Mad Men 3x03 Reaction

Lol at the pre-show conversation trying to guess why this episode was "banned". Sorry girls, you aren't going to predict this one. Lots to love in this episode: I'll shout out the incredible whiplash of Pete & Trudy dancing into Kinsey reciting Eliot. That's how you do it, folks. Some extra credit reading on the Kentucky Derby, minstrel shows, racism, and the song that lends this episode its name: "In South Africa they don’t sing songs about apartheid before a cricket game,” Bingham says. “In Germany they don’t sing songs about the Holocaust before a soccer match. How did it come to have this kind of weight in our sport and our state?” https://www.si.com/horse-racing/2022/05/06/once-again-churchill-downs-will-ignore-the-racist-ties-to-my-old-kentucky-home

Really does say something about us that we remove and decry an episode where a guy stupidly paints his face and sings a song...but it was fine that we watched a woman get raped by her fiance on the floor a few eps ago. Obv there's heavier weight and context to both but I'm just making the point...it's ridiculous smh. Great episode nonetheless.

Every vignette in this episode smacks you in the face with class; what is it, who has it and who doesn't. People hold their noses at Roger's behavior not so much because it's racist, but because it's déclassé.

In the US, this episode comes with a warning about a depiction of racism. These warnings are irritating and infantilizing. I'm a black man who spent much of summer 2020 in the streets of NYC in rage and grief, and I roll my eyes at stupid shit like this. This is *not* what we were demanding.

Hate it when my dads Roger and Don are fighting :(

It looks like Gene is having Sally read "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon, a late 18th century classic. Certainly a strange and difficult book to read for a nine (?) year old. (Makes me wonder: Has religion ever come up with Don or Betty?)

Great reaction, another great example of how dense these eps can be. Mad Men really knows how to use every second of a ~47 minute runtime. I like the context of the party and how 'everyone knows everyone', Roger knows this "henry francis", lots of important business people are there hence Don tells pete "dont hand out your card" cuz its cringe, you're supposed to organically meet people and form connections. The man at the bar tells Don: "It's different inside", which is something only outsiders like them would know. Privilege is not even realising how easy you have it being born 'inside', rather than being outside and having to fight, charm, earn or gamble your way in. By 1963, the popularity of blackface 'minstrel shows' had almost fully declined in the US and by the end of the decade (with the rise of civil rights etc) it will be effectively dead. So Roger doing this is already a sort of cringe racist throwback, in an alternate universe he's saying "everything is so woke these days, you can't even put on a bit of shoe polish and sing a song any more 😩". When you rewatch the scene you see that the only two people visibly uncomfortable are Don and Pete, which is interesting, though we don't know if Don is more disgusted by the blackface or Roger + Jane being "foolish" 💀 I replied elsewhere but the removal or editing of media featuring blackface was a response to the 2020 George Floyd protests, you can find that comment for more context. tldr I agree that pretending racism didn't happen within historical contexts is generally bad. Adding a disclaimer (which Netflix eventually did) is probably the right choice. I think people had a hard time discussing the show during S1 because we're poisoned by future knowledge, all the tiny details about character that we get over many seasons. Like as you say, your take on Paul Kinsey is now informed knowing he is a scholarship boy who abandoned his working class roots to sound educated, privileged, 'posh'. He lived in a cool converted apartment with the Black girlfriend, he smokes a pipe and imbibes rich cognac and quotes poetry etc. In S1 you said that Mad Men is about performance, and I think so far the show keeps proving that true. I also find disdain for scholarships so funny, to quote Roman Roy "Apparently we're meant to hate Peter because he was smart enough to get a scholarship, and bought his own furniture." rich people are a different species fr. Bonus thoughts: Maybe im cooked but Betty letting a stranger touch her pregnant belly felt more intimate to me than Don fingering Bobbie Barrett in the Lutece bathroom 😭 Olive is a great example of economic character development, you understand her completely within like 2 scenes. Picturing Pete and Trudy rehearsing the charlston routine always makes me laugh, though they probably just know it from growing up in rich white circles. Don vaulting the bar and rizzing up a stranger while mixing the worst neon cherry muddled mid-century old-fashioned ever is deeply enjoyable.

A little bit of background: they mentioned the New York governor Nelson Rockefeller marrying Happy for love. This was very shortly after both had gotten divorced and had been involved in an affair that was an open secret. Rockefeller was the presumptive front-runner for the Republicans in 1964, and the marriage was an act of hubris that ruined his chances for the nomination. Instead, it was the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater who rode a wave of grassroots insurgency against party elites to the nomination. However, events led to a landslide defeat in the general election, but this was later seen as a fundamental victory for the conservative movement.

An important bit about Pete and Trudy's dance routine is that it shows their privileged upbringing - the popular Charleston dance would be a mainstay at every country club frequented by only the elite. It was the top dance of their parents’ generation. They definitely took dance and etiquette classes that would prepare them for high society events, including debutante balls. In their positions it was expected you knew all ballroom dances and wouldn't embarrass yourself In this instance as well, you can see how carefree they are in the country club setting of this wedding whereas people such as Harry and his wife feel out of place because they did not have access to these establishments growing up. They are old money (quiet luxury as the kids say on TikTok lmao). Throughout the show we see how much more aware Pete is of these small subtleties of old money WASP East-Coast society. A nice little link to Paul's storyline this episode

And thus we get introduced to Bobby #2 (technically Bobby #3 because there was a different kid in the Carousel episode photos from the past). I like how the girls didn't even notice. This is Sally's world and we all live in it

On AMC, this ep is there, it just has a little placard talking about the racism before the show starts. It's important to remember this, in regards to removing the episode: no one asked them to. And their goal was not to be anti-racist, or to fix racism, or anything. It's a corporate decision based on the (inaccurate) idea that people will be mad at them for having the episode. And if people are mad, they'll make less money. That is literally the entire calculation, they couldn't care less about racism per se. Ironically, it ends up feeling pretty racist in itself, because it's a company essentially saying "you know that THOSE people get mad at EVERYTHING". I will say that, in America, blackface is a particularly inflammatory thing. Other countries might acknowledge it as racist, but it's not as much of a gut punch. I think that's why this one was singled out by the corporation, rather than all the OTHER racist and antisemitic comments in the show. Even, so, it's still absurd to pull the episode. It's not like the scene is saying "isn't this great?!" It's a bunch of rich racist assholes giggling like idiots at cringeworthy racism that was old fashioned even THEN. Plenty of other far more heinous scenes of racism are included just fine in other shows. It's not like Netflix pulled the Hateful Eight because there's a scene with the Klan.

If you go back and rewatch the blackface scene, Pete is frowning. It's pretty clear he doesn't like it. He only gives a weak smile when Trudy looks at him. Yay progressive Pete! Don didn't like it either but I think that had more to do with Roger just making a fool out of himself which irritated him.

This episode isn’t missing from UK Netflix at the very least, even though there is a disclaimer saying it has been removed. Netflix as a company are quite happy to cut funding/cancel shows that are made by POC/centered around POC experiences, but they will remove episodes of shows like this to show how much they really care about social issues. They are so disingenuous.