Favorite Men and Women: Day 1- Don Draper and CJ Cregg- Believe it Or Not- but They CAN Be Compared
On finishing the December Talking Meme, I considered doing the 30 Days of Awesome Ladies meme but then I thought, damnit, I like a lot of male characters too! But then, I scolded myself, "Yeah, but the meme isn't about what characters you like. It's about *feminism*!". But then I said, "Self! Just because a meme has a feminist message doesn't mean that it advances feminism to just talk about women in a vacuum and pretend that male characters with male parts don't exist! Can I even have a conversation about feminism while pretending that men don't exist. What's the point? And you know, I'm recognizing women. I'm doing the meme's job. I'd also like to recognize men too!"
Hence, this new meme was born. I'm calling it "Favorite Men and Women" because a lot of my favorite characters are hella flawed. In this altered meme, I will cover male and female character for each day of the meme. If the characters intersect interestingly, I'll compare and contrast in one essay. If they don't, I'll just cover the characters separately. I probably won't have the time to write every day- but I do aim to complete the meme!
For the first entry, "Favorite Lead Woman/Favorite Lead Man", I found that my choices in CJ Cregg and Don Draper are LIKE SISTERS WITH REALLY DIFFERENT HAIR. Well, not quite but there's a lot to be compared and contrasted.
Don Draper and CJ Cregg are the anti-hero and heroine versions of each other in many ways. Both are spinmeisters, charged with selling the hell out of their product with wit, creativity and yes, dishonesty and manipulation.
Both originated from kind of down-home roots- CJ in Ohio, Don Draper in rural New York. In their adult lives, the capital Eastern cities of D.C. and New York serve a similar function compared to their other nesting place of California. The Eastern city is where most of the show is located- the place of business that makes and breaks them. California is both the illylic place of the future. CJ ends up in California. Don wanted to head to California to escape SC. However, California/LA is also the Lala land where they dangerously escape themselves. CJ frittered her time in an empty, albeit lucrative PR job. Don goes on benders to California where he forgets himself and ended up in the DOOMED marriage with Megan. CJ and Don's facility with moving around the country and developing different personas for each locale aids their manipulative abilities.
CJ and Don are tricksters. They show their dominance in business by teasing or even attacking the very constituencies that a "weaker person" would suck up to- clients or reporters. They find themselves in unenviable positions of cruelly and disloyally jettisoning former allies (Corey Sikes, Mohawk Airlines) because their team just assumes that they can do the dirty work gracefully because they're such accomplished Tricksters. In turn, they harbor similar resentments and grudges against the account men or senior staffers who aren't charged with being the "face" of their administration or company and can just willy nilly make behind the scenes decisions without considering what it takes to *sell it*. It creates a self-centeredness in both of them can be both righteous and annoying at the same time. Exhibit A: CJ's whole "What is my life?" existential crisis at learning that Jed Bartlet had MS. Even though to quote Jed Bartlet with the full power of Martin Sheen's sarcasm, "I feeling fine, by the way! Thanks for asking!"
However, as bosses, CJ and Don rigorously demand the loyalty of their team even they know they work at the least loyal professions out there- advertising and politics. Their romantic relationships- most notably with Danny Concanno and Faye Miller- feature Don and CJ manipulating their lover into tearing down the Chinese Wall that is supposed to maintain integrity to get favors. Don does it overtly. CJ merely intentionally benefits from Danny's feelings for her.
However, why is CJ the protagonist and Don the anti-hero? Why does Don's career of spin and manipulation of public perception both hollow out Don and show exactly how hollow he is while CJ's career of spin and manipulation empowers her and enables her to do good things? Some of it because CJ can do her manipulative battle like a nice person and Don doesn't. However, I want to move aside from the "crappy childhood"/inherent flaws rationales (which are good but I kind of already covered in my Don/Betty post) and speak to their direct points of comparison- their jobs.
World-building wise, CJ can manipulate and lie with integrity because CJ believes in her product. CJ's goal is to use her power as an adviser behind the scenes to make the administration good enough so that CJ has to lie as seldom as possible when she gets up at the podium. Don can't lie with the same sense of integrity because he's a whore for whatever product even if he doesn't believe in it. Some of those different attitudes are based in truth; some in self-deception. CJ can believe in her "product" because that product is *Jed Bartlet* who she signed onto because Toby said Jed was a good man and CJ got to learn that for herself. CJ, like most of the Bartleteers, will cross lines because she believes in *Jed*. What's more, because CJ believes in doing good through Jed Bartlet, CJ balks at too much line-crossing because it betrays her ideals and the whole reasons that she's on this damn Love Boat.
Meanwhile, Don resigned himself into believing that he's a whore for whatever company pays for his ad-man expertise. He knows that all he's doing is lying. There's no grander cause for Don. In this sense, Don is different from Peggy Olson. When Peggy's priest asked for advice on advertising, Peggy said with total sincerity that you need to believe in what's you're selling. Indeed, the show frequently shows Peggy trying out the products that she's selling and determinedly trying to find something that she loves about them. However, this ought to have a dark side- Ted Chaugh tossed Peggy a pack of cigarettes to start smoking regularly to learn how to sell ciggies at the end of S5. However, not to sound too much like a Malcolm Gladwellesque "I TOTALLY CALLED THE AGATHA CHRISTIE TWIST THAT THE UNDERDOG WOULD WIN BECAUSE IT'S AN UNDERDOG", these seasons indicate that Peggy believes in her ascension as a woman in business as a social triumph. THAT'S Peggy's cause to keep going and lying for companies while still viewing herself as the part of the cutting-edge good people of the 1960s. However, it's possible (and I hope) that Abe's break-up indicates that self-centeredness/ambition doesn't equal a noble calling in and of itself.
What's more, without a cause, Don doesn't see the point in holding back from crossing ethical lines. Don sometimes feels unsavory by ditching Mohawk for a wink from American or going after Heinz ketchup after the Heinz beans exec asked him not to when he helped rescue a flailing SCDP with his account. However, Don can pretty much be counted on to do the wrong thing despite his occasional flails of conscience because Don feels deep in his pit that there's no room for having a conscience in his business. And Don doesn't want to make room for his conscience in his day to day life because it gets in the way of Don's insatiable wants.
Of course, CJ and Don didn't just have the fortune and misfortune to just land in two different positions that required different grades of mistruth. Don lied every step of the way from Korea on to get his Sterling Cooper job, up to and including getting Roger liquored up in forgetting whether Roger hired him. And it's because Don is perfectly willing to lie and cheat for money and respect. CJ actually tried a Don Draper-type job as a overpaid Hollywood publicist and SHE WAS TERRIBLE AT IT because it's just not part of CJ's DNA to lie about whether a movie is good or bad to make money. Of course, CJ isn't that much of a saint. CJ lied to her employer that she took a job as a Hollywood publicist seriously to make the $550,000 a year paycheck while CJ acted like it was big joke. (Seriously, CJ didn't know that the Golden Globe noms came out. Granted, I'm an obsessive fan who may not be a model for how seriously to pay attention to popular culture. Exhibit A: The length of this post with 29 more days to go. BUT REALLY???!!!? That's just unprofessional for gansa macha publicist.) However, there's enough of a perverse Robin Hood in CJ that prevents her from lying to the public unless it's ultimately in the public's best interest.
Where to take this meandering essay? I surprise myself that cynical, contrarian me totally believes in CJ as a heroine and Don as an anti-hero despite their umpteen similarities. Despite the fact that I hate lies from Washington D.C. even more than lies from Madison Avenue. Part of me does seek to tear CJ down from her pedestal and cozy up to Don both to be contrarian and to be fairer than fandom (wow, HARD TASK). And the way that CJ so embodies the role as a positive protagonist and Don so embodies in the role as a leading antagonist are a huge part of why I'm listing as "favorite leading man/woman". Some of why I may tear CJ down a little more is because I love her and want her to get the intrigue of a more complicated personality. Some of why I may cozy up to Don a little more is because I love him and it offends me that some fans choose to ignore Mad Men as a rich psychological drama where Don is a the center and instead just spout boring homilies of mansplaining, male privilege, slutshaming and every term that allows a shallow fan with a computer feel like a feminist trailblazer by expressing simplistic "I like dat/I don't like dat" "feels."
The strength comes from how both TWW and Mad Men challenges the audience to look at the characters apart from the cliches of their workplace and time-period and instead focus on the individual journey of the people in question. CJ/Allison Janney completely convinces me that she lies for the greater good and tries to limit her lies at that....and it makes her sometimes with the thrill of doing battle with the press corps for her President and it breaks sometimes with the corruption of cheating her mission. Don/Jon Hamm completely convinces me that he lies to enrich himself and escape himself with as many earthly pleasures as possible and in the long run...it makes him completely miserable. And you need to watch their stories to get that.
Hence, this new meme was born. I'm calling it "Favorite Men and Women" because a lot of my favorite characters are hella flawed. In this altered meme, I will cover male and female character for each day of the meme. If the characters intersect interestingly, I'll compare and contrast in one essay. If they don't, I'll just cover the characters separately. I probably won't have the time to write every day- but I do aim to complete the meme!
For the first entry, "Favorite Lead Woman/Favorite Lead Man", I found that my choices in CJ Cregg and Don Draper are LIKE SISTERS WITH REALLY DIFFERENT HAIR. Well, not quite but there's a lot to be compared and contrasted.
Don Draper and CJ Cregg are the anti-hero and heroine versions of each other in many ways. Both are spinmeisters, charged with selling the hell out of their product with wit, creativity and yes, dishonesty and manipulation.
Both originated from kind of down-home roots- CJ in Ohio, Don Draper in rural New York. In their adult lives, the capital Eastern cities of D.C. and New York serve a similar function compared to their other nesting place of California. The Eastern city is where most of the show is located- the place of business that makes and breaks them. California is both the illylic place of the future. CJ ends up in California. Don wanted to head to California to escape SC. However, California/LA is also the Lala land where they dangerously escape themselves. CJ frittered her time in an empty, albeit lucrative PR job. Don goes on benders to California where he forgets himself and ended up in the DOOMED marriage with Megan. CJ and Don's facility with moving around the country and developing different personas for each locale aids their manipulative abilities.
CJ and Don are tricksters. They show their dominance in business by teasing or even attacking the very constituencies that a "weaker person" would suck up to- clients or reporters. They find themselves in unenviable positions of cruelly and disloyally jettisoning former allies (Corey Sikes, Mohawk Airlines) because their team just assumes that they can do the dirty work gracefully because they're such accomplished Tricksters. In turn, they harbor similar resentments and grudges against the account men or senior staffers who aren't charged with being the "face" of their administration or company and can just willy nilly make behind the scenes decisions without considering what it takes to *sell it*. It creates a self-centeredness in both of them can be both righteous and annoying at the same time. Exhibit A: CJ's whole "What is my life?" existential crisis at learning that Jed Bartlet had MS. Even though to quote Jed Bartlet with the full power of Martin Sheen's sarcasm, "I feeling fine, by the way! Thanks for asking!"
However, as bosses, CJ and Don rigorously demand the loyalty of their team even they know they work at the least loyal professions out there- advertising and politics. Their romantic relationships- most notably with Danny Concanno and Faye Miller- feature Don and CJ manipulating their lover into tearing down the Chinese Wall that is supposed to maintain integrity to get favors. Don does it overtly. CJ merely intentionally benefits from Danny's feelings for her.
However, why is CJ the protagonist and Don the anti-hero? Why does Don's career of spin and manipulation of public perception both hollow out Don and show exactly how hollow he is while CJ's career of spin and manipulation empowers her and enables her to do good things? Some of it because CJ can do her manipulative battle like a nice person and Don doesn't. However, I want to move aside from the "crappy childhood"/inherent flaws rationales (which are good but I kind of already covered in my Don/Betty post) and speak to their direct points of comparison- their jobs.
World-building wise, CJ can manipulate and lie with integrity because CJ believes in her product. CJ's goal is to use her power as an adviser behind the scenes to make the administration good enough so that CJ has to lie as seldom as possible when she gets up at the podium. Don can't lie with the same sense of integrity because he's a whore for whatever product even if he doesn't believe in it. Some of those different attitudes are based in truth; some in self-deception. CJ can believe in her "product" because that product is *Jed Bartlet* who she signed onto because Toby said Jed was a good man and CJ got to learn that for herself. CJ, like most of the Bartleteers, will cross lines because she believes in *Jed*. What's more, because CJ believes in doing good through Jed Bartlet, CJ balks at too much line-crossing because it betrays her ideals and the whole reasons that she's on this damn Love Boat.
Meanwhile, Don resigned himself into believing that he's a whore for whatever company pays for his ad-man expertise. He knows that all he's doing is lying. There's no grander cause for Don. In this sense, Don is different from Peggy Olson. When Peggy's priest asked for advice on advertising, Peggy said with total sincerity that you need to believe in what's you're selling. Indeed, the show frequently shows Peggy trying out the products that she's selling and determinedly trying to find something that she loves about them. However, this ought to have a dark side- Ted Chaugh tossed Peggy a pack of cigarettes to start smoking regularly to learn how to sell ciggies at the end of S5. However, not to sound too much like a Malcolm Gladwellesque "I TOTALLY CALLED THE AGATHA CHRISTIE TWIST THAT THE UNDERDOG WOULD WIN BECAUSE IT'S AN UNDERDOG", these seasons indicate that Peggy believes in her ascension as a woman in business as a social triumph. THAT'S Peggy's cause to keep going and lying for companies while still viewing herself as the part of the cutting-edge good people of the 1960s. However, it's possible (and I hope) that Abe's break-up indicates that self-centeredness/ambition doesn't equal a noble calling in and of itself.
What's more, without a cause, Don doesn't see the point in holding back from crossing ethical lines. Don sometimes feels unsavory by ditching Mohawk for a wink from American or going after Heinz ketchup after the Heinz beans exec asked him not to when he helped rescue a flailing SCDP with his account. However, Don can pretty much be counted on to do the wrong thing despite his occasional flails of conscience because Don feels deep in his pit that there's no room for having a conscience in his business. And Don doesn't want to make room for his conscience in his day to day life because it gets in the way of Don's insatiable wants.
Of course, CJ and Don didn't just have the fortune and misfortune to just land in two different positions that required different grades of mistruth. Don lied every step of the way from Korea on to get his Sterling Cooper job, up to and including getting Roger liquored up in forgetting whether Roger hired him. And it's because Don is perfectly willing to lie and cheat for money and respect. CJ actually tried a Don Draper-type job as a overpaid Hollywood publicist and SHE WAS TERRIBLE AT IT because it's just not part of CJ's DNA to lie about whether a movie is good or bad to make money. Of course, CJ isn't that much of a saint. CJ lied to her employer that she took a job as a Hollywood publicist seriously to make the $550,000 a year paycheck while CJ acted like it was big joke. (Seriously, CJ didn't know that the Golden Globe noms came out. Granted, I'm an obsessive fan who may not be a model for how seriously to pay attention to popular culture. Exhibit A: The length of this post with 29 more days to go. BUT REALLY???!!!? That's just unprofessional for gansa macha publicist.) However, there's enough of a perverse Robin Hood in CJ that prevents her from lying to the public unless it's ultimately in the public's best interest.
Where to take this meandering essay? I surprise myself that cynical, contrarian me totally believes in CJ as a heroine and Don as an anti-hero despite their umpteen similarities. Despite the fact that I hate lies from Washington D.C. even more than lies from Madison Avenue. Part of me does seek to tear CJ down from her pedestal and cozy up to Don both to be contrarian and to be fairer than fandom (wow, HARD TASK). And the way that CJ so embodies the role as a positive protagonist and Don so embodies in the role as a leading antagonist are a huge part of why I'm listing as "favorite leading man/woman". Some of why I may tear CJ down a little more is because I love her and want her to get the intrigue of a more complicated personality. Some of why I may cozy up to Don a little more is because I love him and it offends me that some fans choose to ignore Mad Men as a rich psychological drama where Don is a the center and instead just spout boring homilies of mansplaining, male privilege, slutshaming and every term that allows a shallow fan with a computer feel like a feminist trailblazer by expressing simplistic "I like dat/I don't like dat" "feels."
The strength comes from how both TWW and Mad Men challenges the audience to look at the characters apart from the cliches of their workplace and time-period and instead focus on the individual journey of the people in question. CJ/Allison Janney completely convinces me that she lies for the greater good and tries to limit her lies at that....and it makes her sometimes with the thrill of doing battle with the press corps for her President and it breaks sometimes with the corruption of cheating her mission. Don/Jon Hamm completely convinces me that he lies to enrich himself and escape himself with as many earthly pleasures as possible and in the long run...it makes him completely miserable. And you need to watch their stories to get that.