Mad men gay character
Home / gay topics / Mad men gay character
Mad Men emphasizes memory progression as a means of revealing the characters' pasts.
AWARDS: ‘MAD MEN’ won 16 Primetime Emmys. He tweets here.
Bob never finds love over the course of the series, and Joan's lesbian friend in season 1 has her attempt to come out of the closet politely declined.
The only happy queer characters throughout the series are Kurt (Edin Gali), a minor European character who gives Peggy a cool haircut, and Joyce (Zosia Mamet), Peggy's openly lesbian friend in season 4 -- but both of these characters play minor roles.
In fact, he’s positioned in such a manner so that —and this might be a stretch—Joan leaves him to wallow in the shame of rejection by going out and drinking his sorrows away at a gay bar, as many gay men were known to do at institutions like the Stonewall Inn.
Looking at Bob Benson from a broader perspective, this week’s mid-season finale can go one of many routes: Benson could leave SC&P to pursue a job with Buick, possibly losing Joan’s friendship over a conflict of interest, and thus falling into the pit of previously discarded gay characters (Sal, Kurt, Joyce, etc.), Benson could stay with SC&P, pursuing Buick from within the firm, opening the door to more story arcs about his struggle to balance identity with acceptance, or Benson could come out and tackle the same consequences Sal faced as an outed gay man in a conservative hetero work environment, perhaps successfully this time, affirming his position within the context of the fictional gay community as a new gay man in a new era; the Mad Man Sal longed to be.
Of course, another, more disappointing route could be the complete dismissal of all of this, moving on without further elaboration on Benson’s conflicts or the Stonewall riots, which would follow in the show’s tradition of omitting key points of gay liberation and throwing gay characters by the wayside, never to be mentioned again.
In 1962, Sal is married to Kitty, who seems oblivious to Sal's sexual orientation but begins to realize that something is wrong in their relationship. On one hand, we have to remind ourselves that this show isn’t about the events as much as it is about the characters, but on the other hand, the characters are undoubtedly affected by sociopolitical events of the time.
Between Bob’s ambiguous past —as revealed last season by Pete’s nosy detective work—and his momentous proposal to Joan, we’re meant to understand that this is a man so tragically invested in the establishment of a heteronormative façade, he’s willing to suppress a significant part of his identity in the interest of looking the part, echoing the same conflicts that consume our protagonist, Don Draper.
In a way, Benson is presented as a sign of the times: a closeted gay man playing by the rules, albeit still failing (assuming we’re never to see him again).
But considering the program’s loyalty to detailed portrayals of the struggle of women in the workplace and out, why are we just now seeing the plights of the gay community? The most prominent gay character in "Mad Men" is Salvatore Romano, and things don't go well for him.
See full article at Slash Film
.
In hopes of retribution, I’m pulling for more Bob Benson and a glimpse into the chaotic protests that changed the world for the LGBTQ community, but we’ll see tonight.Ramy Zabarah is a writer living in Brooklyn.
When Kurt (Edin Gali), a recently recruited young advertising executive, casually announces his homosexuality, Sal remains painfully silent as his colleagues talk contemptuously about Kurt. And why have certain landmark events for the progress of gay rights been omitted or only mentioned in passing?
The introduction last season of Bob Benson as a major player in the corporate power struggle of Madison Avenue places him in the familiar position of closeted gay man desperately playing along to get by.
Sal is gay, but closeted. A drama about one of New York's most prestigious advertising agencies in the early 1960s, centring on one of the company's most mysterious yet extremely talented ad executive, Donald “Don” Draper (Jon Hamm).
GAY COUPLE STORYLINE: Salvatore "Sal" Romano (Bryan Batt); regular in seasons 1-3, is the Italian-American former art director at Sterling Cooper.
Later in season 3, Sal rejects the sexual advances of Lee Garner Jr. (Darren Pettie), the drunken playboy son of Lucky Strike founder and a key customer. The series ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007 to May 17, 2015 and ran for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Since then, gay pride has expanded to all corners of the world, and today, gay rights are arguably at the top of the docket when it comes to human rights issues in the United States.
So why not show it?
There's a good reason for that: although characters like Sal (Bryan Batt) and Bob Benson(James Wolk) are interesting and well-written, their stories are pretty depressing.
MAD MEN
MAD MEN is an American drama series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. And yet it’s 1969 and this is the first example of the violent dynamic between the law and gay citizens that we’ve seen so far.
That scene’s significance is difficult to understate, considering the landmark Stonewall Riots of June 1969 had happened/will happen/are happening around the same time as the episode (see the use of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” later in the episode, which was released on June 14, 1969).
Stonewall is often called the single most important event of the gay liberation movement, which gained traction alongside the civil rights, antiwar and counterculture movements of the ‘60s.
Angered by the rejection, the client demands that Sal be removed from the campaign and Roger fires Sal to appease the client and keep his $25 million account. If the Stonewall raid were ever going to be addressed on Mad Men, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity. MAD MEN consists of 92 episodes of 45 minutes.
STORY: The fictional time frame runs from March 1960 to November 1970.
143 wins & 406 nominations.
8.6 IMDB
Bob Benson and Mad Men's Disappearing Gay Characters
As far as TV dramas go, AMC’s Mad Men shines in its ability to accurately document various cultural groups and the social movements of the 1960s in New York, and to a lesser extent, Los Angeles.
Last week, Mad Men gave us a taste of something the show has been largely missing since its premiere seven years ago: the LGBTQ struggle in the ‘60s, when engaging in homosexual activities could get you arrested, violently beaten by the police, or worse.
It’s something we haven’t seen since Sal Romano was fired at the request of Lee Garner Jr., the overbearing Lucky Strike magnate, in "Wee Small Hours" (season three, episode nine).
Ever since Sal’s departure, a major void remained unfilled, and while gay characters such as Kurt, the out and proud German creative who gave Peggy a fabulous makeover, and Joyce, Peggy’s radical gay friend who played cupid, introducing Peggy to her longtime boyfriend, Abe, stuck around as minor supporting characters, we haven’t seen a major gay character grapple with the conflicting nature of displaying a straight, traditional façade in order to maintain the status quo and further his career.
In last Sunday’s episode, entitled “The Strategy,” Benson bails out his bloodied friend, a visiting Chevy executive from Detroit, after he falls victim to abuse from a homophobic NYPD officer who arrests him for attempting to fellate an undercover policeman, a kind of entrapment that was very common throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s.
In a conversation immediately after the firing, Don explains that the agency can't risk losing Lucky Strike and suggests that Sal should have taken Garner Jr.'s advances.
Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) & Lee Garner Jr. (Darren Pettie)
BRYANBATT (2007-2009) March 1, 1963, New Orleans, LA, USA
DARREN PETTIE (2007-2010) August 18, 1970, Andalusia, AL, USA
SPECIAL: Mad Men mainly focuses on Don Draper, although it is an ensemble cast, it shows different segments of society in 1960s New York.
We’re shown the tumultuous relationship between police and an increasingly vocal gay community, and we’ve already seen the different ways in which homophobia smears the halls of SC&P, but why not address the gay rights movement directly?