An episode of Mad Men was censored by Netflix

A “blackface” scene prompted the platform to remove it from the catalog.

While the series about an advertising agency in the 60s has been broadcast by Netflix since August 13, one episode has caused problems, to the point of being ousted from the catalog… without warning viewers. The streaming service had nevertheless communicated about the online release of “the integral” of Mad Menthis summer. Telerama And Release today share the same observation: season 3 is missing number 3, which therefore has 12 episodes instead of 13.

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Broadcast a series set in the mid-60s in New York, in the very masculine and “old game” advertising requires looking at certain points which could, in the light of our times, pose problems.

Netflix, new broadcaster of Mad Men since August, has therefore decided to delete an episode, certainly because it contained a passage where one of the main characters made up in black – officially, this choice has not been commented on by the platform. This openly racist gesture is more commonly called “blackface”. Initially the preserve of the theatrical world in the 19th century in the United States, this process was truly popularized in 1915 with the release of one of the first blockbusters in history: Birth of a Nation. In the film, which takes place during the Civil War, we see several black characters… played by white people, crudely made up to try to create an illusion. If today, DW Griffith's feature film is universally considered racist and is no longer taught except through the prism of its technical inventiveness, blackface has survived it. Almost a century later, Mad Men used the same “artifice”. To better denounce it? That was without counting on Netflix.

My Old Kentucky Homethe third episode of season 3, originally broadcast on AMC in 2009, sees the head of the advertising agency, Roger Sterling (John Slattery), launch into a poor imitation of a black singer, all the while painting his face, still black. Faced with the hilarity of the guests, the main character also invited, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), asks his wife to leave. A sign of a perceptible embarrassment and therefore a criticism of blackface by the production.

Faced with the accusations, the production company Lionsgate responded to the Los Angeles Times in 2020 take negative comments from its fans very seriously. At the time, the studio decided to display this message at the beginning of the episode: “This episode contains disturbing images related to race in America. One of the characters is depicted as black in an episode that highlights how racism was rife in America in 1963. By drawing on historical authenticity, the show's producers are committed to exposing the injustices and inequalities in our society that continue to this day, so that we can examine even the most painful parts of our history to reflect on who we are today and who we want to become. We are therefore presenting the original episode in its entirety.”

For nearly four years, as it moved between platforms, Mad Men was therefore using this banner before the broadcast of the famous E03S03. Netflix, for its part, decided to purely and simply remove the episode from the catalog, confirming the idea that blackface is no longer in use, and especially not in a series potentially seen by millions of people. A strong choice that could set a precedent? Or an excess of zeal? Our colleagues at Telerama accuse the platform of censorship, writing that “It is not by sweeping the problems of history under the carpet that we resolve them.”

Note that this type of episode deletion is usually requested by the producers, not the broadcasters: the creators of Scrubs have decided, for example, to no longer submit the one featuring blackface to streaming services. The same goes for an episode of The Simpsons removed from the catalog by Fox.

In cinema too, the use of blackface has shocked audiences: Robert Downey Jr., for example, had to defend his role in Thunder in the Tropicsinsisting that it had been imagined to denounce a Hollywood trend and certainly not in the first degree.

Robert Downey Jr.: “Tropic Thunder is about how blackface is immoral”