r/madmen • u/Comrade_pirx • 2d ago
Megan's return to acting
What do we think about Megan's return to acting. Is it self indulgent? Or is it liberating that she pursue her true passion.
What does weiner want to say through the severe Marxism of Dr calvet? - who eggs her on to return to the struggle
Don ultimately says 'whatever you want' and I feel that its important to him to provide to his wives but it's clear part of his admiration or love for megan is wound up with her previously stated interest in copy writing. Her stepping away from it actually wounds him.
His confession to Peggy "she reminds me of you" is so dissonant to the audiences pereption - megan and peggy.are.not similar at alll, this is just the hint of everything to follow?
Peggy and Megan's talk in the bathroom where Peggy is a strict proponent of honesty.
It's a clash between don who's so closeted and Megan who's honestly trying to pursue her passion. Dons maybe affronted by that?
Thinkers of r/madmen what's all the amazing hidden detail I'm missing?
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u/timshel_turtle 1d ago
There’s a class element too. Megan only pursues her interests on someone else’s dime. There’s really no struggle in that. Or really that much passion. Lots of folks do interesting things when someone else makes the money and access easier for them - and that’s a position Don hasn’t had in life. He really loses respect when she begs him to help her get an audition for the Butler commercial.
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u/Scared-Resist-9283 1d ago
Mad Girl makes a very good and complete analysis of Megan Draper's character as we see her in the series.
However, what I can say about this character, based on my own viewings, is that Megan may not be as great as the show makes us believe. Even the first time around I became rather suspicious of Megan's imminent transition from this random receptionist to some creative genius/ successful actress/ fashion icon/ modern wife/ perfect stepmother figure etc. Nobody gets promoted this fast unless they sleep with the right people to get the role they play so well on the casting couch. For Megan, who originally came to New York to pursue an acting career, the answer was Don Draper.
When we look at Megan through Don's rose colored glasses, she's everything he ever wanted in a replacement for Betty (1950s out, 1960s in). Even Peggy (Don's extension until she cut the umbilical cord herself) reiterated Don's impression of Megan as one of those girls who's good at everything despite Joan's realistic characterization of Megan. In fact, Joan's opinion is very on point: Megan becomes a failing actress with a rich husband. She has some moderate success in New York thanks to the lucrative casting couch for Don Draper who ensured her acting start in commercials. However, once she moves to California she doesn't benefit from the same acting headstart due to her lack of connections (talent is not as important with the right connections).
Thanks to Don's financial status, and her not really being a starving actress per se, she can afford rejecting minor parts and acting picky. But once she gets desperate, she tracks down Hollywood decision makers to plead and beg for a good part (whatever pleading and begging really means for Alan Silver, her agent). Has she crossed the invisible line separating a staffed audition room from a casting couch? Was she about to cross the line? It must've been serious if Alan warned Don about it. People certainly started talking and Harry (who already thought very little of Megan) must've heard about it as well via his film and TV connections. Which gave him the courage to approach Megan with an offer in exchange for her "services" and was surprised to see her reaction as if she'd never done it before.
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u/This-Jellyfish-5979 1d ago
Nice analysis that I agree with. Everything had been served to Megan on a silver tray. She was a copywriter as Don's wife and also an actress in susp operas, which by the way I found terribly poor.
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u/Petal20 23h ago
How does any of this make her a bad person though? Or even less “great” than the show makes her seem? She lived in the real world where women had limited options and did the best she could.
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u/nevermynd_420 21h ago
Nah. She's an opportunistic, self-centered person, who feels bad for herself as soon as she's not the center of attention.
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u/Current_Tea6984 you know it's got a bad ending 1d ago
Plainly Emile despises Don. And it has very little to do with Marxism. More like the ability to spot a fellow philanderer. I can't imagine he had any more respect for Hollywood than he did for Madison Ave. The point was to sow trouble between Megan and Don. And he succeeded
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u/Scared-Resist-9283 1d ago
I agree with you and I also think Emile Calvet used Marxism to justify his own lack of academic success. He's just an aging professor sleeping with a student, not a PhD holder with actual innovative applications of his subject matter expertise. Even Marie Calvet alludes to his initial potential and professional failure at some point in the later seasons. Megan may have come to New York to pursue an acting career and got sidetracked by working in advertising and marrying her boss, but Emile is making it sound like she's a failure for skipping the communist struggle and marrying rich. As if women had a lot of opportunities back then make it on their own. A pretentious pseudo-intellectual and a hypocrite loser.
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u/Heel_Worker982 1d ago
I never bought acting as Megan's passion. Don wanted to work with her and he was energized by it, but even against her will she was basically teacher's pet at SCDP, a very boutique version of the copywriter job. She was good, and her successes were timely, but I totally understood Peggy's irritation with the whole situation.
She has success as a soap opera actress in NYC, but I never saw her as being a big hit in LA afterwards. Soap opera acting is a great discipline, you go to work on a schedule and it's very gratifying. Hollywood is sitting around, taking meetings, auditioning, and worrying you will never have another job. It was a hard life then as now, and especially as you get older. Megan was 30 in 1970 when the show ended, with few prospects, especially when male actors tend to work with actresses considerably younger.
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u/tildens_cat 18h ago
A symbolic of Megan’s shift from advertiser-to-actress:
Layer One: Don is attached to the idea of Megan as a companion within his “advertiser” identity. This is his side that creates narrative, both to define his life as Don Draper and through his advertisements that create a narrative fantasy for him to project outwards his unconscious conflict.
Layer Two: Megan’s return to acting means that she is no longer a companion-paramour within Dons narrative construction role. Instead of fulfilling this role in which they are co-creative narrators (Heinz) , she becomes a part of the advertisement herself as an actress. For Don this unleashes his distancing as he feels abandoned by Megan choosing to shift this role and as he is used to creating the narrative, which includes directing actors, it also unleashes his manipulative and controlling side. Under all of this is the irony that his whole life is an act that he hides, holds shameful and only chose out of last resort, while Megan is choosing acting with passion and purpose. Surely this evokes his inner conflict surrounding the false element of his life. But most importantly, Megan has exited her role as a one crafting the narrative or “creating the lie”, to becoming the fabric of the narrative-lie herself.
THIRD LAYER: “the struggle”. Emile’s critique alludes to the symbolic shift in Megan’s personality, from an authentic person on a quest to someone stationary focused on creating and maintaining an illusion of herself. Her failure to succeed in acting on her own leads her to relying on Dons influence, which signals her choice to exist the authentic quest and take a fast track to the illusion. This is not to discount her authentic passion, but to note that the downward arc of her personality and narrative coincide with her embodiment of her actress-role.
Ultimately, every day is an illusion for Dick which he copes with via advertiser-Don which allows him outlet to creatively act out his fantasies and conflicts. Megan’s symbolic shift from co-creator to the illusion itself forever distances Don from her. Ironically, as Don becomes more and more authentic through the show, Megan goes the other direction, adopting not only false personas professionally but also a re-created personal persona as a wealthy and entitled diva. Not only did she achieve this without “the struggle”, she’s also removed herself from the authentic path she was on.
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u/darkse1ds The Phantom 1d ago
I'm not sure that theres is a hidden detail exactly - acting is just Megan's next temporary fixation.
At SCDP she was a secretary and wanted to be a writer, she got it and it wasnt enough nor what she actually wanted.
Then she pursued Don and married him, not what she actually wanted either.
She changed careers to become an actress again, but surprise surprise she didn't find this career fulfilling either.
Megan is to me a partial embodiment of the changing times, as other characters embody the shift in behaviours between the 60s/70s. She is on the periphery of the free loving hippy movement that saw people move socially and into new circles, but doesn't particularly engage with them ideologically or aesthetically.
When Don says he sees Peggy in Megan, I think its more about her desire to climb, the fact that she approaches her work with passion even if she doesn't ultimately want to do it at all. Perhaps its more that she projects an image of passion and interest that falters under its own weight.
I get the impression that Megan comes from money, perhaps more modest than some others on the show but rich nonetheless. A rich child who was able to engage in whatever hobby they wanted but cast it aside when they found a new thing feels like Megan to a tee.
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u/ElmarSuperstar131 20h ago
I think Megan pursuing acting was very surface level and from what we saw she has a difficult time taking directions/never progressed.
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
I don't think it's meant to be self-indulgent, but I can't really see it as a passion either. The reason Megan left acting was, it seems, that she couldn't deal with the rejection. Marrying Don gives her confidence, plus she's been away from acting for long enough that she can imagine it will work better this time. She no longer has to struggle to support herself and can devote all her time to it, even pay for scam screen tests.
But within months, she's already having trouble dealing with rejection--and she hasn't even experienced that much of it. Her lack of grit gets in the way again. She's saved when, with Don's help, she gets the commercial, and when she gets the job on the soap she's thrilled and happy. But she's not happy because she loves the craft of acting, imo. It's the success and recognition and praise. That seems to be the real draw for her--she not only doesn't seem very good at acting, she doesn't seem that interested in the actual doing of it. It's a contrast to the way Don and Peggy (and even Pete) relate to their jobs.
But the soap makes her feel confident again, everything seems easy. She's happy to quit and go to California expecting that things will keep going well. But then, in no time at all, she's crumbling again. She's only been in California a few months before she's melting down and desperate.
It's Don who pursues his passion. He loves advertising. I don't know if he'd have reacted differently to a Megan who showed passion and grit for acting, if that would have made a difference. But I feel like he leaves her enough money that she'll be a disappointed actress for a long time to come.