Dudes Say Don Draper Is The Most Influential Guy Of 2009
Posted by: Ami Angelowicz
Filed in:
guys
12:40PM, Thursday October 8th 2009
Guess who AskMen.com readers voted the most influential man of 2009? Don Draper, who, technically, is a not a “real” man but a fictional character. Sure, I love me some hot Hamm every Sunday night, but, at the end of the torrid hour, I realize that “Mad Men” is just a television show and that Don Draper is just a caricature of a man struggling with his own demons, unwilling to face his problems head-on. So why are guys so obsessed with Don, to the point that they treat him as an actual person?
AskMen.com explains:
“Draper’s hardass 1960s persona represents something about male identity that is enduringly captivating but has nonetheless vanished. The man that Don Draper is—value-driven and thoroughly masculine—is the product of a bygone era … yet, as removed as his persona may be, it is also contemporary and familiar. He’s a postwar archetype, both a brilliant career man and a temptation-swayed philanderer who sincerely wants to be a family man. Like most men, us and our fathers both, Draper is permanently conflicted over how to reconcile his morals and his desires.”
Of course, I have no idea what it feels like to be a man. But I think all human beings are conflicted about how to reconcile their morals and desires—that doesn’t seem like a specifically male dilemma to me. Is it that the men today have a case of nostalgia for the good ol’ days when it was less confusing for them? Because what’s changed most since the swinging ‘60s is not the male identity but the female identity. Gender dynamics have shifted drastically in the home, in the workplace … just about everywhere. There’s no simple prescription for how men can adapt to that change, but I know it’s certainly not by worshipping an identity-less, drunk-driving, philandering and somewhat sexist mythical man. Yes, the “Mad Men” era is gone. So now it’s time to evolve and break the mold of your fathers and grandfathers. We want strong men who seem at ease with their place in the world—not men who spend a lifetime in inner conflict. Happy men. [AskMen.com]
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chuckles
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 12:20 pm: [report]
It’s possible that men’s responses don’t have anything at all to do with what you want. Which may be the point.
cymbelene
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 01:39 pm: [report]
great. so men really want to be a super successful, wined and dined business man- who is not only attractive and charming- but married to a nineteen 50s esque, gorgeous, statuesque housewife who stays at home all day taking care of the kids and waits patiently in bed for her man to arrive home late every evening after having one of his many affairs.
wow, an out-dated, unrealistic (for modern times [or any times in my opinion]) stereotype.
well, I’d love to look like giselle, be married to a man (who looks like johnny depp, sounds like clive owen, and dresses like clark gable) who waits on me hand and foot, and lovingly raises my children himself, while I become an unbelievably successful and famous woman in some creative field.
but that’s not going to happen any time either. but I guess it can’t hurt to dream
slip
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 02:04 pm: [report]
Men can’t earn happiness until we hunt down our demons and kill them. Draper is infested with demons, and if his televised struggle inspires a few modern men to face the abyss within, then the women of the world should rejoice.
Slip
Frederica Bimble
wrote on October 9 2009 @ 09:52 am: [report]
Chuckles: Well done missing the point and good show on alering the rest of us to your own bitterness.
If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you piss on today…..
freepeople1986
wrote on October 9 2009 @ 11:53 am: [report]
I think you’re missing the point. Inner demons aside, the man is the epitome of cool, in terms of style (his hair??? AMAZING), always knowing what to say, and getting what he wants without ever having to beg. He also has women crawling all over him, and completely owns all of the other men around him. He is, literally, THE MAN.
And since we’re talking about men- I don’t think they are sitting around worrying about his “issues.” They aren’t that deep!
pragmatryst
wrote on October 9 2009 @ 01:15 pm: [report]
@cymbelene: “great. so men really want to be a super successful, wined and dined business man- who is not only attractive and charming- but married to a nineteen 50s esque, gorgeous, statuesque housewife who stays at home all day taking care of the kids and waits patiently in bed for her man to arrive home late every evening after having one of his many affairs.”
Precisely, and don’t forgot we like to have a glass of Canadian Club neat and our favorite pair of velvet Albert slippers waiting for us by the door. After a “hard” evening leveraging our assets it’s nice to be reminded that we are the sovereign lord of our own little domestic kingdom. It keeps us grounded.
zenDecision
wrote on November 3 2009 @ 08:36 am: [report]
“Like most men, us and our fathers both, Draper is permanently conflicted over how to reconcile his morals and his desires.”
(What?!)
Butunlike most men, Don Draper is an imposter, so his so-called morals and desires are operating on two levels, two lives, actually more than two because he keeps layering on new complications! Most men do not masquerade as essentially a fictionalized version of themselves by assuming someone else’s name and an identity that mirrors an American ad’s idea of a successful man. Don Draper is literally a Mad Man…
As appealing as he is to women (including me), he is no more than a facade and until last week when Betty “outed” him, he had pretty much eschewed morality. The genesis of his “DonDraper” life is a lie; therefore, by extension, everything related to that life is also a lie. Living as a non-existent person made it easy for him to spread the identity lie and its implications to all areas of his life. E.g., why not cheat on his wife? Betty wasn’t actually his wife, but the wife of his imagined persona, so what did his philandering really mean? Or matter? Certainly, nothing to Don/Dick. Don has never shown remorse or guilt for his constant betrayal of Betty, although he has shown poignant devastation (and brilliantly via John Hamm!) over his own self-betrayal when he carelessly left the key to his secret drawer in his jacket for Betty to find and to ultimately expose him. (Betty was right when she accused him of subconsciously arranging the revelation.)
Dick Whitman’s deep emotional issues override the veracity of a deep Don Draper with the gravitas to represent a generation of men, to have conflicts over “morals and desires.” On the contrary, he represents a disturbed man who fakes gravitas. How can his deceptions reconcile with dual realities?
The whole premise of evaluating the Don Draper character as a romantic postwar archetype without factoring its corrupted, maladjusted source, is spurious. Dick and Don cannot be separated; each informs the other. Their struggles and conflicts are more individual than generational, so if “dudes” are looking to a scarred personality as an influential archetype for the 2000’s, what a disappointment for women…