Mad Men is a show about lies, the lies we tell about who we are and what our country is, and what happens when those lies fall apart. The whole idea of the 1950s, picket-fence, Ozzie and Harriet American Dream was a lie, a well-told tale conjured up by Madison Avenue to sell vacuum cleaners and automobiles. And the single biggest lie at the core of that American Dream was the myth of white supremacy, the delusion that allowed a nation of immigrants, outcasts, and orphans to galvanize their standing in a new social order where status and self-worth were rooted in the accident of not being born black. Who is Don Draper but a white man pretending to be a sort of white person he’s not, and who suffers a complete breakdown when that lie is exposed? And what could better symbolize the story of white America in the 1960s?

Read Colby’s two pieces here and here.

And read my 2010 piece about Mad Men and race here.

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I love the show, but when the issue has come up, it’s usually regarding a client at the ad agency: How they will sell their products to blacks (“Negroes”), why clients won’t hire blacks, etc. There have been very few blacks or any people of color with speaking roles on the show that is set in New York City. In Season 2, Paul Kinsey did have a minor story arc that involved a black girlfriend, but blacks on the show have been mostly in the background: the Draper’s maid Carla, elevator operators or sandwich vendors.

Yes, the show needs to be realistic. The show is about sex, sexism and relationships. It would be tricky, but not impossible, to introduce the issue of race and intelligently combine it with sex: the ultimate taboo when it came to race. So, the writers need to be smart.

In the last few weeks, though, race has become more visible. In last night’s episode, “The Beautiful Girls,” it’s revealed one of the firm’s clients won’t hire blacks. Peggy raises the issue in a meeting, but she was quickly shot down. More importantly, though, she tells a guy at a bar, “Most of the things Negroes can’t do, I can’t do either.” It’s an acknowledgment that the fight for equality is about fighting both sexism and racism.

And then there was the mugger: The black mugger in the bad neighborhood whose face was obscured by shadows that demanded money and jewelry from Roger and Joan. It was disappointing that the first on-screen black character with a speaking part in weeks had to be a criminal. The obscured face made it clear the mugger was just supposed to be a faceless black man to Roger, Joan and the viewers. Was he supposed to be an Invisible Man?

I really hope so. I hope the writers and producers were doing something smart last night and not being lazy. “Mad Men” is an intelligent show. As it moves into the late 1960′s they’re going to have to address the changing nature of race in society and in the lives of the people at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, while continuing to substantively explore the sex and relationships of those people. I hope last night’s episode was the beginning of that.

Photo credit: AMC/”Mad Men”

The life of these guys are so miserable because they have to spend time with their mothers-in-law and take their wives’ calls? What assholes. These guys are whining about how whipped they feel because they have to watch “vampire shows?” Having to do those things doesn’t break down the American man. Feeling that those things do break it down is being whiny. It’s the opposite of the manly-man they’re trying to be.

I never understood the whole “life is over because I’m married” line of thinking. First, the reasons “life is so bad” always seemed lame, like in this commercial. And second, no one forced these guys to get married in the first place. So, conclusion: Stupid commercial.

A few weeks later, I noticed an ad for Dockers khakis that said “Wear the Pants.” I saw it and others for the same campaign in a few places in Midtown, but didn’t initially pay too much attention to them. Then I thought about “Wearing the pants” in light of the Dodge ad. It turns out the Dockers campaign is telling men to “wear the pants” to bring back manhood. Wearing khakis is going to bring macho back?

Really?

Here’s the full ad (via NYDailyNews.com)

This ad really pissed me off.

“Once upon a time,” the ad begins, “men wore the pants and wore them well.” Later, the ad continues, “Men took charge because that’s what they did.” No, men took charge because women weren’t allowed to. Men wore the pants, remember? “The world decided it no longer needed men,” claims the ad. (It did?) We were “stripped” of our khakis (read: manhood, balls) and “left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny.” How? ”Disco by disco, latte by non-fat latte.”And while the ad claims, “The World sits idly by as cities crumble,” it seems to blames cities for the emasculation of the American man.

Disco was popular in cities with blacks and gays. The whole “Disco Sucks” movement and the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 are regarded as having racist and homophobic undertones: White, working class, rock music pushing back against black, Latino, gay urban disco. So, saying disco is a reason that men lost their mojo is ignorant at best. At worst, it’s offensive.

As a New Yorker, I find the anti-urban sentiment offensive. What offends me most about this ad, though, is that it yearns back to the time when women, gays and people of color were second class citizens. This ad sets itself up as harkening back to the 1950′s before the Women’s Lib movement. I really like “Mad Men,” but as a black man I wouldn’t want to be in it. As far as gender and racial relationships, it’s offensive to wish for that period in American history to return.

This manifesto isn’t on the Dockers site anymore. The two articles I’ve seen about the campaign link to the Dockers site, but the manifesto is no where to be found. As of just a few days ago, it’s still part of a huge poster in Midtown Manhattan. Whether or not it’s soon taken down, a bunch of people who are paid a lot of money thought this campaign was a good idea. They claim it was tested with women, “It’s not about men taking over again,” and it’s not about whether men are “gay, straight, whatever.” That doesn’t seem possible. It’s amazing that people who use cultural phrases or images don’t understand their meaning or why they’re offensive.

It’s worth noting that the two ads came out in a few months of each other. Dockers in December and Dodge in February. Both state that American masculinity is being threatened. Yes, there’s the “mancession,” more women graduating college than men, and boys not learning as well as girls in elementary schools. All are important issues for society as a whole, not just men. But Dockers and Dodge aren’t talking about those things. They’re talking about men being emasculated and dominated by women. The implication is that men are under siege, mostly by women. Guys, they say, need to man-up and once again wear the pants. (Dockers literally says this.)

The norms of what it means to be a guy in this country are changing. Masculinity is entering unchartered territory. More and more, men are equal partners with women at home and work. Sometimes, the man may be the one who stays home. All of that is ok.Real men know how to handle change. There’s no need to “wear the pants.” We don’t need to bring that type of macho back.