No More Mayberry: In "Mad Men', Ozzie and Harriet Come Unglued

Jon Hamm and January Jones, channeling their Mad Men characters. Photographed at the Lightbourne House, in Lyford Cay, Nassau, the Bahamas. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; styled by Michael Roberts.The word is that the third-season premiere of AMC’s “Mad Men” deals in images of motherhood, breasts and milk.

Viewers of the show know that its influence — the “Mad Men” brand — extends far beyond the 1.8 million weekly viewers. Tech folks watch episodes online and on pod.

On one hand, “Mad Men” is a design love — a period perfect photo of America’s early sixties, apple pie life.

Just as these September 2009 Vanity Fair photos by the financially-insolvent, celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz are Photoshopped to perfection, life in the world of “Mad Men” is not what it appears to be.

Vanity Fair says that Betty Draper, the ice queen wife of central character, ad executive Don Draper, is stranded in what feels at times like an improbably compelling adaptation of The Feminine Mystique.

“Mad Men” Hamm and Jones, Vanity Fair September 2009, photographed by Annie LeibovitzI’m not sure why writer Bruce Handy says “improbably”. American daughters grew up with Betty, a prototype, upper-middle class woman, seething beneath the surface of her stylized, manicured life.

As a young woman I adored KM, a boogie-woogie playing, martini-drinking, strapless dress wearing femme fatale straight out of a Tennessee Williams play.

How she ended up in my small Minnesota town still baffles me, but she was a rebel without a cause, and I worshipped her.

Born a generation too early, KM belonged at Woodstock — in her olive green silks, of course. Some women are starlets, no matter where they hang out.

In our pre Photoshop world of “Mad Men”, Jack Kennedy was still alive and women’s lib hadn’t happened. Betty hadn’t morphed into the “bring home the bacon woman”. The thought that woman’s contemporary anger would be one of having too much to do was inconceivable.

Hamm and Jones, Vanity Fair September 2009, photographer Annie LeibovitzBack then Harriets were often bored out of the minds. It’s not their fault that these upper middle class white women weren’t poor, or immigrants, or nonwhite, all socially-acceptable identities for women with a genuine ax to grind back then, when viewed in today’s politically correct world.

Conceived by the woman-centric mind of Matthew Weiner, “Mad Men” is produced by a rare group of predominantly women writers. The Wall Street Journal dropped in on the team, just as Betty prepares to commit adultery in the end of the second season.

The men were against it. Betty would never compromise her integrity like that, consulting producer André Jacquemetton recalls saying. Most of the female writers disagreed.

“Wrong,” said the women.

“Mad Men” stars as one of the most intuitive examinations of the middle-class, white female psyche ever — even if the men are typically front and center.

Brain scans didn’t exist back in the sixties.

Researchers hadn’t yet stared in amazement at the brain maps of men and then women, answering questions about erotic pleasure and other potentially damaging admissions concerningtheir private thoughts, ones capable of permanently damaging a woman’s reputation.

These women had it easy, after all. In countries beyond America, they might be stoned to death for those admission.

Shockingly or not — women lie, based on brain scan research. What she says, and what her brain communicates she’s really thinking, are often diametrically opposed.

Professing “I hate it; it’s disgusting; get it away from me” often means “bring it on”, based on her brain mapping. Between their brains and behavior, women are conditioned to behave.

Handy writes that at its core “Mad Men” is a moving and sometimes profound meditation on the deceptive allure of surface, and on the deeper mysteries of identity.

In the case of “Mad Men’s” women, the show is a rare example where white, middle-class ladies have equal billing in the world of deceptive allure.

This Photoshopped world of female identity was as false then, as now.

Fifty years later, Madison Avenue and marketing/branding equivalents continues to direct the fake reality show, while the real women soldier on as willing, often enthusiastic collaborators.

Women broke out of gender prison in so many ways since the days of “Mad Men”. On the subject of female identity and self-image, not much has changes. The pros continue to direct her show. Anne