Compare and contrast, Ocean’s 11 (1960) and Mad Men [Media Notes 20]

I’ve just watched the original Ocean’s 11 (1960), featuring members of the (infamous) Las Vegas Rat Pack: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop (kissing cousins to JFK). Angie Dickinson had a role too, and Shirley McLaine had a cameo; they were in a group of fellow travelers known as “Rat Pack Mascots”. And you know what? Compared to the turn of the millennium Las Vegas in the Soderberg remake (2001) the Las Vegas of the Rat Pack glory years looks like a cheesy truck stop – you know, one of those mega stops that serves as a hub where truckers stop, full-up, maybe get some repairs, take a shower, chow down on diner food, play the slots, and maybe visit a prostitute. But that’s an aside.

I was thinking Mad Men, let’s compare Mad Men with the original Ocean’s Eleven. Both, of course, are fiction. But O11 is fiction set in the time it was made while MM was made in the early 2000s but set in the 1960s. They’re set in different worlds, but the high end Madison Avenue advertising world certainly had a Rat-Packy it’s a man’s world vibe. MM of course was a much more extensive exploration of that world and took us deep into the grit and grime behind the glamour in a way that was only hinted at in O11. But still...

I’m thinking of a brutal scene in O11 where Sinatra is confronted by his mistress, who is upset that he’s just had a visit from his wife (Dickinson). He makes it quite clear that she serves in his life at his pleasure. Period. End of Story. As concentrated a display of paternalistic misogyny as I can remember seeing. Ever. Perhaps to be compared with the firm’s prostitution of Joan Holloway to land a client in MM.

And race. Sammy Davis did sing and dance in O11 – that’s how he made his living, no? – but his occupation was garbage man. Race in MM? It was there of course – wasn’t one of junior execs dating a black woman? I vaguely recall a very competent black secretary.

What I’m thinking about, though, is irony. My first instinct is that neither O11 or MM is particularly ironic, though there are ironic bits and angles, there always is. I’m imagining that irony would emerge though the comparison as an aurora encompassing the two eras, the 1960s and the 2000s. The two works, of course, are different in tone and intent. O11 is a heist film, and a buddies film (different walks of life represented in Ocean’s gang, all sides of the tracks). But then, isn’t advertising something of a heist; isn’t the world of MM a conman’s world?

As I say, I think a detailed comparison would illuminating. This is only a hint, a feint, at what’s there.

As Kojak used to say, Who loves ya’ baby.

* * * * *

RESET! I misspoke. The ending of Ocean’s Eleven reeks of irony, even a distant relative of the irony that feel into place at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, believe it or not.

Not sure I do. Haven’t thought that last bit through. 

I will note however that it ends very differently than the Soderberg remark and that difference is worth a comment or three. Soderberg engineered the remake so we could feel good about the heist being successful. Not so the original. The heist was successful until the very end. That's where the irony closed it down. The Princes of Serendip intervened on behalf of the conventional morality of the time.