Abstract
Mentoring centers on the development of another person through career, psychosocial and role modeling support. As popular cultural portrayals and gendered critiques of mentoring show, not all can be categorized as rational, instrumental and positive. There often are unconscious forces that drive particular mentoring arrangements and offer entrée points into mentorship analyses that contrast with rational approaches. Popular culture images provide an arena to critique dominant mentoring practices. Towards this end, we critically examine the award-winning drama Mad Men (Weiner, 2007) and uncover how non-rational mentoring practices are depicted. We argue that characters engage in intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring processes in which loyalties shift and neuroses reflect the nature of workplace social relations. Our critique displays characters’ complicity in perpetuating asymmetrical gendered workplace relations through practices that are seemingly non-rational, presumably meritocratic and/or captured by archetypal mentoring relationships.
Mentoring centers on the development of another person through career, psychosocial and role modeling exposure and support (Ragins and Kram, 2007). Dominant framings of mentoring reflect Haggard et al.’s (2011) emphasis on reciprocity, developmental benefits for at least the mentee, and consistent interaction as core attributes of mentoring relationships. Although the dyadic and long-term mentor–protégé relationship remains prototypical, there are multiple forms of mentoring, with most assuming that positive consequences result for the parties involved (Allen et al., 2004; Allen et al., 2006; Kram, 1985). Described in such terms as teaching, ‘dating’, committing, sponsoring, manipulating and guiding (Ragins and Kram, 2007; Rawlins, 2000), mentoring is associated with goal refinement and attainment in popular culture. In movies, the older man may instruct a younger man in the politics of making and laundering money (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps [Pressman and Kopeloff, 2010]); a boy might learn about relationships, adventure, and the idea that it is never too late to fulfill one’s dreams (Up [Rivera, 2009]); a woman might be advised on ways to recreate herself to enhance her attractiveness to potential relational partners (The Ugly Truth [Heigl et al., 2009]); and a professor instructs her students in class content and exposes them to alternative, everyday gender/ed performances (Mona Lisa Smile [Johanson, 2003]). Through popular culture, audiences learn that there is much to discover about workplace politics, gender and mentoring (Hassard and Holliday, 1998). Indeed, popular culture portrayals of workplace practices invite viewers to reflect on their own experiences, offering ‘frames of reference for the interpretation of actions’ (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2004: 709).
As popular culture portrayals of mentoring show, not all can be categorized as rational, instrumental, positive and developmental. Indeed, gendered analyses of mentoring can uncover semi- or unconscious forces that drive particular mentoring arrangements and expose taken-for-granted power relations. These forces may be deeply embedded in the parties’ psyches and offer entrée points into mentorship analyses that contrast with the rational.
The purpose of this critique is to explore popular culture as a site in which intersections of mentoring in its varied forms can be examined. Although fictional in characters and plots, popular cultural representations can mirror and inform day-to-day organizing processes, critique the gendered status quo, and illuminate the potential for transformation (Hassard and Holliday, 1998; Pullen and Rhodes, 2012). Many of the key assumptions that scholars and workers hold about workplace relations, such as mentoring, professional norms, gender and organizational cultural influences are socially constructed within lived and mediated contexts (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007; Cheney et al., 2010; Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). The issue is not that individuals and groups might become accustomed to perceiving workplace interactions and organizing processes in popular cultural representations as normal, but that such portrayals show them how everyday organizing, gender and mentoring relations are performed and with what consequences. One such popular cultural phenomenon with great influence because of its critical acclaim and attention to realism is AMC’s drama, Mad Men.
Mad Men is set in the New York of the 1960s. It traces the sexual, competitive and sometimes ruthless lives of the men and women of Madison Avenue’s advertising agencies. Work takes place in various venues such as offices, conference rooms, hallways and reception areas. It is in these venues and on work-related trips that viewers see interactions with clients. They see the ways in which the talents of different creative production team members are fostered for advertising campaigns, how conflict management functions, and where different individuals fit within the agency based on their gender, roles, talents, social networks and other aspects. Also, viewers see mentoring processes constructed, refined, rejected, adapted, contested and constrained during episodes.
There are several reasons for Mad Men’s cultural significance. First, the influence of Mad Men can be ascertained through the extent to which aspects have entered mainstream talk 1 and fashion, and have garnered Golden Globe, Emmy and other awards. The second reason for Mad Men’s cultural status concerns ‘popular memory’ or ‘a form of story-telling through which people make sense of their own lives and culture’ (Spigel, 2001: 363). Warner (2009) adds that popular memory is formed through linkages to representations of history on television. It is the realistic depiction of history and its mirroring of 21st Century life that attracts viewers. In Mad Men, the turbulent world of the 1960s’ creative industries, particularly advertising and its use of new media (i.e. television), is set against the emergence of women’s and civil rights movements, increased consumerism, space exploration, and global intrigue, organizational volatility and generational conflicts.
Third, in engaging viewers’ popular memory, gendered readings of Mad Men offer a critique of the nature of organizations. Inherent in most western constructions of history is ‘a very strong idea of the progress of the human race towards liberty, fraternity and equality through the practices of democracy and capitalism’ (Warner, 2009: 727). In contrast, Mad Men offers viewers a critique of power relations in organizations and, in doing so, problematizes the idea that progress in the workplace has been attained. Last, in examining mentoring depictions, the nature and meaningfulness of work in creative industries is considered given that mentoring processes can vary with occupation (Haggard et al., 2011). Specifically, television dramas and other popular cultural portrayals of everyday life, including Mad Men, accentuate the dramatic, humorous and conversation-enhancing interplay between fact, or the realities of gender and careers, and other life interconnections. Further, television is a noticeable part of everyday talk and interaction, influencing individuals and collectivities in ways that they often do not even recognize (Jurgensen, 2013). Although Mad Men shows creative industry personnel at work in the 1960s, these depictions mirror the creative industry content work and workplace relationships found in New York during the Internet era (Neff, 2005, 2012).
Our reading of Mad Men proposes three conceptual themes that expose the intimate, ambivalent and erotic aspects of mentoring. We focus our critique on the central, evolving relationship between Don Draper, the lead advertising executive at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP) Advertising Agency, and Peggy Olson, the up-and-coming copy writer, to illuminate these different facets of mentoring. Don and Peggy’s relationship is particularly compelling for an examination of mentoring because their relationship appears to be based on reciprocity, developmental benefits and consistent interaction (Haggard et al., 2011). Our reading of Mad Men reveals how non-rational mentoring processes facilitate rational workplace outcomes and reward structures. We suggest that Mad Men mentoring is designed to be meritocratic through which mentees advance based on their talents, but the system actually maintains the asymmetrical gendered status quo. Last, our reading suggests that mentoring taps into deep archetypal images that expose relationships wrought with ambivalences, neuroses and shifting loyalties.
In the following sections, we first briefly review the prototypical mentor–protégé relationship then turn our gaze to gendered forms beyond the traditional mentoring model. We then expand on popular culture representations of organizing, gender and workplace processes.
Mentoring processes and gendered critiques
Mentoring has, at its core, the sharing of expertise. Indeed, meta-analyses attest to the career benefits of mentoring (Allen et al., 2004) in different organizations and careers. Despite decades of research rethinking mentoring from a more traditional, masculine model whereby a seasoned professional oversees the career development of a high potential neophyte, the image of a positive dyadic, and often male, relationship remains the prototype for these relationships (Ibarra et al., 2010). In this idealized form, mentoring is incremental, positive and designed to help the newcomer overcome obstacles in his quest to become a recognized professional. The mentor−protégé relationship begins when both realize that such an arrangement would be mutually beneficial. This mentor builds on the talent, expertise and emerging loyalty of the protégé in assisting with the mentor’s work, rejuvenating the mentor’s informational bases and interests, and preserving his legacy. In turn, the protégé is expected to learn the business, be devoted and reflect favorably on the mentor. If successful, this relationship leads to external success in a linear career model set within specific organizational contexts (Buzzanell and Goldzwig, 1991). It also leads to successful networking within and across broader occupational and industry boundaries (Allen et al., 2004; Allen et al., 2006; Simon and Eby, 2003).
Yet, these traditional mentoring models arguably ‘support deeply entrenched divisions and disparities between men and women, often in subtle and insidious ways’ (Ely and Meyerson, 2000: 104). Dominant mentoring models have been constructed as masculinist, corporatist structures that are restricted to instrumentalist, exchange relations that work to advance each individual’s separate interests (Ellingson and Sotirin, 2008; Kram, 1985) and perpetuate gendered inequities in organizations (Acker, 2006). The possibilities for women in these types of relationships are limited because they are either ‘trivialized for their femininity’ or constructed as ‘falling short of being fully accepted in the masculine social order’ (Pullen and Rhodes, 2012: 4). For example, women in the workplace are expected to exhibit typically feminine behaviors, such as caring, compassion and a willingness to listen (Calás and Smircich, 2006; Gherardi, 1995). However, these behaviors are in contrast to the competitive and utilitarian behaviors rewarded in traditional mentoring relationships (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004; Buzzanell, 1994). Gender norms also influence expectations of (in)appropriate workplace behaviors and roles for men and women (Acker, 2006; Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004). For instance, findings on mentoring point to concerns that close cross-sex mentoring associations might be misconstrued by outsiders (Ragins and Cotton, 1999). In this way, gendered contradictions emerge when women attempt to assert organizational power as mentors or when they are mentored by a man who is in a position of power (Acker, 2006; Gherardi, 1995). Furthermore, because of occupational and gendered norms, women often do not have access to close informal relationships that provide accessible social network contacts and long-term attachments (Ibarra et al., 2010).
In contrast, gendered theorizing about mentoring posits core themes of: alternative, nonlinear and not necessarily rational thinking and organizing; cooperative and collaborative processes; and the inclusion of emotions (Buzzanell, 1994, 1995). These alternative mentoring models are not restricted to female-to-female mentoring relationships, but rather provide alternative criteria from which to explore mentoring processes. Gendered mentoring models have been based on friendship (Bell et al., 2000), co-mentoring (McGuire and Reger, 2003; Rymer, 2002) and aunting (Ellingson and Sotirin, 2008). Whereas traditional mentoring models highlight objectivity, competition and hierarchy, gendered mentoring models often blur public–private boundaries through emphases on relational maintenance, personal disclosure and cooperation (Humble et al., 2006; McGuire and Reger, 2003). For instance, in recent studies, ‘mentee’ rather than ‘protégé’ is used because ‘mentee’ displaces the hierarchical power relationship implied by ‘protégé’ and allows for role shifting (Ragins and Kram, 2007). However, in problematizing traditional mentoring models, gendered mentoring models often demand long-term and intensive relationships based on commitment, equality and loyalty. In this way, they lack the flexibility and tolerance to accommodate difference, constrained resources and non-standard work processes (for an exception, see Ellingson and Sotirin, 2008). Thus, despite the fact that most contemporary situations demand both traditional and non-traditional mentoring approaches and functions, resource constraints and gender identity politics within organizations can preclude women from accessing and benefiting from mentoring relationships. Combined, this research invites exploration of how gendered power is represented and how non-rational processes surface in mentoring relationships. Popular culture representations of workplace processes can offer insights and create spaces for exploration and critique of mentoring practices (Bell, 2008).
Popular cultural representations of workplace processes
To begin, popular cultural images, such as those found in television, can enable better understandings of workplace institutions by digging beneath the surface of traditional academic literatures about the workplace (Godfrey, 2009; Rhodes, 2001). Popular culture representations of organizations include content that is often overlooked by management texts such as gender, emotions, power struggles, mythologies, the consequences of success and the implications of failure (Hassard and Holliday, 1998; Munro and Huber, 2012). Yet these representations can inform understandings of everyday work processes by getting at the ‘heart of organizational life’ (Hassard and Holliday, 1998: 1). That is, mediated representations of work ‘represent management and organization at the emotional as well as intellectual level, providing individuals with a way of making their own experiences’ meaningful’ (Bell, 2008: 1).
Second, narratives serve an important function in linking mediated representations of workplace processes to everyday workplace interactions. To be successful, television shows must present narratives that resonate with audience experiences and understandings of the phenomenon explored (Beeden and de Bruin, 2010). Hucznyski and Buchanan argue that the narratives found in popular culture representations are theory-laden. In other words, ‘they offer accounts of events that unfold chronologically, linking antecedents, through actions, to consequences, in particular contexts’ (Hucznyski and Buchanan, 2004: 709). In addition, narratives such as those found in popular culture representations encode processes that allow for multiple and fluid interpretations of events. Storey (2003) explains that the meanings behind these workplace processes occur at two levels. First, there is the level of denotation or the literal content of the program and storyline. The second level is the connotative or ‘the associations and implications which resonate from the storyline and character interactions’ (Storey, 2003: 26). Storey (2003) adds that interpretations of television narratives can fluctuate between these two levels such that although viewers may not identify with the storyline at the denotative level, they can draw connections between the narrative and their own lives at the connotative level. So, for instance, a television show that offers a storyline from a previous historical era can still resonate with viewers even though the specific context is out of date with contemporary audiences. In this way, mediated representations can provide a ‘safe’ way of learning what work looks like across different historical and cultural contexts (Czarniawska-Joerges and de Monthoux, 1994). Moreover, a focus on narrative invites consideration of dramatic interpretations of organization, including ‘the symbolic qualities of gender representation’ (Dow, 2006: 266).
Last, popular culture representations are not neutral, but instead offer positions and interpretations that can normalize, reinforce or critique gendered power relations and structures (Hassard and Holliday, 1998). For example, research has considered the ways in which popular culture reinforces problematic gendered workplace constructions. Höpfl (2003) critiqued G.I. Jane, which starred Demi Moore as a female solider in the hyper-masculine military, for claiming women could not succeed in the military without cancelling the feminine. Höpfl’s argument articulates how gendered norms penalize women both for their femininity and their failed attempts to enact masculinity in a hyper-masculine organization such as the military. No matter how they perform their gender, women will fall short. Another strand of research highlights the transformative potential of popular culture gendered representations. For instance, Rhodes (2001, 2002) articulates how the television shows The Simpsons and South Park offer parodies of organizational life that problematize the rules that frame more conventional representations of organizations. This research has been extended to explorations of how television shows like Futurama and The Office problematize the normalization of hegemonic and asymmetrical gendered workplace processes in organizational life (Pullen and Rhodes, 2012; Tyler and Cohen, 2008). As these examples indicate, mediated representations of organization can expose the taken-for-granted assumptions of everyday work life and point to opportunities for critique and change. In this way, the portrayal of gendered workplace processes depicts ‘the cultural rules of working life and, in doing so, makes these rules both more clear and less taken for granted’ (Rhodes, 2001: 381). We turn to Mad Men to consider how the show depicts gendered mentoring processes.
A case study of Mad Men mentoring
Borrowing from critical narrative research, we examined how Mad Men, as a popular cultural text, portrays mentoring processes, including power structures, gender and social relations, and creates understandings of people’s agency, motivations, worlds and activities (see Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). To develop our reading of the mentoring relationships in Mad Men, we first took notes on the 65 episodes that form Seasons 1−5 (finale aired on Sunday, 10 June 2012). These episodes translate to approximately 54 hours. We then looked for critical incidents where mentoring relationships were featured. In doing so, we individually watched segments and episodes repeatedly, reviewed our notes iteratively to understand the organizational context in which characters interacted and business was conducted, and then came together to compare and contrast preliminary analyses and conclusions. We looked for incidents that addressed how characters negotiated, perceived and developed business and relational strategies through mentoring processes and explored how these relationships and incidents intersected with gender. We examined content at both the denotative and connotative levels to highlight implications for contemporary understandings of mentoring relationships. Our reading of Mad Men mentoring is organized around conceptual themes that center on intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring relationships.
Intimate mentoring
The first category of mentoring relationships highlights their intimate nature as these relationships tap into familial relations, call upon the mentee to make drastic identity changes, and frequently expose the subversive nature of mentoring.
Gendered analyses of mentoring often invoke a mother–daughter trope that perpetuates maternal guidance on the part of the mentor and devotion on the part of the mentee (Ellingson and Sotirin, 2008). In contrast, Don and Peggy’s intimate relationship resembles a father–daughter relationship in which Don serves as a father-figure to Peggy, helping her to navigate both the public and private worlds of Mad Men. Take Peggy’s first day in the office. Peggy began as Don’s secretary. She was a young, inexperienced recruit, traveling to Manhattan from Brooklyn for work each day. During her training, Joan Harris, head of the secretaries, explained that if Peggy makes the right moves, she could end up moving into town and if she makes even better moves, she could end up in the country and not working at all, hinting that the ultimate goal for women in the workplace was to find a husband so as not to have to engage in paid labor. Joan also explains that Peggy is supposed to enact roles somewhere between a mother and waitress because that is what the men want. In this scene, Joan takes on the role of the big sister, introducing Peggy to the taken-for-granted assumptions of gender identity and work performances at the agency and reinforcing the power relations between the women.
Given their superior–subordinate positioning, Don and Peggy’s relationship was initially primed for erotic potential. On her first day, Peggy places her hands over his, presumably prepared to use her sexuality for advancement. However, Don does not mentor Peggy in a way that will ensure these potential gendered outcomes. In fact, he problematizes Joan’s advice by eventually promoting Peggy to copy writer, praising her for her instrumental workplace contributions, and making her an integral part of the creative team. In another scene, a male coworker, Pete, compares Peggy’s appearance to the Amish because she is wearing a dress that is not form-fitting. Don immediately reprimands Pete for making these comments, explaining that advertising is a small world. Pete later apologizes to Peggy. Don’s comment that advertising is a ‘small world’ establishes the premise that Peggy is not there to find a husband but will, in fact, be working in the advertising industry for some time. Don’s reprimand also serves to highlight that one’s actions toward others, particularly in the workplace, could have long-term repercussions just as Don’s recognition of Peggy’s talents, despite her outward appearance, did. Don’s mentorship, along with the acknowledgement of her talent by others, contributed to her drastic transformation from an entry-level secretary to a competitive member of the creative team. Instead of being molded into the perfect office wife, Don groomed Peggy to be a competent and successful organizational member who reflected his image and sustained his power.
On occasion, Don offered political and personal advice, or psychosocial mentoring, to Peggy. This advice established the basis for their intimate mentoring relationship. For instance, during Season 1, Peggy became pregnant with a married agency employee’s baby. Through a flashback during the opening of Season 2, it is revealed that Don is the only person who visited Peggy in the hospital following the birth of her baby. As her mentor, he advises Peggy to return to work. He says, ‘This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened’ (Veith and Getzinger, 2008). As father-figure, Don coached Peggy on how to handle the resulting tenuous circumstance. Through his mentorship, Don enacted the role of a concerned father, providing advice and support during this difficult time, but also vowing to never betray her confidence. Peggy later returned the favor by bringing him bail money after he had a car accident while drinking and driving with a married client en route to her vacation home. The two were kissing when Don lost control of the car. Don could not call his wife because of the affair, so he turned to Peggy. Peggy kept his confidence and noted that his car crash and night in jail never happened. In a later episode, Peggy was considering leaving the firm because she felt that her talents were consistently looked over and she was getting attractive offers from competitive firms. Don said that he would spend the rest of his life trying to hire her back. Don saw value in her potential, her loyalty to him, her ability to tap into the female consumer, and her strong work ethic. There clearly is a connection between Don and Peggy as they both recognize common qualities in each other, such as intuitive understandings of others, their own creative abilities and their ability to keep secrets. Our reading proposes that the father recognizes himself in his offspring and knows what advice can make a difference.
These examples expose the intimate nature of the loyalty between Don and Peggy. There are a number of qualities that underscore these intimate mentoring processes. First, reciprocity underlies the relationship between Don and Peggy and informs this loyalty. This reciprocity is evidenced in the overt and tacit commitments Don and Peggy make to each other over the course of Peggy’s workplace transformation. Second, Don and Peggy’s mentoring relationship takes on a subversive quality as the two share the most intimate and telling details of each other’s lives. In fact, this intimacy necessitates self-disclosure (Jamieson, 1998) and creates a shared history that contributes to the loyalty the two feel for each other (Oglensky, 2008). In short, the loyalty underlying intimate mentoring seems to be a relationship quality that enables the mentoring partners to share personal details with the understanding that both parties would provide assistance and go beyond normal role expectations. Moreover, Don’s mentoring of Peggy also enables her to subvert the gendered prescription that she is working to find a husband.
Third, in contrast to intimacy studies and theorizing that focus predominantly on romantic relationships, Don and Peggy’s intimate mentoring does not rest on an assumption of romance, although our reading suggests that familial relations provide a template to enact intimate mentoring. Fourth, Don and Peggy’s mentoring relationship indicates that intimate mentoring relationships will not necessarily be perfect, but will be penetrated by trials and tribulations. Last, our reading suggests that intimate mentoring processes provide an avenue to strengthen the bonds of the collective as people are no longer only working for their own best interests. This position proposes that respect for one’s self ‘coexists with and indeed fuels obligation toward another’ (Santore, 2008: 1213). Thus, in contrast to traditional approaches to mentoring, Don and Peggy’s intimate mentoring transcends a public−private division, encourages reciprocity that privileges relational maintenance and self-development, and serves as a foundation for loyalty.
Ambivalent mentoring
The second way in which mentoring relationships are enacted in Mad Men pertains to ambivalences and shifting loyalties. Ambivalence can be defined as holding ‘intrinsically contradictory or mutually exclusive desires or ideas … although one cannot have both simultaneously, one cannot abandon either of them’ (Flax, 1990: 50). These ambivalent relationships expose taken-for-granted assumptions of loyalty, strategy, care and reciprocity.
Again, an example from Don and Peggy’s relationship illuminates these issues. Despite earlier accounts in which Peggy benefits from Don’s mentoring, by the end of Season 4, her loyalty to Don is wrought with ambivalence. She seems increasingly frustrated by the lack of support and recognition she is receiving for her work. For instance, Peggy produced the original idea for the award-winning Glo-coat advertisement, yet Don did not acknowledge her contributions when accepting the award at the Clio Award ceremony. In fact, Don discussed the advertisement as part of the creative team work in which all contribute, but only the Director receives credit. To Peggy, this act further diminished her individual contributions. In another example, Don chastises Peggy for taking initiative with the fledgling Sugarberry ham account. To boost sales, Peggy hired actresses to stage a fight over a ham in the local grocery store. She seemed pleased with her initiative and creativity when it came to solving a company problem. However, this staged fight led to assault charges. Shortly after the actresses ended up in jail, Peggy paid Don a visit in his apartment to get bail money. At this point, he accused her of threatening SCDP’s reputation with this stunt. What went unsaid were the instances where Don’s actions had seriously hurt SCDP, like his failed interview with Advertising Age. In brief, whenever she thought her efforts might be recognized, Peggy was either chastised verbally by Don and others for not understanding what it meant to be a team player or she was ridiculed, such as the time when she was told she had lipstick on her teeth, rather than being congratulated, after she successfully navigated client relations.
Our reading of Mad Men mentoring processes reveals that reciprocity does not always mean equality. A particularly compelling scene is in the final episode of Season 4. By this time, SCDP is struggling, having lost the lucrative Lucky Strikes account and appearing desperate to potential clients. However, Peggy secures the Topaz Panti-Hose account that could sustain the agency financially and provide a base for further business. Peggy went to Joan’s office because her moment of victory in signing the much needed account was usurped by Don’s announcement that he was engaged to a twenty-some-year-old French-Canadian secretary. As the men celebrated Don’s news, Peggy offered congratulations to Don and then asked Joan, ‘Can you believe it?’ Peggy could not believe that the men would downplay the fact that SCDP landed a big account and instead highlight Don’s pending marriage. To Joan, it was all more of the same repetitive pattern; the men were always leaving their current wife for someone younger and less threatening. However, Peggy was dismayed and said, ‘I just signed a new account. And they are all excited about a marriage.’ Joan replied, ‘I was just named director … if there was champagne, then it must have happened while I was pushing the mail cart.’ Joan continued, ‘I learned a long time ago not to get all my satisfaction from this job.’ Peggy says that’s ‘bullshit’ (Igla and Weiner, 2010). The women look at each other and laugh. As the two women share a cigarette in this scene, they partially penetrate the agency’s gendered inequity regime with the building of a discursive bridge (Flores, 1996). To the extent that they move past their moment of recognition, their achievement of their standpoint will mark whether the women share an authentic alliance or just a moment of commiseration.
As Peggy matured in skill with Don’s coaching, sponsorship and critical career developmental mentoring functions (Bosley et al., 2009) she became ambivalent. In Peggy’s case, ambivalence is not necessarily a weakness, but rather ‘a strength to resist collapsing complex and contradictory material into an orderly whole’ (Flax, 1990: 50). She was ambivalent about the lack of recognition for her personal contributions to ad campaigns and the agency’s finances, as well as the personal costs and lack of respect she endured (Oglensky, 2008). Indeed the intimate nature of her relationship with Don and the emotions that informed her loyalties could inevitably become the undoing of their mentoring relationship as Peggy becomes more ambivalent. At the same time, she acknowledged and was grateful for her career visibility and exposure as Don’s mentorship over time helped to secure her a promotion from secretary to copy writer (Buzzanell and Goldzwig, 1991). As his protégé, she learned to be both assertive and passive or feminine − hallmarks for gendered career success (Buzzanell and Lucas, 2006). She also emulated the masculine style of providing unelaborated but crisp responses to questions, but feminine, or indirect and ambient, information gathering styles (Tannen, 2001). For example, Peggy asked for and got an office with a window next to Don’s corner office. She requested that her ideas be heard and used, and she often took the lead in creative team work. She told Don directly that she wanted what he has, and she also kept his confidences. She was loyal to Don, but adamant about her own desires.
Although Peggy sometimes saw into the dysfunctionality of SCDP, she did not pursue offers to leave until the close of Season 5. Mentorship processes, workplace interactions and observations of the reward structure taught Peggy her place in the social order and agency hierarchy. The structural aspects of workplace processes constrained Peggy’s agency, leaving her ambivalent (Connidis and McMullen, 2002). In the end, her loyalty to Don seemed to trump her ambivalence about the agency. Her loyalty made her indebted to Don, although this loyalty did not require full reciprocity. As Don was celebrated for his pending marriage, Peggy’s workplace successes were largely ignored. Her recourse was a shared cigarette with Joan and an acknowledgement of their shared ambivalence toward their bosses, gendered relations and their work at SCDP. Gonick (2003) explains that women often feel ambivalent about the contradictions and conflicting expectations within discourses of dominant femininities. These contradictions have certain consequences in terms of how individuals position themselves. In the case of Mad Men mentoring, Peggy rejected other work offers, staying with SCDP despite persistent gendered inequities, and retaining her role as Don’s loyal daughter-figure.
Erotic mentoring
Finally, Mad Men mentoring relationships tap into the erotic nature of mentoring. Erotic mentoring refers to the personal relationships developed between men and women where men attempt to mold women ‘to fit their own masculine ideals’ (Rushing, 2006: 1). Our reading uncovers a complex set of unconscious desires and archetypes that unfold when considering Don and Peggy’s relationship. These multidimensional mythic characters offer insight into fantasy-based elements of mentoring that contribute to organizational sensemaking.
To begin, even as life and work events might seem to prompt change in their behaviors, characters adhered to their core qualities and values. Peggy began as the Brainchild in her original role as the new secretary. The Brainchild ‘is not a soul-mate who complements a man with her feminine radiance, but one who mirrors his masculinity in a perfectly rational reflection’ (Rushing, 2006: 76). True to the Brainchild who did not need to engage in sex with the mentor, she began to see herself as special because others did so. For instance, Freddy, an account executive in Season 1, recognized her talent when she behaved analytically during a focus group with women who were trying different shades of lipstick. After observing the women in the focus group, Peggy noticed that they each preferred their signature shade, and subsequently came up with the ‘basket of kisses’ and the lipstick to ‘mark your man’ ideas. In this instance, she was not afraid to disagree with the client who believed that women want many different lipsticks. As the Brainchild, Freddy’s and later Don’s reliance on and encouragement of Peggy’s ideas awakened career dreams in her that were not viewed as typical in the 1960s masculine world of advertising. In this way, as the Brainchild, Peggy relies more on praise from men than sex with men. She receives praise when she engages in rational, analytic behaviors that are traditionally construed as masculine.
Peggy looked to the men for career developmental mentoring, but as the series continued, so did Peggy’s desire for a new mentor who was an attractive and successful female researcher. Peggy attempted to subvert the gendered order at SCDP through a female-to-female mentoring relationship. She approached Dr Faye Miller, a research consultant, in Season 4 because Peggy admired Faye. She asked to talk to Faye and expressed her admiration for the woman who seemed to have it all together and was taken seriously by men. Faye was both surprised and flattered at this assessment of her professional image, but she was unwilling to take on a mentee. Faye seemed to be the Amazon in the original mythic sense. According to Rushing, the Amazon is a fighter who embodies ‘strength, courage, and independence’ (Rushing, 2006: 165). The Amazon is often depicted not only as a soul-mate to men, but also as someone turning their passion and intellect toward equality and a voice for the disenfranchised. They make their own way with the absence of men (Rushing, 2006).
Faye wielded ‘intellectual power’, was ‘skilled in battle’ and a force ‘to be reckoned with’ (Rushing, 2006: 169). She was also competent, beautiful, feminine and masculine. These qualities may have been what attracted Don to her in the first place. During her affair with Don, Faye told him that she decided not to have children, not because she did not like children, but because she prioritized her work. She had the human and social capital for success: advanced degrees, careful work execution as a social scientist, professional self-presentation of herself in suits but with bright lipstick and a ready smile, and professional demeanor at the office. She used her femininity to draw out women’s focus group responses so that they could relate to her – for instance, during a Pond’s cold cream focus group, she was perceived as attractive but not so much so that she was deemed incompetent or a threat to SCDP agency women (Buzzanell, 2001). Ultimately, Faye was admired but discarded by Don, who chose a fiancée who could relate to his children and not privilege her work over his needs. Because Faye did not display stereotypical female attributes, we assume that Don did not see the potential for a long-term commitment with Faye. Our reading of the failed mentoring relationship between Peggy and Faye is more complicated than the problematic idea that women will not help each other out because of the entangled relationships among Don, Peggy, Faye and Don’s fiancée Megan. However, women who privilege their own career over that of their partner and who embody the strength of the Amazon are alone. Amazons do not fight against women, any more than Faye turned against Peggy, but instead fight against the perceived and stereotypical characteristics of the feminine because such (feminine) qualities are undervalued in the workplace. They embody the qualities that garner success for men in the workplace, but often garner disrespect or ostracism from others (Rushing, 2006). In Faye’s case, she is valued for her work and her ability to carve a professional path, but is not perceived as able to have both career and family.
In sum, erotic mentoring helps characters to maintain and secure places in the agency. Peggy, the Brainchild, is Don’s female counterpart who holds his confidences, generates creative ideas, and comes to recognize her career dreams and talents through association with other male employees. Peggy is mentored because she has exchange value. As long as she is useful, she can present herself as an employee whose talents are worth developing. However, her work is supportive of others’ work, which she constantly fights because she believes that her unique talents should be recognized. Whereas men can engage in this competitive individualism, she is reminded that she is a team player. When she attempts to forge new relationships and potential alliances with other women, she is turned away.
Discussion
Our reading of Mad Men reveals mentoring processes that fulfill varied functions, forms, ambivalences, and productive and dysfunctional aspects. Creator Matthew Weiner notes this is a realistic drama of human interactions. Indeed, viewers see what characters are thinking and feeling through facial expressions, flashbacks and off-stage moments in private spaces, instead of through monologues or lengthy reality TV-type explications of every movement. Mad Men depicts mentoring processes that are formal in form and career developmental in function during creative team work processes, but are exigency-driven, informal, multidirectional and momentary in nature during other times. Moreover, these mentoring relationships coalesce around the intimate, ambivalent and erotic aspects of mentoring. Although mentoring is primarily traditional insofar as the expert or more experienced male – and almost always someone in a legitimate position of power – advises, sponsors and guides newcomers or younger agency members, our reading underscores the non-rational aspects of these relationships. In this section, we highlight several theoretical contributions and consider how these popular culture depictions can inform everyday gendered mentoring practices and relationships today.
First, our reading of popular cultural portrayals of Mad Men mentoring indicates that mentoring teaches people how to present themselves so that their accomplishments are noted and they are positioned for employability, security and promotion in the main ‘line’ or business (e.g. profit centers). However, these rational outcomes are ironically attained through non-rational and semi- or unconscious mentoring processes. Our reading proposes that these mentoring processes are still systematic, albeit a different system fraught with emotion, status cravings, insecurities and stereotypical gender expectations. In fact, these processes could be construed as part of a highly rational mentoring system, but not one based in the rational-legal ideological system that we presumably believe in and practice. Instead, Mad Men mentoring depicts the ways in which characters center on personal goals and desires as experienced every day based on the contexts in which they live. In the case of Mad Men, it could appear that Don simply sponsors Peggy, but our argument unpacks the underlying intimate, ambivalent and erotic connections that solidify their relationship. Combined, these emotional and subversive processes move people, like Peggy, into positions of visibility and exposure and prompt consideration of the intersections of rational and non-rational aspects of workplace processes (Buzzanell and Goldzwig, 1991). The surfacing of intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring offers a counterbalance to the rational notions of mentoring that are perpetuated in much mentoring research and popular materials.
Second, Mad Men mentoring is not formal mentoring, but instead the moment-to-moment episodic or spontaneous career advice that arises from specific exigencies or conversations (Buzzanell, 2009). In this respect, Mad Men mentoring is constituted communicatively, rather than communication being the tool whereby mentoring takes place. That is, communication is the site of meaning construction around mentoring, communication is a ‘historically situated, always-political, always-material, and always-contingent social practice,’ and, therefore, communicatively constituted mentoring processes are inherently ambiguous, dilemmatic, uncertain and paradoxical (Kuhn, 2012: 549). Our reading of Mad Men reveals the constitutive process embedded within a rich and changing context. When seen as a communicatively constituted process, mentoring is deeply embedded and interwoven into organizational culture and practices. Furthermore, there are different ways in which mentoring becomes constituted communicatively and relationally depending on the value of each participant and the specific knowledge, skills and aptitudes that he or she brings. Understanding how these dynamics are developed in a day-to-day, moment-to-moment fashion, with much mentoring not being formal and explicit or even acknowledged as an informal mentoring relationship, but episodic or exigency-based, provides a more robust understanding of everyday mentoring.
Third, in Mad Men, there are moments of emancipatory action that may partially disrupt the gendered order of workplace relations, such as when Peggy’s and Joan’s talents are recognized as useful for creative production. However, these moments do not lead to sustained change. Indeed, our reading of Mad Men mentoring shows that it is primarily the white, middle- and upper-class, heterosexual, Protestant males who retain privilege and engage in career developmental mentoring processes and outcomes. Mad Men shows how mentoring encourages mentee development that, at times, seems to advance mentees’ desires for work recognition, but that also maintains the gendered status quo. In short, Don mentors Peggy for meritocracy. By meritocracy, we mean mentoring that rewards merit, organizational contributions and efficient work practices, and ignores or downplays potential differences based on gender, race or class. Accordingly, meritocratic mentoring is not concerned with structural and cultural transformations of organizational processes that promote asymmetrical gendered relations (Alvesson and Due Billing, 2009; Perriton, 2009). Meritocratic mentoring systems can set people up for disappointment, especially when they do not know the unwritten rules (Sabattini, 2011), how to use other personal qualities for advancement, and are the recipients of paradoxical messages with regard to gender expectations (Gherardi, 1995). In Mad Men, Peggy desires career advancement, but must also play by Don’s rules. Each advancement Peggy attains in the organization is tempered by a moment, interaction or circumstance in which colleagues remind her that she is a woman in a man’s world. Yet, Peggy’s advancement and good work act in concert with Don’s mentoring work to secure Don’s position of power within the organization.
The issue is that those in privileged positions have the power to justify their decisions and habitually reconstruct workplaces and organizing more to their liking. Our reading suggests that those in power would rather lose talent than lose the foothold they have secured. Meritocratic mentoring may be well meaning and supportive of excellence, but it cannot change the gendered social fabric. In this way, Mad Men mentoring relationships maintain and secure places in the organization because these relationships solidify and reinforce power differentials, as well as privilege particular forms and bases of knowledge.
Fourth, Mad Men’s portrayal of gendered workplace processes displays the struggles over everyday gendered performances and how characters navigate conflicting expectations around gender. In doing so, the show makes visible dominant cultural rules regarding gender, and offers ideas for how to constitute mentoring differently and for greater equity through shared ambivalences, a constitutive approach and resilience. Mad Men provides depictions of overt and covert sexism whereby reflective male and female viewers might see themselves and note how much has not changed in 50 years (Josey, 2010; Swim and Cohen, 1997). Part of the show’s appeal may be in the way it exposes men’s and women’s workplace relationships beneath the guise of 1960s’ family values. In this way, Mad Men depictions offer a glimpse into the socio-political-historical context in which workplace relations were embedded, such that viewers can trace the roots of workplace discrimination. Accordingly, it becomes apparent how gendered, raced and classed discourses may work to underwrite dominant ways of doing management and mentoring today (Runté and Mills, 2006). In terms of gender politics, contemporary work contexts are presumably enlightened and responsive to overt and repressive displays of difference. Thus viewers may find themselves pulled into the drama of Mad Men by what they intellectually envision as a socio-historical-cultural narrative deemed accurate by the show’s creators, and by what they recognize as contested and reproduced even today, albeit in more subtle forms. Viewers may find pleasure in recalling past collective memories of gender power struggles and the hope that the characters will enact more contemporary forms of agency that might dissolve or at least challenge the institutionalization of hegemonic masculinity. Yet the shared discourse of meritocracy and the tokenism of singular women who achieve (constrained) career success belie progress, just as the numbers of women in top positions worldwide in all sectors provides empirical proof as to the persistence of gender inequities today. Pragmatically, then, popular cultural depictions of the workplace might offer a safe space whereby viewers can (re)consider their own actions and how their behaviors perpetuate or transform asymmetrical gendered relations in the workplace. The beauty of pop culture is that viewers can objectively analyze these behaviors if they are self-reflexive and mindful.
Fifth, the mentor–protégé relationships of Mad Men are wrought with ambivalence, emotions, neuroses and shifting loyalties. Characters exemplify the ambivalences of mentoring relationships as individuals navigate organizational and interpersonal politics. For example, Peggy is both abused and nurtured by her relationship with Don as he demands long working hours such that her personal life suffers, but he also keeps her indiscretions to himself, offering advice about how to cope and move on. Peggy’s ambivalence highlights the insidious nature of being mentored for one seemingly transparent system, while in fact the workplace is encoded with unwritten gendered rules that perpetuate inequities (Buzzanell, 1995). As such, intimate and ambivalent mentoring processes consider the feelings of parties involved, how they impact mentoring outcomes, and the emotional aspects of mentoring relationships (Oglensky, 2008).
Sixth, whereas it is not surprising that traditional and nontraditional mentoring takes place, Mad Men’s archetypal and mythic dynamics may explain part of the appeal of the show and how its creators have remained true to the characters’ qualities throughout the five seasons. Our reading considers how human interactions regarding mentoring tap into deep archetypal images (Jung, 1990). Rushing proposes that ‘myths should help us, then, not only as ways into our individual and collective dilemmas … but in lighting pathways out of them’ (Rushing, 2006: 15). In revealing the myth for what it is, our erotic mentoring reading can contribute to the development of ‘counter-mythologies’ that free mentees from their indebtedness to dominant mentors and change the gendered order of traditional mentoring relationships (Munro and Huber, 2012). For example, understanding mentoring dynamics set within the turbulent and rapidly changing 1960s world of Mad Men offers insight into the ways that lack of attention to directed and personalized mentoring means that the characters replay their mistakes in new contexts and do not grow out of the erotic and exclusionary processes in which they are embedded. Recognition of these erotic processes is powerful because it offers a site in which power–control dynamics and the complexities of human nature become visible in deeply embedded (archetypal) struggles.
Finally, our reading of Mad Men mentoring extends and complicates alternative mentoring models by problematizing dysfunction. Mentoring research has challenged the assumption that these relationships are positive for all parties (e.g. Scandura, 1998). Drawing upon explications of dysfunction in interpersonal relationships (Duck, 1994), dysfunctional mentoring describes relationships where the parties attempt to diminish others in the mentoring dyad or cluster through sabotage, theft of intellectual property, bullying, intimidation, enticement or demands for sexual favors, failure to give credit for another’s ideas, and other sins of omission and commission (Rushing, 2006; Simon and Eby, 2003). In other words, the relationship is not working for one or both parties (Scandura, 1998). However, Oglensky (2008) argues that attempts to characterize mentoring relationships exclusively as dysfunctional may exaggerate the problems by ignoring the subtle nuances, ironies and contradictions of mentoring relationships. Our emphasis on the non-rational and gendered aspects of mentoring points to the complexities of relationships that may at first appear dysfunctional. For instance, Don’s reliance on Peggy to keep his indiscretions secret may at first appear manipulative but, within an intimate mentoring frame, these incidents establish a subversive, reciprocal loyalty that binds Don and Peggy together.
In extending the ideas considered in this reading of Mad Men, future research could ask viewers what they learn from characters and plots and what they understand about creative industries and dynamics of gender by watching this show. This endeavor could also consider the possibility of alternative readings of Mad Men given that the gaze of the viewer can vary based on cultural and gendered positioning. Mad Men features neurotic, familial, erotic and other dynamics playing out in the workplace in a way that resembles organizational behavior relegated to the past and behaviors that are similar to, but not identical to, the contemporary workplace. Although these presentations are presumably for entertainment, they also offer a way to learn about organizational norms (Buzzanell and D’Enbeau, 2013). Research indicates that the willingness, ability and kinds of mentoring in which people are engaged are based on their own experiences. These experiences may be actual engagement in mentoring processes or they may be virtual, vicarious or ambient. However, the point that mentoring is a phenomenon with significant career consequences suggests that depictions of intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring, although entertaining, should be discussed and problematized as non-normative.
In conclusion, Mad Men offers a popular cultural site in which the multiple layers of mentoring become visible. Exploring how such mentoring takes place and with what consequences offers much for discussion in organizational and popular communication.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are especially grateful to the Associate Editor, Nick Turner, and the reviewers for their invaluable assistance with earlier drafts of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.