Mad Men’s Blackface Episode Will Now Contain Title Card Warning of “Disturbing Images”

Mad Men now joins Community, Golden Girls, and 30 Rock as the latest TV show to take precautionary measures around an episode featuring blackface, according to Variety. The Emmy-winning drama, which AMC announced Wednesday will soon be available to stream on Amazon Prime, will now feature a title card on the third episode of Season 3, “My Old Kentucky Home,” warning viewers that it contains “disturbing images related to race in America.”

The title card will appear before the episode on all platforms, Variety reports. Per AMC’s announcement Wednesday, Amazon has acquired international streaming rights for the show and will be its new streaming home starting July 15. The show was previously available to stream on Netflix.

Mad Men is an award-winning drama set in New York’s competitive advertising world in the 1960s. The blackface episode features a scene in which the character Roger Sterling (John Slattery) sings an offensive song as part of a minstrel performance. The title card will provide context for the scene and will read as follows, per Variety:

“This episode contains disturbing images related to race in America.
One of the characters is shown in blackface as part of an episode that
shows how commonplace racism was in America in 1963. In its reliance
on historical authenticity, the series producers are committed to
exposing the injustices and inequities within our society that
continue to this day so we can examine even the most painful parts of
our history in order to reflect on who we are today and who we want to
become. We are therefore presenting the original episode in its
entirety.”

This is a slightly different approach than other shows contending with episodes featuring blackface. Tina Fey, for example, opted to have four episodes of 30 Rock completely pulled from platforms, issuing an apologetic statement about the “pain they have caused.” Community, The Office, and Golden Girls have all followed suit, pulling episodes from digital platforms, as creatives across Hollywood contend with the industry’s racially insensitive past amid ongoing national protests sparked after the death of George Floyd.

Mad Men, it should be said, is a period drama that often worked to examine problematic aspects of American culture in the 1960s. Unlike shows like 30 Rock, which are contemporary and used blackface as a punchline, the deployment of blackface in Mad Men is a reflection of its characters and the social circles they inhabited. While that doesn’t ameliorate the use of blackface, it does explain why the show would opt for a title card instead of pulling the episode in its entirety.

HBO Max found itself in a similar position recently after pulling the 1939 film Gone with the Wind from its streaming library, sparking a debate about how to handle valorized but deeply problematic cultural touchstones. Days later, the streamer reinstated the film, updating it to include a four-minute introduction by TCM’s Jacqueline Stewart who contextualizes the movie’s complicated, racist legacy. At this rate, it won’t be the last streaming film or series to make this kind of move.

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