The virtues of mad men
The Beautiful Girls
I thought it was mostly a beautiful and moving episode, like a Fellini movie.
The key line I thought was when Dr. Faye leaned down and told Sally, "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do." She might have added it's companion which is like unto it, "Sometimes we have to not do the things we want to do." "We" meaning women in this case.
I thought it was a beautiful and moving episode about the plight of women and just as much about the plight of women now as back then. Everywhere they are faced with the tension between opening one door (or, as Roger would put it, opening a dress) only at the cost of closing others.
I kept thinking of Jean Paul Lemieux paintings. This one:
And this one:
That last one is called "La Mort par un clair matin" or "Death on a clear morning"
Vignettes
It's hard to know where to start. I loved how Roger after trying to restart his affair with Joan for so long inadvertently succeeds by being kind.
That may not seem like much but I think it's something we boys never get over. We spend so long pursuing women and think of them only the as ones denying us that it never occurs to us that in denying us they are denying themselves too. Denying themselves for all sorts of reasons good and bad. (And we do have to wonder what Joan will do if she conceives as a consequence of this encounter. We know she is no longer on the pill.)
There is Miss Blankenship who ends up dying as "she lived, surrounded by the people she answered phones for." The last thing Miss Blankenship says to Peggy is, "It's a business of sadists and masochists, and you know which one you are." But we also know that remark is literal as well as figurative because Ida Blankenship had a surprising past as "the queen of perversions" and a relationship with Roger that was resented by Bert who, I think we are entitled to presume, was genuinely in love with her as we see further evidence this week. (And who do you think was whom—as in top or bottom—in the relationship with Roger?)
There are the lovely interactions with Megan. First there is the moment where she asks Joyce if she is there to see Peggy. Did you catch that? There was ever so brief a hint of jealousy in Megan's voice. Not to say that Megan desires Joyce (although maybe she does in which case the tragedy would be that Joyce can't see it because Megan is too beautiful). It's just that brief desire to step out of the confines and, as a wonderful Mary Gaitskill story has it, really connect with another woman. Then there is the way Sally reacts to Megan. The little girl is naturally more attracted to the most beautiful woman in the office in way that she isn't attracted to, picking a not so random example, Dr. Faye.
And there is the whole Dr. Faye interaction. I didn't see any outside references at all so we can't guess how much time has passed since the last episode but Don and Faye have obviously had time to fall in love. And they have had enough time for Faye to feel all sorts of troubling tensions about how she might or might not fit into Don's life.
But I think it is more the road not taken that haunts her. Anyone who has worked with children knows that it is very easy to connect with children if given the chance and very difficult if you don't have that chance. Spend a little time in their company and you figure out their world and how to communicate with them. But drift away from that world and you lose the touch. Faye knows that she could do it if she wanted but she didn't want and now she is still stuck with a feeling of inadequacy.
(To get the opposite side of the story, read Jane Austen or hang around with day care workers. Austen does a lovely job of showing what being constantly in the company of children does to our brains and conversation. Every young woman has watched her friends' lives narrow and infantilize when they start spending all their time with children and has wondered if they want to do that. And every childless woman has felt the tug of the choice not made.)
The left and feminism
One of the nicest touches here is the way Peggy's leftist friend Abe shows himself to be absolutely clueless about the plight of women in the mid 1960s. For many people this will seem wrong but it's historically accurate. The 1960s left was stupid about women, effectively telling women that their contribution to the revolution was to provide comfort to the brothers. And it was this insensitivity that caused feminism to part ways with the rest of the left in the early 1970s.
It's something that has never changed as witness the way way women on the left were expected to swallow their principles and defend Bill Clinton or some of the vicious anti-woman attacks made by Obama supporters against Hilary Clinton. A woman who lived in the apartment upstairs from the Serpentine One and I back in the 1990s quit the Canadian Liberal Party because she got tired of being ghettoized in women's issues. Anytime she tried to talk about something else, she wasn't taken seriously.
The point here is not that the other political philosophies are any more friendly to women but that everywhere women are faced with these dichotomies even, or perhaps, most particularly, in situations where they are offered what passes for greater freedom.
But what is a woman to do if she can trust neither political allies or her lovers?
Clowns
This shot at the end was the moment most like Fellini:
I'm drawing a blank on the music unfortunately. Usually I can peg it but not this week but it also sounded Felliniesque.
Anyway, fans of Kierkegaard may remember that he has a wonderful little parable of the clown from the circus who is sent to warn the people of a nearby town that there is an approaching fire that threatens them and their town. The problem is that no one will take him seriously because he is wearing a clown suit and the town is burned.
Way back in 1969, the then Joseph Ratzinger noted that the seeming solution to the problem—that the man should just take off the clown suit—isn't available to us. That's the big lie of modernism. That we can simply take off our clown suits and be "as we really are". No amount of liberation can ever get us out of our clown suits.
That was the point of every Fellini movie: we can't take off our clown suits. Anyone who has seen Amarcord will note the strong resemblance between Joan and the Gradisca.
Few people feel very sorry for beautiful girls but they too are clowns and they cannot take off their clown suits. No matter how they try they remain beautiful girls. Until they stop being beautiful girls like Miss Blankenship did. There is a moment and then the door closes.
The post on the next episode will be here when there is a next post.
For anyone crazy enough to go even further :
Season three blogging begins here.
Season two, if you are interested, begins here.
Season one begins here.
The Beautiful Girls
I thought it was mostly a beautiful and moving episode, like a Fellini movie.
The key line I thought was when Dr. Faye leaned down and told Sally, "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do." She might have added it's companion which is like unto it, "Sometimes we have to not do the things we want to do." "We" meaning women in this case.
I thought it was a beautiful and moving episode about the plight of women and just as much about the plight of women now as back then. Everywhere they are faced with the tension between opening one door (or, as Roger would put it, opening a dress) only at the cost of closing others.
I kept thinking of Jean Paul Lemieux paintings. This one:
And this one:
That last one is called "La Mort par un clair matin" or "Death on a clear morning"
Vignettes
It's hard to know where to start. I loved how Roger after trying to restart his affair with Joan for so long inadvertently succeeds by being kind.
That may not seem like much but I think it's something we boys never get over. We spend so long pursuing women and think of them only the as ones denying us that it never occurs to us that in denying us they are denying themselves too. Denying themselves for all sorts of reasons good and bad. (And we do have to wonder what Joan will do if she conceives as a consequence of this encounter. We know she is no longer on the pill.)
There is Miss Blankenship who ends up dying as "she lived, surrounded by the people she answered phones for." The last thing Miss Blankenship says to Peggy is, "It's a business of sadists and masochists, and you know which one you are." But we also know that remark is literal as well as figurative because Ida Blankenship had a surprising past as "the queen of perversions" and a relationship with Roger that was resented by Bert who, I think we are entitled to presume, was genuinely in love with her as we see further evidence this week. (And who do you think was whom—as in top or bottom—in the relationship with Roger?)
There are the lovely interactions with Megan. First there is the moment where she asks Joyce if she is there to see Peggy. Did you catch that? There was ever so brief a hint of jealousy in Megan's voice. Not to say that Megan desires Joyce (although maybe she does in which case the tragedy would be that Joyce can't see it because Megan is too beautiful). It's just that brief desire to step out of the confines and, as a wonderful Mary Gaitskill story has it, really connect with another woman. Then there is the way Sally reacts to Megan. The little girl is naturally more attracted to the most beautiful woman in the office in way that she isn't attracted to, picking a not so random example, Dr. Faye.
And there is the whole Dr. Faye interaction. I didn't see any outside references at all so we can't guess how much time has passed since the last episode but Don and Faye have obviously had time to fall in love. And they have had enough time for Faye to feel all sorts of troubling tensions about how she might or might not fit into Don's life.
But I think it is more the road not taken that haunts her. Anyone who has worked with children knows that it is very easy to connect with children if given the chance and very difficult if you don't have that chance. Spend a little time in their company and you figure out their world and how to communicate with them. But drift away from that world and you lose the touch. Faye knows that she could do it if she wanted but she didn't want and now she is still stuck with a feeling of inadequacy.
(To get the opposite side of the story, read Jane Austen or hang around with day care workers. Austen does a lovely job of showing what being constantly in the company of children does to our brains and conversation. Every young woman has watched her friends' lives narrow and infantilize when they start spending all their time with children and has wondered if they want to do that. And every childless woman has felt the tug of the choice not made.)
The left and feminism
One of the nicest touches here is the way Peggy's leftist friend Abe shows himself to be absolutely clueless about the plight of women in the mid 1960s. For many people this will seem wrong but it's historically accurate. The 1960s left was stupid about women, effectively telling women that their contribution to the revolution was to provide comfort to the brothers. And it was this insensitivity that caused feminism to part ways with the rest of the left in the early 1970s.
It's something that has never changed as witness the way way women on the left were expected to swallow their principles and defend Bill Clinton or some of the vicious anti-woman attacks made by Obama supporters against Hilary Clinton. A woman who lived in the apartment upstairs from the Serpentine One and I back in the 1990s quit the Canadian Liberal Party because she got tired of being ghettoized in women's issues. Anytime she tried to talk about something else, she wasn't taken seriously.
The point here is not that the other political philosophies are any more friendly to women but that everywhere women are faced with these dichotomies even, or perhaps, most particularly, in situations where they are offered what passes for greater freedom.
But what is a woman to do if she can trust neither political allies or her lovers?
Clowns
This shot at the end was the moment most like Fellini:
I'm drawing a blank on the music unfortunately. Usually I can peg it but not this week but it also sounded Felliniesque.
Anyway, fans of Kierkegaard may remember that he has a wonderful little parable of the clown from the circus who is sent to warn the people of a nearby town that there is an approaching fire that threatens them and their town. The problem is that no one will take him seriously because he is wearing a clown suit and the town is burned.
Way back in 1969, the then Joseph Ratzinger noted that the seeming solution to the problem—that the man should just take off the clown suit—isn't available to us. That's the big lie of modernism. That we can simply take off our clown suits and be "as we really are". No amount of liberation can ever get us out of our clown suits.
That was the point of every Fellini movie: we can't take off our clown suits. Anyone who has seen Amarcord will note the strong resemblance between Joan and the Gradisca.
Few people feel very sorry for beautiful girls but they too are clowns and they cannot take off their clown suits. No matter how they try they remain beautiful girls. Until they stop being beautiful girls like Miss Blankenship did. There is a moment and then the door closes.
Season 4 blogging begins here.
For anyone crazy enough to go even further :
Season three blogging begins here.
Season two, if you are interested, begins here.
Season one begins here.
These are interesting comments and I like your comparisons to Fellini. I agree with you that in the '60s men were clueless about women's issues--I was one of them. But notice how Peggy seemed to be equally clueless about the "Negro Problem" until she reads Abe's piece. In the bar she says that as a woman she's not allowed to do the things "they" want to do. Although his piece infuriates her when she first reads it, it has an impact as we see when she she asks Don why SCDP is representing a company that won't hire Negroes.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that was most telling for me in this episode is that of all the beautiful girls, it was only Megan--the secretary--who reached out to Sally and comforted her. Sally wrapped her arms around her because she was the only woman there who felt for her, and Megan knew exactly what to do. Joan, Peggy, and Faye stood there--a train wreck someone on another site described it--more concerned with Don than Sally. But even before that they tolerated Sally, especially Faye. She told Don she likes children but didn't want any of her own but even that was a lie--the way she related to Sally when she stayed with her in the office showed that. Let's not even mention Betty the mother when she and Sally were reunited in the reception area. It's not a coincidence that Joan had two abortions, Peggy gave her baby up for adoption, and Faye said she doesn't want any children. And she told her old boyfriend she "doesn't cook!" And 30 yrs from now she'll wonder why she's still alone with her Ph.D hanging on the wall. These women are a disaster, feminism or no feminism. They lack, to use your word--Virtue. They might be beautiful but I wouldn't want any of them.
We could read the Megan response to Sally in a lot of ways. She relates to younger children. We know from past episodes that Joan connects well with teenagers and we also know that Joan has good reasons to dislike Sally.
ReplyDeleteAs to Peggy, I think the thing to keep in mind is how narrow her experience is. She's never been on a plane.
I also wonder how many people notice offensive hiring practices of firms they deal with. There was a chain of health food stores here in Ottawa that only hired young attractive women to work the cash. I once asked the owner and he patiently explained his theory that women had more manual dexterity than men do (my sister was one of the beneficiaries of hiring practices so I didn't ask him to explain why only young and attractive women had this extra dexterity).
Anyway, the point is that we tell ourselves that there is something unusually naive about Peggy when she is probably typical of the time.
But, we should also note, that when she does bring it up with her Harry Belafonte suggestion, all the men at the meeting already know but none see any need to do anything about it.
All that said, the person I found irritatingly naive was Abe.
I don't know why Joan has good reasons to dislike Sally--am I forgetting something from a past episode, or how she relates well to teen-agers?
ReplyDeleteThe thing that bothered me about all three women was their utter lack of maternal instinct. I don't have children but I don't deny that I have paternal instincts. I express them in appropriate ways as the opportunities present themselves, and there are always opportunities, especially in this day and age. These women are so narcissistic, everything is always--and only--about them, and it is so unbecoming. I've always believed that Joan is a shallow opportunist, last night proved it. Its interesting that the younger guys at the office have never expressed an interest in any of these women other than to mock them, and deservedly so. Poor Ida Blankenship is a premonition of all of them, her death was an omen--"she died as she lived surrounded by those she answered phones for"--that probably none of them will heed.
And by the way, Weiner took a great deal of license in Joan and Roger's back-alley tryst. For a man Roger's age, with a heart condition, and his bad habits--smoking and drinking--to be able to perform like that at a moment's notice is highly unlikely!
BTW, another blog mentioned the number 666 on another building that was visible through the reception window when Sally is brought to the office by the woman who found her on the train, and that there were a few references to Satan in last night's episode. I didn't catch them, did you?
ReplyDeleteInteresting about the 666. No I didn't notice. 666 would be an Antichrist reference. In any case, I missed it and I'll have to watch again to see.
ReplyDeleteThe reason Joan might not be so big on Sally is from the Three Sundays episode in season 2 when Don ends up having to bring Sally with him while works on the American Airlines pitch. Poor Joan is saddled with Sally and it's not a pleasant experience for her.
My cynical view on the heart attack is that it dates from season one when Slattery was just a guest part and they meant to write him out. Then they noticed how well the audience responded every time he was on screen and decided to keep him.
Since then, they have sort of forgotten all about his two heart attacks. They are a little like Murphy Brown's baby, they get mentioned from time to dime but they don't have much to do with his actual life.
No, remember last night after Ida died and he and Joan are alone in his office, Roger mentioned the two heart attacks in the office, and that if it happens again she should open a window so he can jump.
ReplyDeleteNow I remember the incident with Joan and Sally, but that was 5 yrs ago, and Joan's supposed to be the grown-up here. Again, no maternal instinct. I wonder why she and her husband are trying to concieve, probably because he wants children.
Yes, the 666 would be an anti-Christ reference, so what does that mean in light of the Christian references this season? Is Weiner just playing games with us?
666 5th Avenue is one of the iconic buildings on New York it is the GE building now, and not a Satanic reference...
ReplyDelete