Willy Loman's Sons

H ave you ever had one of those Eureka moments, when you suddenly understood something in a way you never did before? I’ll never forget when I finally “got” the play “Death of a Salesman,” years after I had studied it in high school. For some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that it was a critique of the American Dream. Willy Loman was the perfect representative Everyman to appear in the middle of the American Century, when the United States was flush with confidence and swagger after winning World War II. And he was a salesman.

It didn’t matter what he sold: he was selling happiness, domestic bliss, reaching for the golden ring on the carousel of life—and nabbing it. Think of all those smiling faces in magazine ads and TV sitcoms from the 1950s. Arthur Miller’s genius was to realize that America’s number one product was the idea of America itself—Happyland. If Walt Disney had thought of it, he would have included it alongside Frontierland and Tomorrowland, but then again, Disneyland itself was a perfect distillation of the idea.

But Happyland doesn’t exist, at least not this side of paradise. It’s a myth cooked up by slick ad men to sell whatever it is that they’re selling, whether it’s popcorn, iPods or politicians. The trouble with our constant exposure to this myth is that we begin to believe it, and this was Willy Loman’s undoing. When he could no longer deny that his “happy life” was a facade, he didn’t know what to do, how he could continue to live, and so he chose not to.

Miller’s cultural critique of America has undergone a brilliant updating in the television series “Mad Men,” which recently concluded its second season on the cable network AMC. Set in the early 1960s, the show follows the stylish comings and goings of a group of Madison Avenue ad men and the women they love—or use. Personified by the dapper Don Draper and his rakish boss, Roger Sterling, these men are early versions of the “Masters of the Universe,” whom Tom Wolfe so bitingly satirized in The Bonfire of the Vanities. They’re attractive, confident, and rich—much like America itself before JFK’s assassination. These men and their colleagues do whatever they want. They smoke, they swill gin, they take time off in the middle of the day to have sex with their secretaries or their mistresses (who often enough are their secretaries). They blithely lie about their infidelities to their wives. And they do all this while selling assorted versions of the American Dream—and trying to maintain the appearance of this Happyland fantasy at home.

As with Willy Loman, their lives are mirages built on sand (to borrow an image from Jesus). This is cleverly signaled in the opening title sequence that begins every episode. Done in an animation style reminiscent of Saul Bass (whose work was at its height during the same time period), it features a flat, black silhouette of a man whose high-rise office crumbles beneath his feet. As he tumbles to the ground, he falls past cascading ads for the good life, past gigantic smiling models, glasses of scotch and seductive legs in pantyhose. Just before he hits the ground, his black silhouette fills the screen, only to reveal that he’s magically back in his office, his arm jauntily thrown over the back of a chair, cigarette in hand.

This sequence perfectly illustrates both the cardboard-thin morals and dark lives of the show’s main characters and the stylish, Rat Pack-era production design that dazzles the eye even as it obscures cynical manipulations of the heart. Much of the appeal of the first season focuses on the ironic dichotomy between the picture-perfect lives of the ad men—which flawlessly mirror the cheerful fantasies they sell for a living—and the deceit and unhappiness that lie just below the surface.

Don Draper, the main character, portrayed by the actor Jon Hamm, astutely personifies the American myth of the self-made man—so much so that a recurring plot line of the series deals with the fact that he isn’t who he says he is. (An enduring feature of the American Dream, after all, is the freedom to re-invent oneself in the pursuit of happiness.)  

Raised under hard-scrabble circumstances by “sorry people” (as he tells one of his mistresses), Don seized the chance to start over when, in desperate circumstances, an opportunity presented itself. To all outward appearances, he succeeds wildly, marrying a former model, moving to the suburbs, having two kids, and becoming creative director and partner at the ad agency Sterling-Cooper. In his depiction of Draper, Hamm successfully walks a very fine line. His character’s good looks and suave, mysterious air are undeniably attractive, even as his skillful manipulation of people’s emotions diminishes our sympathies for him.

Anything built on lies cannot keep up appearances forever, and this is as true for Don Draper as it is for America itself. At the end of the first season, Draper returns from work to an empty house because his wife and kids have left without him to visit relatives for Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays. And in Season Two, he pays the consequences for his infidelities when his wife, Betty (whose name may be a sly nod to Betty Friedan and the budding women’s movement), kicks him out.

Plot lines throughout the second season allude to the brewing social revolution just over the post-Camelot horizon that will eventually assault the dominance of white men like Draper and his pals at Sterling-Cooper. Without being preachy or didactic, they touch on issues of equal rights for women, African Americans and homosexuals, as well as the military-industrial complex and even abortion. So far, as the dichotomy between ad-perfection and real life becomes harder to ignore, Draper hasn’t chosen to go the way of Willy Loman—at least not yet. At the end of Season Two, he has reasserted some control over his personal and professional life, though he seems far from content. For Don and his fellow salesmen, the vision of Happyland on the horizon seems to grow fainter with each passing day.