The second-best case against Don Draper in which I rant
A while ago in the comments, Gaius put me onto a fascinating site called The Last Psychiatrist. It strikes me as a little like this site but only with even less restraint. He cuts loose and says stuff that you might think but would think better than to actually say. And he has devoted two long, rambling posts to trashing Don Draper.
That's odd—meaning unusual—because most people who think so little of something wouldn't bother arguing the point. They'd consider it beneath their dignity to waste all that time on a mere fictional character that only a small segment of the population watches. The longer someone spends trying to diminish something, the more they succeed in making it appear significant.
Anyway, he has come up with the second-best argument against Don Draper and I think that is worth some comment. Now he would insist that he has made a case against wanting to be like Don Draper but that is redundant. Draper is a hero and the whole (only) point of a hero is to inspire emulation.
But first let me answer the obvious question: If his is the second best case, where is the first?
Well, let me tell you about an argument I had with an English professor back in university. We were reading Lucky Jim and I was defending an unsympathetic character from that novel named Margaret Poole. After class the professor approached me and said, "How can you like her, she is a psychotic, neurasthenic b____?" And I said, "Yes she is but she is because Kingsley Amis made her that way and I think he was cheating."
And there is the problem, the best case against Don Draper is the one made by the show itself. No one expected Don Draper to be so admired by young men and no one expected that young women would all have to go change their pants after watching the show. The show intends to be a dissection of the character from the very start.
Anyway, the show was meant to reinforce conventional wisdom about an era and, much to everyone's surprise, people reacted in ways they weren't supposed to. You can see this in season one when they realize that Roger Sterling is more important to the show than they intended. The role was slowly expanded to reflect what viewers wanted to see. (We have seen this phenomena before: no one expected the Fonz or Alex P. Keaton to be so loved either.)
But lovable rogues are one thing and people taking a pre-liberal era man as a role model is another. (That's lousy history—if any era was liberal it was the 1950s—but it is the sort of lousy history the kids have been taught at university.) And The Last Psychiatrist is only one of many to rush to the rescue. And in so doing, he completely misses the ambiguity of the character. It's an ambiguity he has no trouble seeing in other characters:
Okay but what is there to admire in Don?
Well, here I think The Last Psychiatrist blunders into the truth.
No Don Draper doesn't and that is obvious right from the beginning when we see him in the bar. Don knows very well what it is like to be small and insignificant and he keeps connecting with other characters who feel small and invisible. There is genuine sympathy for other human beings here and narcissists don't do that.
Don is an admirable character because he is a role not a person. Like a figure in a religious icon, he is largely an apathetic representation. He isn't a blank slate but he is a role and roles are open to interpretation. The real problem for the sort of person who calls themselves a liberal today is that he is a role that we aren't supposed to admire. It's a real problem that he might be open to interpretation: there is only one interpretation damnit so shut up.
How does TLP get around this? He introduces a straight man who is satisfyingly one-dimensional and will perfectly support the part TLP wants to play (far be it from me to point out that this is actually rather, ah, narcissistic). But he has to do some mind reading to do that. His starting point is the Ask Men poll that concluded that Don Draper was the most admired man in America.
(Okay, brief detour here, it's not just who Ask Men's readers picked, it's who they didn't pick. The poll was a couple of years ago and they didn't pick Obama. Get it? All you have to do to be a narcissist these days is not behave the way other people want you to.)
Anyway, if you read the two pieces that TLP has written with that in mind, you'll notice that his argument relies very heavily on the straight man who keeps saying all the right kinds of stupid things. His imaginary interlocutor is a narcissist because TLP made him that way.
Here is the cool thing about Don Draper: people can change. I know, that is the opposite of what Matt Weiner always says but he is wrong. It's not easy to change, ask anyone who has ever tried to lose weight or to learn a new language or to learn how to play a musical instrument if you don't believe me. I mean, you've sat in a room when some talented person sat down at a piano and began to play and sing and wanted to be them right? No one has to explain this.
We see Don struggle but we are always on his side just like anyone over six years of age is always on the coyote's side against the road runner even though the coyote always loses. If you ever meet an adult who sympathizes with the road runner you can be sure you are talking to a narcissist. Don's failures don't prove necessarily anything about his character (although they sometimes do), they prove how hard his task is. He can always keep trying. (And there is Matt Weiner's problem: This series started well but how is he going to end it? Most shows stop when they are canceled or the contract runs out but this show calls for a artistically and morally satisfactory resolution and there is a limit to how many times you can simply have the screen fade to black.)
Everyone can understand Don Draper. He was handed an identity he didn't want and he set about creating a new one. He didn't pick any identity at random, he picked from a certain era. Of course it was his era ... except it wasn't because he doesn't exist. Matt Weiner picked the era and it isn't his.
And there it starts to get really difficult. Because you see, we know what happened in the early 1960s. "Those people were racist and sexist jerks and they have to be because that justifies our sense of moral superiority!" And race is the most important issue of all because, well, it has to be to justify our sense of superiority. And then it all starts going in circles from there. Hey, let's get that imaginary narcissistic jerk who reads Ask Men back in the room because he keep saying the sorts of things we want him to.
A while ago in the comments, Gaius put me onto a fascinating site called The Last Psychiatrist. It strikes me as a little like this site but only with even less restraint. He cuts loose and says stuff that you might think but would think better than to actually say. And he has devoted two long, rambling posts to trashing Don Draper.
That's odd—meaning unusual—because most people who think so little of something wouldn't bother arguing the point. They'd consider it beneath their dignity to waste all that time on a mere fictional character that only a small segment of the population watches. The longer someone spends trying to diminish something, the more they succeed in making it appear significant.
Anyway, he has come up with the second-best argument against Don Draper and I think that is worth some comment. Now he would insist that he has made a case against wanting to be like Don Draper but that is redundant. Draper is a hero and the whole (only) point of a hero is to inspire emulation.
But first let me answer the obvious question: If his is the second best case, where is the first?
Well, let me tell you about an argument I had with an English professor back in university. We were reading Lucky Jim and I was defending an unsympathetic character from that novel named Margaret Poole. After class the professor approached me and said, "How can you like her, she is a psychotic, neurasthenic b____?" And I said, "Yes she is but she is because Kingsley Amis made her that way and I think he was cheating."
And there is the problem, the best case against Don Draper is the one made by the show itself. No one expected Don Draper to be so admired by young men and no one expected that young women would all have to go change their pants after watching the show. The show intends to be a dissection of the character from the very start.
Anyway, the show was meant to reinforce conventional wisdom about an era and, much to everyone's surprise, people reacted in ways they weren't supposed to. You can see this in season one when they realize that Roger Sterling is more important to the show than they intended. The role was slowly expanded to reflect what viewers wanted to see. (We have seen this phenomena before: no one expected the Fonz or Alex P. Keaton to be so loved either.)
But lovable rogues are one thing and people taking a pre-liberal era man as a role model is another. (That's lousy history—if any era was liberal it was the 1950s—but it is the sort of lousy history the kids have been taught at university.) And The Last Psychiatrist is only one of many to rush to the rescue. And in so doing, he completely misses the ambiguity of the character. It's an ambiguity he has no trouble seeing in other characters:
I know what happened in the 1960s, I don't know what happened to Peggy. Tell me that. Season 1 Peggy was exploited and exploiting, I couldn't tell if I wanted to strangle her or Campbell and so I was hooked-- what kind of a woman is this? According to Season 4, she's a budding superhero. Are you telling me they had superheros in the 1960s?Does he really know what happened in the 1960s? Probably not but he is right about Peggy's ambiguity. Why can't he cut Don Draper the same slack? Why does Draper have to be the irredeemable narcissist? Because he has to, that's why!
Okay but what is there to admire in Don?
Well, here I think The Last Psychiatrist blunders into the truth.
Don Draper is a narcissist. That's not an assessment, it's the premise of the show. The definition of a narcissist is one who creates an identity and prizes it above all other things, every moment of existence is spent perpetuating that identity, trying to get everyone to believe it. That's Don Draper.Well, that's not unique. Take the loaded word "narcissist" out of the equation and that is everyone. Everyone creates an identity and then tries to become it. What makes the narcissist special is not that they value that identity very highly, it's that they reduce everyone else to a supporting role for that identity. But does Don Draper do that? Because if he doesn't the Last Psychiatrist's argument crumbles.
No Don Draper doesn't and that is obvious right from the beginning when we see him in the bar. Don knows very well what it is like to be small and insignificant and he keeps connecting with other characters who feel small and invisible. There is genuine sympathy for other human beings here and narcissists don't do that.
Don is an admirable character because he is a role not a person. Like a figure in a religious icon, he is largely an apathetic representation. He isn't a blank slate but he is a role and roles are open to interpretation. The real problem for the sort of person who calls themselves a liberal today is that he is a role that we aren't supposed to admire. It's a real problem that he might be open to interpretation: there is only one interpretation damnit so shut up.
How does TLP get around this? He introduces a straight man who is satisfyingly one-dimensional and will perfectly support the part TLP wants to play (far be it from me to point out that this is actually rather, ah, narcissistic). But he has to do some mind reading to do that. His starting point is the Ask Men poll that concluded that Don Draper was the most admired man in America.
(Okay, brief detour here, it's not just who Ask Men's readers picked, it's who they didn't pick. The poll was a couple of years ago and they didn't pick Obama. Get it? All you have to do to be a narcissist these days is not behave the way other people want you to.)
Anyway, if you read the two pieces that TLP has written with that in mind, you'll notice that his argument relies very heavily on the straight man who keeps saying all the right kinds of stupid things. His imaginary interlocutor is a narcissist because TLP made him that way.
Here is the cool thing about Don Draper: people can change. I know, that is the opposite of what Matt Weiner always says but he is wrong. It's not easy to change, ask anyone who has ever tried to lose weight or to learn a new language or to learn how to play a musical instrument if you don't believe me. I mean, you've sat in a room when some talented person sat down at a piano and began to play and sing and wanted to be them right? No one has to explain this.
We see Don struggle but we are always on his side just like anyone over six years of age is always on the coyote's side against the road runner even though the coyote always loses. If you ever meet an adult who sympathizes with the road runner you can be sure you are talking to a narcissist. Don's failures don't prove necessarily anything about his character (although they sometimes do), they prove how hard his task is. He can always keep trying. (And there is Matt Weiner's problem: This series started well but how is he going to end it? Most shows stop when they are canceled or the contract runs out but this show calls for a artistically and morally satisfactory resolution and there is a limit to how many times you can simply have the screen fade to black.)
Everyone can understand Don Draper. He was handed an identity he didn't want and he set about creating a new one. He didn't pick any identity at random, he picked from a certain era. Of course it was his era ... except it wasn't because he doesn't exist. Matt Weiner picked the era and it isn't his.
And there it starts to get really difficult. Because you see, we know what happened in the early 1960s. "Those people were racist and sexist jerks and they have to be because that justifies our sense of moral superiority!" And race is the most important issue of all because, well, it has to be to justify our sense of superiority. And then it all starts going in circles from there. Hey, let's get that imaginary narcissistic jerk who reads Ask Men back in the room because he keep saying the sorts of things we want him to.
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