me particularly about each of those other characters is how, distinctive and individual though they are, each clearly represents as a product of their environment. They function as much as symbols of the various failings of the society in which they live as they do characters in their own right. What little of their history we're given serves mostly to reaffirm their status as representatives, not individuals.
On the other hand, Don feels in some ways to me to be the only truly specific and individual character on this show. Yes, he's the veteran (at the tail end of WWII, I guess? that doesn't quite jibe with his and Roger's dinner conversation in 1.07, but I think Korea would have been too recent? or possibly I'm misjudging his age), and yes, he's the successful professional man suffering from suburban ennui (woe is him, say I), but what we've been told so far of his past seems aimed to set him apart as a product of his individual circumstances – primarily his family life – rather than, as is the case with all the other characters, a product of greater social forces.
I don't understand the purpose of this special treatment. This show is both so very intentional in its design and writing of its characters and so aware of male privilege in general that I have trouble imagining it privileging its male protagonist in the narrative this way without some reason. I just have no idea yet what that reason is.
--
(I'll say this, though: Like Joan, Don is not a person to cross, as Roger Sterling learned to his chagrin. Y'all, oysters and cheesecake? And gin? I was feeling some sympathetic nausea before we even got to the stairs. :P)
Original entry posted at Dreamwidth. Feel free to reply here or there. (
DW replies)
Y'all, I do not understand Don Draper's purpose in this narrative.
Every other character who's been given even a quarter of Don's development has clearly been positioned to explore some aspect of the role of gender in their culture. Betty is a deconstruction of the perfect housewife, Pete is a deconstruction (I believe) of the ambitious young businessman, Joan exploits her gender, and Peggy (though we haven't seen much of her lately) is still learning to negotiate the expectations and limitations implied by hers.
So what's Don a deconstruction or example of? I... have no idea.
What strikes me particularly about each of those other characters is how, distinctive and individual though they are, each clearly represents as a product of their environment. They function as much as symbols of the various failings of the society in which they live as they do characters in their own right. What little of their history we're given serves mostly to reaffirm their status as representatives, not individuals.
On the other hand, Don feels in some ways to me to be the only truly specific and individual character on this show. Yes, he's the veteran (at the tail end of WWII, I guess? that doesn't quite jibe with his and Roger's dinner conversation in 1.07, but I think Korea would have been too recent? or possibly I'm misjudging his age), and yes, he's the successful professional man suffering from suburban ennui (woe is him, say I), but what we've been told so far of his past seems aimed to set him apart as a product of his individual circumstances – primarily his family life – rather than, as is the case with all the other characters, a product of greater social forces.
I don't understand the purpose of this special treatment. This show is both so very intentional in its design and writing of its characters and so aware of male privilege in general that I have trouble imagining it privileging its male protagonist in the narrative this way without some reason. I just have no idea yet what that reason is.
--
(I'll say this, though: Like Joan, Don is not a person to cross, as Roger Sterling learned to his chagrin. Y'all, oysters and cheesecake? And gin? I was feeling some sympathetic nausea before we even got to the stairs. :P)
Original entry posted at Dreamwidth. Feel free to reply here or there. (
