Mad Men’s very first episode, entitled “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, utilized tobacco to illustrate the destructive dance of death that advertising was facilitating. According to Don, happiness is a billboard that screams at you that you’re OK, though surgeon-generals might be telling you otherwise. Everyone in advertising knew there was deception involved, that they were blowing smoke; but the addicts were happy, the dealers were happy, what was the problem outside of a few conscientious whiners? Wasn’t that the essence of the capitalist dream, that deals could be struck to most everyone’s benefit?
The cruel irony was of course that though in the short run consumers were happy, they hadn’t the knowledge, foresight, or fortitude to realize they were poisoning themselves. Really they were not much different from a heroin junky - content long as they got their fix, and in for a very rude awakening one day. The pushers like Don were happy to think that in blowing smoke, at least it wasn’t getting in their eyes. But in last night’s episode, Don realizes that his vision has been clouded all these years, and he’s going to have to blow smoke like he’s never done before to see clearly again.
The first time we see Sterling Cooper meet with Lucky Strike, we’re reminded that tobacco was given to the settlers by the natives. It’s hard to think of another product that is as essentially American. It was smoked non-daily by Native Americans for religious and medicinal purposes centuries before the Europeans arrived. It was the very first crop grown exclusively for profit, planted by the Jamestown settlers in 1612. It helped finance the revolution against England. Washington and Jefferson supported their aristocratic lifestyles through its production. It was one of the principal cash crops on which the country’s initially shaky finances were built.
Tobacco was wildly profitable not just because it was addictive, and because it enhanced cognition, and because its production was easily conducive to slave labor, but also because it became associated with a kind of rugged Americanism that was fresh in the eyes of the world. When in 1881 an invention came along that allowed rolled cigarettes to be produced in mass quantities, the masses quickly fell under its spell and it wasn’t long before billions and billions of these “cancer sticks” were circulating the planet. Today, despite all our knowledge and abilities, we are still a society heavily under its sway, like a drug addict mired in split consciousness. In their tragically disunited psyches, smokers are no different from other Americans - they are in fact the quintessential Americans. Blowing smoke is hard unless you’re also good at blowing smoke.
Of course, beyond its literal meaning, to blow smoke is to lie for the purpose of making yourself seem better than you actually are. The complexity of Don’s commendable decision to judge tobacco publicly is that it is really a ploy to make him and his agency seem stronger than they really are. Don reasons that since they’ve already lost the business, they may as well position themselves as morally superior. Megan sees its purpose best by intuiting that it’s really a face-saving strategy in a relationship gone sour, as she says, “It’s like: he didn’t dump me, I dumped him”.
But that doesn’t make Don’s stunning admonition any less true, courageous, or necessary. Any relationship has the potential to drown out our moral sensibilities, and sometimes we can only regain what is right through a severing of ties, whether we had intended to or not. Don’s brash decision to speak out against tobacco was partly a salvaging of pride, partly a strategy to garner new business, and partly a lament that his creative prowess was being wasted. Don’s genius wasn’t being utilized to create desires in people that would actually make them happy, but was simply window dressing for an addictive product that “makes people unhappy”. What would our world look like if the Don’s of this world used their powers of persuasion for good rather than ill?
Speaking out for what is right and decent is crucial for all our well being, but it would be a lie to say that morality is the fundamental principle upon which our society operates. What is that fundamental principle? Look no further than money. Considerations of its gain drive the vast majority of human behavior, and it nearly always trumps values that might have in simpler times seemed indispensable. The main thing always to remember about money is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.
In threatening bottom lines speaking the truth can therefore be very dangerous to the status quos, and there are very real consequences to its utterance. Mad Men doesn’t sugarcoat Don’s actions by giving him a big pat on the back. We think that Don might be granted total moral vindication when he’s speaking to Bobby Kennedy, but of course it turns out to be a ridiculing prank by his chief rival. His partners are understandably upset at not being consulted, and though Don is right to assume they would’ve watered down his pure vision, he essentially made a decision that will impact them negatively. And they’re the ones in power, the ruling elite that will basically be fine no matter what happens. It is the powerless that will truly suffer: SCDP’s divorce from tobacco means that half the company is terminated. Weiner doesn’t let us forget that morality has its victims as well, that conscience costs.
The only people that truly applaud Don are his lovers Faye and Megan, but for very different reasons. Faye is out of a job because of Don, who had not even considered that he might hurt those around him, but seems actually relieved since it means that the deception of their relationship and its uncomfortable entanglement with work can now be discarded. She has made the wise decision to value love over money and status. Megan is supportive for the simple and angelic reason that it was the morally right thing to say, and that she “loves that you stand for something”. I suspect most of the audience would fall in Megan’s camp. Indeed, I myself got chills at the beauty and power of Don’s language and resolve during the writing of his letter. There seemed to be a return to brilliance that we haven’t seen in some time, that he had lost in stages as he became ever more comfortable in his position.
The creations of the desperate can carry with them the greatest of beauty. Often it is the very fact of their desperation that pushes them towards producing something of value. When Don receives Midge’s painting, Midge asks him what he thinks of her work, and he answers: “would it matter?”. It doesn’t seem like it would matter, since the transaction taking place between them is actually just blowing smoke, making her feel better about hounding an ex for heroin money.
Don once said to Midge, “I can’t decide whether you have everything, or nothing”. It seems as though that question has been decidedly settled as nothing. There are not many symbols more forceful than heroin to exemplify the epic waste intrinsic in pure pleasure seeking. Don has teetered between that kind of live in the moment sensibility and the desire to create something that will bring permanent happiness. Much of this season has been about his attempts to truly build something lasting. And though the business state he’s in has made him desperate, Don is not ready to give up on creating something of real value.
He first wants to throw out Midge’s painting because it would only remind him of her abject state, but in the process of taking it away he becomes lost in its beauty, and can’t help but see the value in it. He realizes that the desperate do have something to offer - a bit of beauty, a piece of the truth, a slice of real honesty. His addiction to his job is in ways not so different from Midge’s addiction to heroin or the millions of smokers’ addiction to nicotine: they’ve all let a bit of evil into their lives, a touch of desperation, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have the capability of redemption in them. After staring at that painting for some time, Don rips out the old pages in his notebook and starts afresh: Why I’m Quitting Tobacco.
The most pessimistic note of the episode is that Don doesn’t mean he’s actually going to quit smoking, only that he’s not going to work for tobacco anymore. Indeed, he’s smoking like a chimney while defending the nobility of his statements the next day. Addictions are addictions, and insight into the truth is too flimsy a substance to break one. Don’s been smoking his whole life, he’s not going stop without serious intervention. The same is true of America, smoking since the Mayflower days, smoking at every turn of its illustrious development.
The same sadness of an addiction that will continue untreated permeates the exchange between Don and Midge: he is helping a friend, gaining some art in return, but in reality he is only delaying her descent to the bottom. He can’t offer her substantive help, nor do his insights offer himself substantial help.
The damages of addiction are not easily reversed, and the pushers should not easily be forgiven. We know that Don wants to do good, and he has some strength in him that others lack to push culture in positive directions, but he has sullied himself. Should society trust a man like this? Does he really have our best interests at heart given his powers? As he stares at the commiserating group of ex-SCDP employees with concern just as he steps into his office for one more firing, a soulful singing washes over us:
trust in me, in all you do
have the faith i have in you
love will see us through
if only you trust in me
why don’t you, you trust me?
I for one would really like to trust Don, but is it heroically visionary or unforgivably naive to assume that the powers of one man are sufficient to curb his vices, let alone the vices of a nation?
The cruel irony was of course that though in the short run consumers were happy, they hadn’t the knowledge, foresight, or fortitude to realize they were poisoning themselves. Really they were not much different from a heroin junky - content long as they got their fix, and in for a very rude awakening one day. The pushers like Don were happy to think that in blowing smoke, at least it wasn’t getting in their eyes. But in last night’s episode, Don realizes that his vision has been clouded all these years, and he’s going to have to blow smoke like he’s never done before to see clearly again.
The first time we see Sterling Cooper meet with Lucky Strike, we’re reminded that tobacco was given to the settlers by the natives. It’s hard to think of another product that is as essentially American. It was smoked non-daily by Native Americans for religious and medicinal purposes centuries before the Europeans arrived. It was the very first crop grown exclusively for profit, planted by the Jamestown settlers in 1612. It helped finance the revolution against England. Washington and Jefferson supported their aristocratic lifestyles through its production. It was one of the principal cash crops on which the country’s initially shaky finances were built.
Tobacco was wildly profitable not just because it was addictive, and because it enhanced cognition, and because its production was easily conducive to slave labor, but also because it became associated with a kind of rugged Americanism that was fresh in the eyes of the world. When in 1881 an invention came along that allowed rolled cigarettes to be produced in mass quantities, the masses quickly fell under its spell and it wasn’t long before billions and billions of these “cancer sticks” were circulating the planet. Today, despite all our knowledge and abilities, we are still a society heavily under its sway, like a drug addict mired in split consciousness. In their tragically disunited psyches, smokers are no different from other Americans - they are in fact the quintessential Americans. Blowing smoke is hard unless you’re also good at blowing smoke.
Of course, beyond its literal meaning, to blow smoke is to lie for the purpose of making yourself seem better than you actually are. The complexity of Don’s commendable decision to judge tobacco publicly is that it is really a ploy to make him and his agency seem stronger than they really are. Don reasons that since they’ve already lost the business, they may as well position themselves as morally superior. Megan sees its purpose best by intuiting that it’s really a face-saving strategy in a relationship gone sour, as she says, “It’s like: he didn’t dump me, I dumped him”.
But that doesn’t make Don’s stunning admonition any less true, courageous, or necessary. Any relationship has the potential to drown out our moral sensibilities, and sometimes we can only regain what is right through a severing of ties, whether we had intended to or not. Don’s brash decision to speak out against tobacco was partly a salvaging of pride, partly a strategy to garner new business, and partly a lament that his creative prowess was being wasted. Don’s genius wasn’t being utilized to create desires in people that would actually make them happy, but was simply window dressing for an addictive product that “makes people unhappy”. What would our world look like if the Don’s of this world used their powers of persuasion for good rather than ill?
Speaking out for what is right and decent is crucial for all our well being, but it would be a lie to say that morality is the fundamental principle upon which our society operates. What is that fundamental principle? Look no further than money. Considerations of its gain drive the vast majority of human behavior, and it nearly always trumps values that might have in simpler times seemed indispensable. The main thing always to remember about money is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.
In threatening bottom lines speaking the truth can therefore be very dangerous to the status quos, and there are very real consequences to its utterance. Mad Men doesn’t sugarcoat Don’s actions by giving him a big pat on the back. We think that Don might be granted total moral vindication when he’s speaking to Bobby Kennedy, but of course it turns out to be a ridiculing prank by his chief rival. His partners are understandably upset at not being consulted, and though Don is right to assume they would’ve watered down his pure vision, he essentially made a decision that will impact them negatively. And they’re the ones in power, the ruling elite that will basically be fine no matter what happens. It is the powerless that will truly suffer: SCDP’s divorce from tobacco means that half the company is terminated. Weiner doesn’t let us forget that morality has its victims as well, that conscience costs.
The only people that truly applaud Don are his lovers Faye and Megan, but for very different reasons. Faye is out of a job because of Don, who had not even considered that he might hurt those around him, but seems actually relieved since it means that the deception of their relationship and its uncomfortable entanglement with work can now be discarded. She has made the wise decision to value love over money and status. Megan is supportive for the simple and angelic reason that it was the morally right thing to say, and that she “loves that you stand for something”. I suspect most of the audience would fall in Megan’s camp. Indeed, I myself got chills at the beauty and power of Don’s language and resolve during the writing of his letter. There seemed to be a return to brilliance that we haven’t seen in some time, that he had lost in stages as he became ever more comfortable in his position.
The creations of the desperate can carry with them the greatest of beauty. Often it is the very fact of their desperation that pushes them towards producing something of value. When Don receives Midge’s painting, Midge asks him what he thinks of her work, and he answers: “would it matter?”. It doesn’t seem like it would matter, since the transaction taking place between them is actually just blowing smoke, making her feel better about hounding an ex for heroin money.
Don once said to Midge, “I can’t decide whether you have everything, or nothing”. It seems as though that question has been decidedly settled as nothing. There are not many symbols more forceful than heroin to exemplify the epic waste intrinsic in pure pleasure seeking. Don has teetered between that kind of live in the moment sensibility and the desire to create something that will bring permanent happiness. Much of this season has been about his attempts to truly build something lasting. And though the business state he’s in has made him desperate, Don is not ready to give up on creating something of real value.
He first wants to throw out Midge’s painting because it would only remind him of her abject state, but in the process of taking it away he becomes lost in its beauty, and can’t help but see the value in it. He realizes that the desperate do have something to offer - a bit of beauty, a piece of the truth, a slice of real honesty. His addiction to his job is in ways not so different from Midge’s addiction to heroin or the millions of smokers’ addiction to nicotine: they’ve all let a bit of evil into their lives, a touch of desperation, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have the capability of redemption in them. After staring at that painting for some time, Don rips out the old pages in his notebook and starts afresh: Why I’m Quitting Tobacco.
The most pessimistic note of the episode is that Don doesn’t mean he’s actually going to quit smoking, only that he’s not going to work for tobacco anymore. Indeed, he’s smoking like a chimney while defending the nobility of his statements the next day. Addictions are addictions, and insight into the truth is too flimsy a substance to break one. Don’s been smoking his whole life, he’s not going stop without serious intervention. The same is true of America, smoking since the Mayflower days, smoking at every turn of its illustrious development.
The same sadness of an addiction that will continue untreated permeates the exchange between Don and Midge: he is helping a friend, gaining some art in return, but in reality he is only delaying her descent to the bottom. He can’t offer her substantive help, nor do his insights offer himself substantial help.
The damages of addiction are not easily reversed, and the pushers should not easily be forgiven. We know that Don wants to do good, and he has some strength in him that others lack to push culture in positive directions, but he has sullied himself. Should society trust a man like this? Does he really have our best interests at heart given his powers? As he stares at the commiserating group of ex-SCDP employees with concern just as he steps into his office for one more firing, a soulful singing washes over us:
trust in me, in all you do
have the faith i have in you
love will see us through
if only you trust in me
why don’t you, you trust me?
I for one would really like to trust Don, but is it heroically visionary or unforgivably naive to assume that the powers of one man are sufficient to curb his vices, let alone the vices of a nation?
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
I think that you nailed the crux of this episode here.
The whole smoke in your eyes is (obviously) that you can't see clearly. And it set the whole stage of not seeing what you are seeing of the series. I think they are both apt metaphors.
Damon, I wouldn't go so far as you do - if there hadn't been tobacco I'm sure American ingenuity would've squeezed money out of something else. But certainly tobacco is deeply and inextricably mixed up with the American character.
Prophetess, I love that name by the way, I'm glad we agree that the fact that Don's statement has no immediate effects on anyone's smoking habits is a hilarious and yet tragic irony.
Adele, thanks very much for informing me that the singer's name was Etta James. I like that song very much and have added it to my musical rotation. The best thing of any piece of art is the enrichment we experience by all sharing our interpretations. Of course we can never be truly in the mind of the writers so our analysis will always be technically wrong, yet that doesn't detract at all from what we take from it.
UnderstandingDon, thanks, and I feel ya on the linking laziness. I hope that it will not deter you in the future!
The watcher, thanks for your enthusiasm, I'm new at this and your comments in the past were much needed nudges in the right direction.
Teresa, thank you and excellent points about Betty's smoking. I neglected to discuss the storyline involving Betty and Sally this week, but it certainly summons interesting thoughts to consider that Betty's whole purpose in life at the moment seems to be to control Sally, and yet she has no control over herself. The compulsion of smoking, usually as a response to stress or nervousness, is an interesting entry into those ideas, i.e. the desire to control and dampen stress yet the concomitant lack of control over your own behavior.
Georgia, you're probably right about the alternate interpretation of "blowing smoke". It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the writer's had multiple meanings in mind when they chose that title, and perhaps there are a few more we haven't hit upon yet. I was intrigued but slightly confused by your comment, "it set the whole stage of not seeing what you are seeing of the series". Would you elaborate on that?
Think about it first from purely a physical standpoint. If you are around smokers, first the smoke is very irritating to your eyes. So you're already squinting and pulling back. Then, smoke is opaque. You can't see what is right in front of your face. It makes you misinterpret your surroundings (aka smoke and mirrors).
All throughout this series we've seen and discussed about how things aren't as they seem. Don is Dick. Sal is closeted (his poor wife). Peggy is a Catholic school girl (images of soft and innocent) who has had an illegitimate baby and can play hard ball. Granted, it's a commonly used tactic in tv/film.