Blacks and Latinos in “Mad Men”: Art or Artifice?

I have a thing for New York City nostalgia.  That is why I was excited to learn a couple of weeks ago that Netflix began streaming all four seasons of Mad Men, which I still had not seen.  I had heard testimonials of its keen story line, exquisite production, and distinguished cast.  I could not wait to see what the hoopla was about.  After watching just one episode, now I know.

The opening scene of the first episode is a bar filled with executives laughing, drinking and smoking during happy hour.  Ever the creative genius, the show’s protagonist, ad man Don Draper, is doodling something on his beverage napkin.  Just then, Sam the bartender appears with Draper’s drink.  Sam is African-American and in his 60s.  Sam looks tired, like he is working a double shift for the third time this week.  A conversation ensues between Draper and Sam and the head bartender, who is white, immediately interrupts them to ask Draper if Sam is “bothering” him.  Draper waves off the head bartender and, ostensibly trying to determine how to get people like Sam to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes—one of Draper’s clients—he begins to quiz Sam on why he is loyal to Old Gold, a competing brand.

Ah, the good old days … But, for whom? 

I am usually skeptical about period pieces featuring an all-White cast.  I usually assume the subtext is that things were much better the way they used to be, when people of color were subjugated by enforced discrimination—either through Jim Crow laws, or by things like refusing to hire and promote anyone in New York City’s storied corridors of industry, unless they lived in its surrounding suburbs.  Provided that you lived in places like Ossining, NY, or at least summered in the Hamptons growing up, you were part of the “in” crowd—it just made the day go by faster when you had people around who could relate to the old neighborhood. 

I have not seen a demographic breakdown of Mad Men’s audience—this information is usually proprietary and limited to television networks with millions to spend on ratings service subscriptions.  Still, there is no question that Mad Men is very popular, at least within the television industry itself.  According to the show’s website, Mad Men, which will enter its fifth season of production next year, has been nominated for 19 Emmy Awards this year alone.  It has already won thirteen Emmys and four Golden Globes.

Normally, television shows do not achieve that kind of notoriety unless they are successful in reaching the audience advertisers value most—consumers with disposable income.  That category excluded people beset by inequality in 1960, and it continues to exclude people beset by inequality today, unless something cheap is for sale that dulls the senses, like cigarettes. 

But the show’s earnings have been less than impressive by industry standards, as mainstream advertisers have been slow to take to the show, in its broadcast form, when it airs on AMC.  Mad Men’s current advertisers are often luxury brands, such as BMW, but the show only generated $1.98 million in advertising revenues in 2009—the latest year for which numbers are available. 

Some have argued that Mad Men’s subpar financial performance can be attributed to the increased popularity of time-shifted entertainment and on-line television viewing.  These are reasonable conclusions for expanding Mad Men to new platforms, like Netflix.  But from a broader perspective, it is difficult to conclude that these trends do not signal America’s changing demographics and the state of the economy.  Given America’s increasing racial and ethnic diversity, it is possible that more Americans are skeptical, before giving Mad Men a chance, concluding that it is yet another example of the past being repackaged to perpetuate old value systems.  They avoid what they perceive to be revisionist interpretations of the past.  But it could also be another indicator that America’s growing inequality has resulted in a scenario where there are simply too few viewers with disposable income left.  And that is truly something to be mad about.