It happened again last night, this time on Mad Men. I had finally talked my husband Mark, who was initially put off by the program’s depictions of unsavory behavior among our parent’s generation, to try again and we were halfway through season two when the plot took a dreaded turn.
A dog entered the story.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Mark said.
So we waited. Waited as this one bedded that one, as one drink gave way to five, as the man with the dog struggled with alcoholism and estrangement from his children.
“He loves that dog,” Mark said, as in his loneliness the man petted and protected the Irish Setter named Chauncey. We sat on separate sofas, Mark and I, flanked by two dogs each, four sleeping dogs snoring and whimpering in dreams, four dogs with at least twice that many breeds between them.
“Exactly,” I said. But secretly I hoped. I hoped because this was a good show, damn it, a show built on three-dimensional characters and dialogue that never stayed within the lines. A show that didn’t do the obvious thing, take the well-worn path, surrender to cliché. But I should not have hoped. Because in due time the man, succumbing to despair, walked the impeccably groomed Chauncey to the front door of Sterling Cooper’s Madison Avenue building, detached the leash, and handed him over to the Manhattan night and traffic, to strangers and almost certain death. One bark, then nothing.
In that instant, the writers did what writers nearly always do. We had recognized the odds as soon as Chauncey took his first spritely step onto the screen. Because dogs are never dogs in films or television shows, they are symbols. They are lessons. They are tear-jerking plot devices. They are Chekhov’s gun: Once introduced in Act One, they must pay off in Act Three. Cheap, cheap, cheap shot.
Curious to see what other viewers had said at the time the episode first aired, I went to AMC’s Mad Men blog. A few viewers felt outrage, but there were more who found the scene no big deal: “Someone else will find the dog, take it home and treat it well,” one viewer wrote. Another said, “I am a major animal lover and I thought it was sad/surprising when he let Chauncey go but I was more struck by what it said about Duck. To me, it showed that Chauncey was better off finding a new family than with him…I assume the dog will be fine.” I assume the dog will be fine.
Isn’t it pretty to think so.
That a dog can thrive if turned loose on city streets is a convenient fiction…just as it is a convenient fiction that the dog dumped on the rural interstate will find its way to a bucolic farm with kindly farm folk just waiting for a dog to happen along and live happily ever after, chasing cows and barn cats… just as it is a convenient fiction that the dog surrendered by its owner to the county animal control will be adopted--being, you know, so special and all. We don’t have enough time to do right by this dog is what people say. We love the dog dearly, but now we have a baby on the way is how the emails to rescue groups are worded. We’re moving across the country, they say, no other explanation apparently required. Or, worst of all, we’re going on vacation.
You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe that some people would just as soon dump their dog at animal control to be killed almost immediately because they are going on vacation and figure they’ll get another one upon their return. Oh, but it’s true. It’s the reason that every person involved in dog rescue feels a little crazy, a little despondent, or very, when Fourth of July approaches, say, or Memorial Day.
Let me explain how animal control works, because I need to put it in black and white, need to remind myself that my own parents did this to a stray dog whom I had named and come to love when I was nine or ten. Pepper. For Pepper’s sake, and for the sake of every dog surrendered to every animal control across this dog-loving and dog-hating nation, let me articulate it here.
When dogs are picked up as strays, the county or municipal animal control is supposed to hold the dog a certain number of days to allow the owner to locate it, if, in fact, it has an owner. Some wait six days, some wait four, but those dogs are supposed to be “safe” for that interval, after which they can be put up for adoption or destroyed. However, when an owner walks into animal control and surrenders a dog (or cat), that animal can be euthanized immediately if space is an issue, which it almost always is in certain parts of the country (such as the South, where I live now) or if the officer in charge just feels like keeping things tidy. After all, the one person who is most likely to care for the dog has just washed his hands of it, delegated the problem to municipal functionaries who may or may not give a damn.
Gas chambers, heart sticks, euthanasia performed on a slotted floor that’s hard to stand on, but easy to clean. Is this upsetting? You damn well better believe it is, and I could easily launch into a lecture about the importance of the No Kill movement, but that is not my purpose here. No, my purpose is to say to the writers who so glibly, who so easily turn the abandoned dog, the lost dog, the dead dog into a symbol, simply this: Dogs are not your pawns to move around, your whores to buy and discard after an hour, your jerk off tools, your shorthand for character, your cheap trick. To kill a dog off in a movie or a television show or a story is the most predictable, the most bush league move you can make. And every time you do it, you breathe life into the idea that dogs are expendable, nothing but props, and that human convenience and narrative expediency take precedence.
That’s why, when a dog enters the story, I pull my own dogs a little closer. That’s why I prepare to suffer. Because even Mad Men's writers, even they could not resist.
A dog entered the story.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Mark said.
So we waited. Waited as this one bedded that one, as one drink gave way to five, as the man with the dog struggled with alcoholism and estrangement from his children.
“He loves that dog,” Mark said, as in his loneliness the man petted and protected the Irish Setter named Chauncey. We sat on separate sofas, Mark and I, flanked by two dogs each, four sleeping dogs snoring and whimpering in dreams, four dogs with at least twice that many breeds between them.
“Exactly,” I said. But secretly I hoped. I hoped because this was a good show, damn it, a show built on three-dimensional characters and dialogue that never stayed within the lines. A show that didn’t do the obvious thing, take the well-worn path, surrender to cliché. But I should not have hoped. Because in due time the man, succumbing to despair, walked the impeccably groomed Chauncey to the front door of Sterling Cooper’s Madison Avenue building, detached the leash, and handed him over to the Manhattan night and traffic, to strangers and almost certain death. One bark, then nothing.
In that instant, the writers did what writers nearly always do. We had recognized the odds as soon as Chauncey took his first spritely step onto the screen. Because dogs are never dogs in films or television shows, they are symbols. They are lessons. They are tear-jerking plot devices. They are Chekhov’s gun: Once introduced in Act One, they must pay off in Act Three. Cheap, cheap, cheap shot.
Curious to see what other viewers had said at the time the episode first aired, I went to AMC’s Mad Men blog. A few viewers felt outrage, but there were more who found the scene no big deal: “Someone else will find the dog, take it home and treat it well,” one viewer wrote. Another said, “I am a major animal lover and I thought it was sad/surprising when he let Chauncey go but I was more struck by what it said about Duck. To me, it showed that Chauncey was better off finding a new family than with him…I assume the dog will be fine.” I assume the dog will be fine.
Isn’t it pretty to think so.
That a dog can thrive if turned loose on city streets is a convenient fiction…just as it is a convenient fiction that the dog dumped on the rural interstate will find its way to a bucolic farm with kindly farm folk just waiting for a dog to happen along and live happily ever after, chasing cows and barn cats… just as it is a convenient fiction that the dog surrendered by its owner to the county animal control will be adopted--being, you know, so special and all. We don’t have enough time to do right by this dog is what people say. We love the dog dearly, but now we have a baby on the way is how the emails to rescue groups are worded. We’re moving across the country, they say, no other explanation apparently required. Or, worst of all, we’re going on vacation.
You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe that some people would just as soon dump their dog at animal control to be killed almost immediately because they are going on vacation and figure they’ll get another one upon their return. Oh, but it’s true. It’s the reason that every person involved in dog rescue feels a little crazy, a little despondent, or very, when Fourth of July approaches, say, or Memorial Day.
Let me explain how animal control works, because I need to put it in black and white, need to remind myself that my own parents did this to a stray dog whom I had named and come to love when I was nine or ten. Pepper. For Pepper’s sake, and for the sake of every dog surrendered to every animal control across this dog-loving and dog-hating nation, let me articulate it here.
When dogs are picked up as strays, the county or municipal animal control is supposed to hold the dog a certain number of days to allow the owner to locate it, if, in fact, it has an owner. Some wait six days, some wait four, but those dogs are supposed to be “safe” for that interval, after which they can be put up for adoption or destroyed. However, when an owner walks into animal control and surrenders a dog (or cat), that animal can be euthanized immediately if space is an issue, which it almost always is in certain parts of the country (such as the South, where I live now) or if the officer in charge just feels like keeping things tidy. After all, the one person who is most likely to care for the dog has just washed his hands of it, delegated the problem to municipal functionaries who may or may not give a damn.
Gas chambers, heart sticks, euthanasia performed on a slotted floor that’s hard to stand on, but easy to clean. Is this upsetting? You damn well better believe it is, and I could easily launch into a lecture about the importance of the No Kill movement, but that is not my purpose here. No, my purpose is to say to the writers who so glibly, who so easily turn the abandoned dog, the lost dog, the dead dog into a symbol, simply this: Dogs are not your pawns to move around, your whores to buy and discard after an hour, your jerk off tools, your shorthand for character, your cheap trick. To kill a dog off in a movie or a television show or a story is the most predictable, the most bush league move you can make. And every time you do it, you breathe life into the idea that dogs are expendable, nothing but props, and that human convenience and narrative expediency take precedence.
That’s why, when a dog enters the story, I pull my own dogs a little closer. That’s why I prepare to suffer. Because even Mad Men's writers, even they could not resist.
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