Watching Mad Men During a Pandemic: Betty Draper’s Time Has Finally Come
Current events have brought about their fair share of fictional comparisons. There are the other pandemics (Contagion, The Stand, The Decameron), the homebound romantics (Carrie Bradshaw, all of Jane Austen’s characters), and the virtual love affairs (You’ve Got Mail, Her). But, as I stay in, day after day, cooking, drinking, moping, and generally on edge, I’ve found a kindred spirit in a certain 1960s housewife.
Season 3, episode 5 of Mad Men: “The Fog,” is otherwise known as the episode where the third and final Draper child, Gene, is born. As Betty gives birth in a drug-induced twilight sleep (it was the ’60s, after all), she hallucinates a conversation with her recently deceased father.
“Be happy with what you have,” the apparition tells her. “You’re a house cat. You are very important and have very little to do.”
Despite the show’s title, Mad Men often focused on its women, showcasing the various ways these female characters struggled to fit into a constraining and suffocating society. Betty, though often absent, cruel, and irresponsible, lived a life in gilded exile, confined to her suburban cage, a mere accessory to the men around her. You would be hard pressed to find an episode of Mad Men that did not feature at least one shot of the housewife in her natural habitat: sitting in the Draper or Francis kitchen, cigarette and/or drink in hard, gazing out a window.
In the show’s second season, upon being asked by her young neighbor why she was home alone, Betty simply responded, “It’s the middle of the day.” “It’s lousy,” he observed.
For those of us lucky enough to stay home right now, life has slowed to a Betty-like pace. We sit; we bake; we nap; we stomp our feet. Aside from occasional bouts of tears in front of the TV, a palpable numbness makes many of us stoic and lethargic. For those with children, parenting becomes all-encompassing. And, the rest of us have taken to peculiar activities simply to fill the expanse of idle time we never asked for. Day after day, to quote Betty, “Nothing’s changed.”
I have found myself struggling with my own perception of idleness. Many of us who are not essential workers feel unessential, not to mention constrained, helpless, and weak. And, at worst, I worry I’m destined for Betty’s fate: becoming superfluous.
But Betty’s retribution is that she cannot actually disappear without a trace. Unlike Don, who can take off, shedding his life like a second skin, the Draper family relies on Betty to maintain its domestic rhythms.
Betty Draper, it also seems, cannot disappear from our own cultural consciousness. Mad Men resurged as stay-at-home orders went into effect and new fans discovered January Jones's vibrant Instagram presence. She too has recognized that Betty is an unlikely icon for our times.
“It hits every 3rd or 4th day am I right?” Jones recently captioned a photo of Betty in tears, wearing her signature cardigan and pearls.
So, even after making donations and buying face masks, I continue to feel useless, sitting in my kitchen as the world burns. But occasionally I think about Betty (as does January Jones, apparently), and remember that sometimes, doing something can look very similar to doing nothing at all.
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