In the Flesh: Mad Men s3e03 'My Old Kentucky Home'

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana said that in 1905, and people have been misquoting it ever since. ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ invites us to remember our own past in the light of people incapable of remembering theirs. Watching Roger Sterling serenade his child bride, Jane (Peyton List), in blackface, heedless of the world changing around them, is profoundly revolting. When he leans in to plant a kiss on Jane, he smears her face with bootblack, leaving her looking like she’s daubed her cheek and jaw with a little bit of shit. The crowd looks on in a confused mixture of amusement, disgust, and embarrassment. They look at one another to gauge the reactions of the group. They change their expressions to mirror those of the people around them. 

Sally reading Edward Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Grandpa Gene (Ryan Cutrona) echoes this same theme of historical insight, as does Kinsey’s (Michael Gladis) marijuana dealer ribbing him for dropping his original Jersey accent. Ignorance of the past, disconnection from what it has to teach, is not a circumstance, but a decision. An accent shed. A book left unread. An accordion left in a closet, and a husband who doesn’t care about why it might be there. Greg’s (Sam Page) anger and humiliation at having botched an operation and killed or maimed a patient, and his desire to conceal this from his wife, Joan (Christina Hendricks), leads him to intentionally embarrass her by guilting her into playing for their dinner guests. 

It’s an iconic scene, and one that lays out in perfect detail the genius of Hendricks’ performance, a sort of layered Kabuki act, both constrained and enabled by appearance. Her mask-like expressions, exquisite makeup and styling, her exaggerated but highly intentional body language, and beneath the kissy face and the cutesy French pronunciation, black rage staring out of her eyes. Here’s someone who has never failed to learn from circumstance, and still she’s restrained by the ignorance and willful obfuscation of others. She has to make a spectacle of herself, just as Roger chooses to at his garden party. She has to stand there, shit on her face, and smile.