Article: ‘Why I'm Quitting Tobacco’: Lucky Strike, having your cake and eating it in AMC's Mad Men Author[s]: Roberta Klimt Source: MoveableType, Vol. 7, ‘Intersections’ (2014) DOI: 10.14324/111.1755-4527.060 MoveableType is a Graduate, Peer-Reviewed Journal based in the Department of English at UCL. © 2014 Roberta Klimt. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ‘Why I’m Quitting Tobacco’: Lucky Strike, having your cake and eating it in AMC’ Mad Men! The la t e#isode o$ Mad Men to date, ‘In Care O$’, ends with Don Dra#er and his three children staring u# at his childhood home, a dila#idated sometime brothe"!( The Dra#er are played out by Judy Collin ’ ver ion o$ ‘Both Sides, No&’, written but at that time ,(-./0 unrelea ed by Joni Mitche""! ‘Both Sides, No&’ wa in #ired by a pa age in Sau" Bello&’ 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King, in which Hender on, feeing his unha##y life for a solo trip to ‘darkest A$rica’, looks out o$ his aero#lane windo&! A he te"" it: I dreamed do&n at the c"ouds, and thought that when I wa a kid I had dreamed u# at them, and having dreamed at the c"ouds from both side a no other generation o$ men ha done, one shou"d be ab"e to acce#t hi death very ea i"y!4 Hender on is a man not unlike Don Dra#er (e5ce#t that Don is a very nervou fier0! Bello&’ protagonist is driven by a ‘cea eles voice in my heart that said, I want, I want, I want, oh I want’67 and having run out o$ obviou ways to fulfl that want – alcohol, se5, violent rages, t&o marriages – he trave" to ‘darkest A$rica’ to see if he can fnd the an &er there! Mean&hile Don’ list o$ resolution , when he writes a diary in sea on 4 o$ Mad Men, run : ‘%ne: climb Mount Kilimanjaro! Go anywhere in A$rica, actually! T&o: gain a modicum o$ control over the way I fee"!’: Don ha a voice in his heart saying ‘I want,’ too! Dis atis$action, an5iety, pro$ound estrangement from one’ o&n desires and ho& 1 Matthew Weiner and Carly Wray, ‘In Care Of’ (dir. Matthew Weiner). 2 Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 43. All further references will be to this edition. 3 Henderson the Rain King, p. 15. 4 Matthew Weiner, Janet Leahy, Lisa Albert, ‘The Summer Man’ (dir. Phil Abraham). 75 they might be satisfed, is a con istent motif in Mad Men! Don is the mo t con #icuou but not the only suferer: the women in his life are noticeably dis atisfed too6 so are colleagues like Roger Sterling, Joan Hollo&ay, Peggy O" on, Peter Cam#bell, and (before he run of to join the Hare Krishna 0 Paul Kin ey! Further, these character ’ pro$es ional life revolves around the identifcation o$ desires and dis atis$action on the part o$ client and con umer , which they seek to an &er one way and another! The major division at Mad Men’ ad agency, Sterling Coo#er, is bet&een Creative and Account ! Creative have the idea , come u# with the art&ork and co#y for advertisement 6 Account drum u# ne& bu ines , liaise with current client , kee# them ha##y and entertain them when they visit +e& York. Creative and Account do not a"&ays recognize each other’ skills, nor the fact that des#ite their mutual ba is, their work mu t remain distinct for the sake o$ the com#any! @eter Cam#bell yearn to be in Creative, even pitching the odd idea to client with some ucces , while Don attem#t to get HeinC to em#loy him on their Baked Bean account – only to be told, ‘Bou’re a hell o$ an idea man, but let the Account boys do this part!’1 'es#ite their diferences, Creative and Account are really selling the same thing: rea urance! This article will con ider in that light Mad Men’ relation hip with a #articular product, Lucky Strike tobacco! The fr t shot o$ Don in ‘Smoke Get in Your Dyes’, Mad Men’ pilot e#isode, sees him jotting do&n idea in a midto&n bar where everybody, but everybody, is smoking. He is un ure ho& to proceed no& that medica" research ha confrmed that Luckies, along with all other cigarettes, are so carcinogenic that 5 Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton, ‘Blowing Smoke’ (dir. John Slattery). 76 marketing them a ‘ a$e’ is no longer permis ible! Having failed to come u# with any idea before the meeting, Don, im#rovising, a ks the client ho& their product is made! Lee =arner Sr, the com#any o&ner, launches into a detailed description o$ the tobacco gro&ing, harvesting, and toa ting proces ! Don sto# him at ‘toa ting’, recognizing that even though all cigarette tobacco is toa ted, the average smoker won’t kno& it! He suggest that $oregrounding this element, with the slogan ‘It’ Toa ted’, will make Lucky Strike a##ealingly unique to the con umer! The bo ’ son, Lee Garner Jr, is unconvinced, so Don pitches him what is es entially an advertisement for advertising it e"$! He says: Adverti ing i ba ed on one thing! Ha##ine ! And you kno& what ha##ine i F Ha##ine i the sme"" o$ a ne& car! It’s freedom from fear! It’s a bi""board on the side o$ the road that scream with rea urance that whatever you’re doing, it’s ok! You are ok!. This is a strange moment, in which Don tem#orarily elides the distinction bet&een Creative and Account by telling Sterling Coo#er’ client the theory behind his idea ! The content o$ the s#eech refect Don’ practice a an ad man, by ju5ta#o ing a particular con umer e5#erience – ‘the smell o$ a ne& car’ – with an ab tracted, more po&er$ul desire, $or ‘$reedom from fear’! Earlier in the e#isode Don ha jettisoned a piece o$ research by an Au trian lady p ychiatrist which suggested that peo#le smoke becau e o$ the death-drive: he kno& that suicide, packaged a such, will not rea ure anyone o$ anything. The only o#tion is to ignore the risk, gesturing a ide to an aesthetic feature o$ the smoking e5#erience, making cigarettes’ harm$ulnes moot! This is a pro$es ional trium#h for Don, yet, a Mark 6 Matthew Weiner, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ (dir. Alan Taylor). 77 =reif point out, watching this e#isode we do not kno& ‘&hether!!! to be im#res ed or to $eel that the whole advertising indu try is uncon cionable and stu#id.’H The an &er, I &ould say, is both! Mad Men ha been accu ed o$ com#lacency and hypocrisy in it rendering o$ the #a t, it re#resentation o$ smoking, daytime drinking, ca ual se5ism and racism coming under fre for con tituting, a Greif ca"" it, ‘an un#lea ant little entry in the genre o$ No& We Kno& Better!’/ Even Clive James, who enjoys the programme des#ite noticing it moothing-a&ay o$ some o$ the com#le5ities o$ the real 1960s, writes that ‘Mad Men is a marketing cam#aign: what it se"" is a sen e o$ su#eriority!’- There probably is an element o$ this in the pilot e#isode, in which a grou# o$ tobacco e5ecutives sit around a con$erence table, smoking and coughing their way through a discu ion o$ ho& to sell more cigarettes! +aturally this strikes u a ironic, but it is not a purely plea urable sen ation6 since what this plotline let u witnes , from our 21 t-century vantage, is the moment ffty year ago &hen the kno&ledge o$ ho& dangerou cigarettes were fr t began to murder slee# for moker ! If we are ‘ u#erior’ no&, and it’ a big if, that su#eriority wa hard-won! What is certainly the ca e is that Mad Men ha induced in it fan , among other res#on es, a strong no talgic desire to partake o$ the smoky, liquorou atmo #here it ofer 7 Mark Greif, ‘You’ll Love the Way it Makes You Feel,’ London Review of Books, vol. 30 no. 20 (20 October 2008), pp. 15-16. 8 ‘You’ll Love the Way it Makes You Feel’, p. 15. 9 Clive James, 'Mad about “Mad Men”', Australian Weekend Review (20 April 2009): http://www.clivejames.com/mad-aboutmadmen 78 u#! According to Daniel Mende" ohn, this is even wor e: The creator o$ thi sho& are indu"ging in a kind o$ dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even a it invite u to be shocked by what it’s sho&ing u .!! it kee# eroticiCing what it’s sho&ing u , too! For a drama (or book, or whatever0 to invite an audience to fee" su#erior to a le en"ightened era even a it tea e the regre ive urge behind the behavior a ociated with that era strike me a the wor t po ib"e o>en e that can be committed in a creative work set in the pa t: it’s simu"taneou "y contem#tuou and pandering! Here, it cri##"e the sho&’s abi"ity to te"" u anything o$ rea" sub tance about the wor"d it de#ict !(I There may be some truth in Mende" ohn’ remarks about Mad Men tea ing our regres ive urges, or Jenny Diski’ ob ervation that the sho& #eddles a ‘$a" e no talgia’!(( But regres ive urges and fa" e no talgia are part o$ what Mad Men is about, it ‘real sub tance’, in fact6 in no way limited by it 1960s setting.