Mad
Men is a drama set in the 1960's. It outlines the life of protagonist Don
Draper. So far, what we know about Draper is that he is one of the top guys in
a huge advertisement firm. He and his co-workers are huge womanizers, everyone
in the show smokes, and one of Drapers huge accounts is a cigarette company
called 'Lucky Strike'. In this episode, he was struggling to find a campaign
that would make people feel like they can put their trust in these cigarettes.
He also was terribly offensive to a woman who owns a Jewish department
store.
The
majorly prevalent theme of the episode would be sexism. Sexism is all
throughout the episode, and I am assuming the series. It starts with Don's new
secretary Peggy. Multiple people mock her for the fact that she is dressed too
conservatively. One of the men, a few days before his wedding, went as far as
to sexually harass her in front of his superior and it was treated very
causally. She was also told on her first day that she needed to take birth-control
pills, in a time when those had in incredibly bad reputation. In another situation, Draper yells at a woman
in a business meeting because she disagreed with his thoughts on a new ad
campain. He made it clear that the reason he was so livid is because of that
fact that she was a woman standing up to him. Towards the beginning of the episode,
Don goes over to a woman’s apartment in the city and sleeps with her. He tells
her the next morning that he feels like they should just get married, which
would give him the appearance of more of a wholesome guy. This would especially
be shown paired with that as Don’s co-worker hit on his secretary, he tells him
off. Peggy even tries to make an advance, which Draper rejects. In the last
scene in the episode, it shows a beautiful woman waiting for her husband to get
home, and you discover that her husband is, in fact, Don Draper and the two
have two children together.
I
think I verse that really sticks out to me in the context of this theme would
be Mark 16. This is the text where Jesus is raised and the first people to
discover this are the women. These ‘Mad Men’ have bigger problems than just the
fact that they are sexist. John 3:16 should be the first verse they need to
hear, but in the sense of putting women in a more equal view, I would say that
they should see God placing women in the highest regards of letting them be the
first to see Jesus.
The
theme of sexism, although relevant to the culture of the biblical times, is in stark
contrast to actual biblical teachings. The Bible was obviously the first of
historical teachings to place woman in such a good light, but that equality was
still not understood 1960, give or take 33 years, later.
