WAT? Roger Sterling in Blackface????
Posted by: elledub08 on: August 31, 2009
If you follow me on Twitter, then you probably saw my shock and awe at seeing Roger Sterling in Blackface on last night’s episode of Mad Men. Wat? Blackface? In the 60s? I was in disbelief. In my last post I talked about my frustrations with the lack of race commentary on the show. Wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing but I now think that we will see more commentary on race and white privilege in this season than we ever have before on the show.
From Basket of Kisses:
Matt Weiner has been criticized often enough for not quite getting there about race. We have, on this site, discussed “Magical Negroes” in Mad Men, and the Sheila storyline ended up fizzling in an unsatisfying way.
So now that he’s decided to address it, it’s not just a scene or an incident, no, it’s Matt, so it’s a holistic embrace of everything privilege; the privilege of race, of gender, of age, of money, of social class, and of how all of those things intersect.
Surely the most privileged person on the show is Roger Sterling; even more so than YodaBert, because Roger was born with his silver spoon. Roger is so incredibly privileged that he can parade an embarrassingly young wife and make a lot of powerful people treat her politely, and do it, nauseatingly, in blackface to boot. Blackface! (And don’t even try to say “sign of the times;” privileged people still do this). Roger can make people swallow any kind of bad behavior, because he’s got the money, class privilege, and power.
I certainly think Roger in blackface was a symbol of his level of privilege. On another note, I loved seeing the tension between Betty’s father and Carla–of course he accused Carla of taking the money without actually saying, “that n*gger stole my money.” And then when he got her name wrong? “We don’t all know each other, you know”…..a woman after my own heart as I’ve retorted with that in my travels.
Damn…the Black blogosphere might go nuts over this one.
So…what did you all think about Roger in Blackface? Did we like it? Was it a sign of the times? Do we hate him more?
And isn’t Joan’s husband just a complete loser (and a rapist)?
5 Responses to "WAT? Roger Sterling in Blackface????"
[...] Black Girl Blogging is horrified by Roger’s blackface. [...]
September 9, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Wow, I love MM and didn’t know about this because the new episodes of series 3 haven’t hit the UK yet.
[...] Black Girl Blogging is a Mad Men fan. I found out about this through Basket of Kisses, the pre-eminent Mad Men fan site online. Elle at BGB has written some pieces on the new episodes of series 3 of the critically acclaimed series [...]
September 25, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I was incredibly shocked to see Roger Sterling in blackface, for the exact same reasons you were. It really made me think that if guys did blackface in the 1960’s, are there people who do it today? I’d hate to think so, but at least it’s considered far more socially unacceptable now.
It doesn’t change my opinion of “Mad Men”, because that’s still a great show whose intention is not exploitation.
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September 3, 2009 at 2:14 am
The kind of club that Roger holds his party in is the perfect setting for Roger’s performance, if Lawrence Otis Graham is to be believed:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=173
That being said, I don’t find my opinion of Roger changing from this. Of course he’s a WASP supremacist – there’s never been any doubt about that. I felt that having everyone but Don and Pete seemingly amused was a bit off. I am not aware that Roger has any actual friends, just people he works with and who he thought liked him.
I know a woman at work who’s in her 50s. She’s been the first black woman to have authority over whites in a number of jobs, and been called “arrogant” and everything else. Very interesting and intelligent woman. I’d love to see her represented on the show — But how? How to get it into Sterling Cooper?
I remember when Roger told Don that BBDO (?) had hired a colored. Don said, “I wouldn’t want to be him,” which was interesting as Don’s empathy went straight to the black man. And who WOULD want to be him, glad as we all are that it happened?
I read somewhere an unsupported assertion that we’d get someone black working at Sterling Cooper this season. No idea if it’s true. It would be hard to fit it in believably, but we’ll see. I’d love for Weiner to take on the subject.