FIGURE 5.2. Mad Men’s detailed mise-en-scène just barely contains the emotional upheaval below the surface of midcentury American “normalcy.”
For the rest of the episode, televisions provide crucial narrative information and prompt characters to take, at times, extreme actions. Betty is particularly affected, with her confrontation of Don taking place beside a television tuned to funeral preparations (figure 5.2). Later, after seeing Lee Harvey Oswald killed on live television, she screams and exclaims, “What is going on?!” Motivated by the television violence she has witnessed and the collapse of her privileged world, she eventually leaves the house to meet Henry Francis, and he proposes to her. Thus, the television, an element of mise-en-scène, evolves in this episode from seemingly insignificant set dressing to major narrative catalyst, blending the personal crises of the characters with larger moments in American history.
The episode ends with one final comment on an object and its implicit reference to the assassination. After exiting the kitchen of his house in the scene discussed above, Don arrives at the empty and dark office, which is closed for a national day of mourning, and finds Peggy, who has come to escape her grieving roommate and relatives. The harsh, punishing florescent lights are off, and she is working by the natural light of a window, augmented by a desk lamp. Don examines the Aqua Net hairspray storyboards on her desk, one of which contains a high-angle view of four individuals in an open convertible (figure 5.3). Before he can offer an opinion, she anticipates his criticism: “It doesn’t shoot until after Thanksgiving. We’ll be okay.” But Don authoritatively dismisses this delusion by shaking his head. The scene is rather elliptical unless the viewer is able to place this storyboard image within the iconography of 1963 and recognize how much it resembles widely circulated high-angle photos of the presidential convertible limousine in which Kennedy was shot (figure 5.4). Since none of those photos is shown in the episode, only viewers who associate the storyboard imagery with the visual vocabulary of 1963 will understand Don and Peggy’s motivation for considering redoing the storyboard.
FIGURE 5.3. Don nixes the plan for a hairspray commercial after seeing a storyboard that evokes widely circulated photos of the convertible in which President Kennedy was shot.
This short scene also illuminates Mad Men’s central preoccupation. It is a program about consumer products and the imagery attached to them through advertising. Moreover, Mad Men is obsessed with objects and their representation, and—by extension—with humans and their representations. Just as Don, who was born Richard “Dick” Whitman, has styled himself as “Don Draper,” so has Don mastered the ability to style products in a way that satisfies his clients and increases their revenue. One could even say that Don is a designer of his own mise-en-scène (his clothing, hair style, walk, the spaces in which he chooses to live and work, and so on), but, of course, Weiner and his crew and cast have actually constructed the mise-en-scène for both Draper and Mad Men.
The way that Mad Men is filmed and cut is distinctive, but unlike the show’s mise-en-scène, its cinematography and editing do not mimic 1960s television. “The Grown-Ups” calls attention to this difference by giving glimpses of live, black-and-white television from 1963: Mad Men clearly does not look anything like As the World Turns. Rather, it uses a mode of production associated with contemporary high-budget, primetime dramas (e.g., Lost, The Sopranos, and the CSI programs) and with theatrical films. This single-camera mode of production allows for more precise visual control than is possible in the multiple-camera mode of production that was used by As the World Turns throughout its long run. That precision is evident in the final shot of “The Grown-Ups,” where cinematography is used both to build a mood and develop characterization. After saying goodnight to Peggy in the main Sterling Cooper office, Don enters his own private office and hangs up his hat while the camera shoots him through the doorway. The camera then arcs slightly to the left to reveal a liquor cabinet as Don walks into the room. Not bothering to remove his coat, Don reaches for a bottle and begins mixing a drink (figure 5.5). The scene then cuts to black and the end credits roll while Skeeter Davis is heard singing “The End of the World”: “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world ’cause you don’t love me anymore?”
FIGURE 5.4. Mad Men relies on the viewer’s associations with this photograph of the Kennedy motorcade.
Episode director Barbet Schroeder and episode director of photography Christopher Manley use framing and camera angle to signify Don’s isolation. Keeping the camera outside the room and surrounding Don with the frosted-window walls of the doorway frame have the effect of both emphasizing his remoteness and distancing us from him. As shown above in figures 5.1 and 5.2, Mad Men often shoots from a low camera angle that incorporates the ceiling in the frame. This shot is just below Don’s eye-level, looking slightly up at him, which brings the ceiling into the top of the frame, blocking it off. The low-key lighting of the office—an aspect of mise-en-scène—works with the framing to blend Don into the darkness. In many TV programs and films, low angles emphasize the size and bulk and even heroic nature of a person or object, but in Mad Men the low angles more often make the ceiling close in on the characters, accentuating the repressiveness of their work and home spaces. In short, this scene’s cinematography and mise-en-scène collaborate to generate an atmosphere of entrapment, despair, and alienation.
Mad Men’s implementation of the single-camera mode of production allows for editing patterns that would be difficult or impossible in the multiple-camera mode used by soap operas. A breakdown of the kitchen scene previously described in which Don and Betty exchange no words (posted on criticalcommons.org) illustrates this point, and illuminates the narrative significance of characters looking at other characters.
As edited by Tom Wilson, the scene begins in the hallway as Don comes downstairs and walks through the dining room to the kitchen door. There, he pauses, unseen by his family. We see a point-of-view shot, over his shoulder into the kitchen. The next shot is a reverse angle from inside the kitchen, but not from anyone’s point of view as he is still unobserved. We return to Don’s point-of-view shot as he enters the kitchen and announces his presence: “Good morning.” The children respond, but Betty pointedly does not. We cut to her point of view of Don even though she is looking down at the stove and not at him. The camera stays behind her, panning and tracking with Don as he crosses the room. During this short walk, he looks directly at her, but she does not return his gaze. The camera movement comes to a rest from nobody’s point of view, showing Betty, Don, and the kids; she looks straight ahead, and he and the children look at each other. The camera stays objective for four medium shots, with the fourth shot offering a subtle bit of camerawork. Bobby looks at Sally, and when she turns around to look at Betty, the camera pulls focus from him to her—a distance of just a few feet. In terms of narrative motivation and the emotional rhythm of the scene, Sally needs to be sharply in