'Mad Men:' Feminism Fresh as a Wound

'Mad Men' by Urban Barbarian

By Dan Hagen

The arguments for feminism remain valid but sound tired, except on “Mad Men,” where they’re as fresh as a wound.

I suddenly realized that for some time, the “Mad Men” story line that has most interested me is that of Joan Holloway Harris (Christina Hendricks), the office manager at whatever the name of that newly merged firm of free-falling alcoholics and inventive narcissists will turn out to be.

Joan is the most competent character, surpassing even the agency’s dynamic creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm). After all, when drunken staffers cut off a visitor’s foot with a lawn mower, it’s Joan, not Don or anyone else, who can handle the emergency.

Note that she was absent during the episode “The Crash,” when Dr. Feelgood’s speedy ministrations turned the men in the agency into delusional and/or dangerous loons. Joan had to be offstage at the time, because she’d never have permitted that bullshit.

Although she literally keeps the agency functioning, no-nonsense Joan has to put up with plenty of nonsense, or believes she must. The series underlines the double-edged nature of her statuesque body, which gets her some things easily, and puts other things unfairly out of her reach.

One of the series’ most moving moments was the look on her face when Joan — finally by accident doing some challenging creative work in reviewing television scripts — had the job brusquely snatched away from her by a far less competent man. You can see her contain her aching disappointment, without complaint, as she silently returns to making secretarial assignments.

Joan’s competence provided her an unspoken, reliable bond with Don, who has never tried to sleep with her and respects few others in his profession. But lately, when Don’s high-handedness cost Joan perhaps a million dollars and her chance at real independence, even her patience with him snapped.

From the beginning, her looks and gender have caused the men at the agency to treat Joan with a backhanded indifference bordering on contempt. She was ill used by her backstreet lover Roger Sterling (John Slattery), then by her husband (Samuel Page). Roger thinks he’s paying her the ultimate compliment when he calls her the best piece of ass he’d ever had. Even a damn freelancer feels free to call her a “Shanghai madam” to her face.

The drama makes it clear that here we have a character who feels she must hide the depression and unhappiness that result not from a lack of love, but from a lack of respect.

The situation got worse when the men persuaded Joan to literally prostitute herself to land a client, at the price of a partnership.

You want to slap her pimp partners and ask them what they’re sniggering at. Every one of them is, after all, a whore. In fact, the series makes it pretty clear that the men’s contempt for Joan is laced with self-loathing.

But as a result of that messy business, Joan’s now a partner in the firm, although she hasn’t yet begun to act like one. When and if she does, when and if she discovers and flexes her newfound power, that will indeed be something to see.

Joan is the disrespected central support of a 1960s advertising agency

There, I’ve written 555 words on this topic — more than the 250 words that is the most Don Draper has ever written about anything, as he once ruefully observed.