The fall TV schedules are rolling out, and it appears that Mad Men has inspired a handful of new shows that seek to capitalize on a similar blend of nostalgia and historical snarkiness. Mad Men, set in the 1960s, has brilliantly and comically played up some cultural shifts in the workplace and the home over the last 50 years. In an early episode, Sally Draper (the lead character’s young daughter) is seen running through the house with a plastic bag over her head. Her mother sits smoking cigarettes with her pregnant friend, pausing only to yell at Sally that the dry cleaning (which had been in the bag) had better not be lying on the floor. The smoking . . . the suffocation danger . . . ah, what we’ve learned.
Sexual tensions run deep in Mad Men, particularly in the workplace, where women are clearly expected to be sexualized and second-class. Mad Men manages to use this tension both for comedic and dramatic purposes, revealing deep discontent in female characters whose talents and skills are often underutilized and unappreciated. It serves as an interesting reminder about how far our culture has come in discouraging such objectification. There’s no doubt that similar behaviors remain today, but they’re not smiled upon broadly, and in most (but not all cases) there is recourse for sexual harassment.
It appears that the followers of Mad Men will be making their premiers this fall. Pan Am, a show about airline stewardesses in the 1960s, and The Playboy Club, set in Chicago, both hearken to the same era but appear to be taking a more raw, sexualized track. Where Joan Harris, the red-headed bombshell from Mad Men, suffers these attitudes, the show exposes them as abuses and shows us their consequences. Based on early reviews, it seems that these new shows are seeking to revel in them, bragging of a return to days when corsets where the norm, where weight requirements and exposed cleavage were part of the job description.
Maureen Dowd has an interesting piece in The New York Times about these shows.
The networks have picked up an extraordinary number of shows by and about strong, modern women. . . . In addition, ABC ordered a new Tim Allen sit-com, “Last Man Standing,” about a man who feels threatened in a world ruled by women, and a show called “Work It” about two men who have to dress in drag to get jobs as pharmaceutical reps.
But Hollywood is a world ruled by men, and this season, amid economic anxieties, those men want to indulge in some retro fantasies about hot, subservient babes.
As a pastor, a husband, and a father of two daughters, there’s nothing about this trend that seems like a good thing. While radical feminism has certainly wrought damage to souls across the culture, the correct response is not a return to the good ol’ days of subservience and sexualization.
At one level, these emerging shows seem only to take advantage of the Mad Men fad to do what television and entertainment at their worst have never ceased doing to women. Objectification runs absolutely rampant. It’s not enough for Kate Beckett (from Castle) to be a strong, smart detective; it’s necessary every so often to show her in her underwear or emerging from a swimming pool in a bikini. Grey’s Anatomy features strong, smart women as well, but clothes fly off on that show as often as commercial breaks. (To be fair, they’re equal-opportunity exploiters of both men and women.) Even Bones, a show loosely based on the work of brilliant forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, manages to find opportunities to get their scientists naked.
Far worse is the world of so-called “reality” TV. Is anything more objectifying and exploitative than the likes of The Bachelor, The Real World, The Girls Next Door, Jersey Shore, and anything with any of the Kardashians?
What sets apart the objectification at work in Mad Men and these new series is an air of conservatism. They play on a broad sense of cultural emasculation, offering an escape fantasy into a world where men had more power.
It creates a subtle temptation for those who believe in a biblical complementarian understanding of gender. Our current sense of discontent can lead us to imagine that the past had it right. But while the sexual revolution and radical feminism have eroded much from the home and the family, the cure is not to applaud a return to the values of the 50s and 60s. We watch these shows, where power is centered around men and where women are eager to please, and we laugh along like we’re in on the joke. Such conservatism is no solution to the gender problems that plague us.
Instead, we must seek a return to genuinely biblical values of manhood and womanhood. Jesus and his followers radicalized gender in the early church, including women among Jesus’ inner circle and treating them with equal dignity. The Bible teaches us a differentiation in roles in both the church and the home, but it also calls us to a vision of manhood and womanhood marked by immense strength, respect, service, and love. The women of Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 are not marked by subservience, weakness, and objectivity. They’re pillars of strength and wisdom.
I’ve wondered what a show or a film would look like with such a woman as a central character, but I fear it’d be doomed from the start. Such a woman wouldn’t be seen in fishnets or corsets, and that doesn’t skew well with men 18-34.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
