The virtues of Mad Men
Indian Summer
There is a beautifully filmed bit at 38:40 of this episode. A shot right out of film noir. We see whisky pouring into an old-fashioned glass. The room is lit as it would be for evening. A hand picks up the glass and we see the man drinking is Donald Draper. His face is darkly lit. Then the here is knock at the door and we cut to another camera angle to see Don turning to face the person about to enter.
The problem is that he has been staring out into bright Manhattan afternoon. The whole beautiful noirish shot before doesn't fit here.
This whole episode has that quality. Nothing here fits.
Why just turn on the shower
I mentioned Stephanie in a story I wrote a while ago. She—unlike others in my stories—is based on a very real person and I have very fond memories of her.
Anyway, when I was teenager, the WaterPik massaging shower head was introduced to the world. I was intrigued. We didn't get one because my parents never got any of the new things. We visited a relatives place in P-town one summer, though, and they had one. The next morning I climbed in, twisted the dial to one of the massage settings and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Flash forward a few years to my first meeting with Stephanie. A bunch of us were sitting around the Café Alternative. Somehow WaterPik came up in conversation. I mentioned how unimpressed I was with it. Stephanie, whom I did not yet know laughed at me and said, "That's because you're not a girl."
And suddenly it all made sense. WaterPik's slogan originally was "Why just turn on the water when the water can turn you on."
Everyone, even slow types like me, eventually figures out that these shower heads are really for women to masturbate with and not to massage your neck but there is some sort of tacit agreement that no one ever says it in so many words. There still at it, the latest ads say:
In any case, the theme running through this issue is the quiet world of women's sexuality that was supposedly completely unknown before the 1960s. The problem, of course, is that the very device the writers use to introduce the theme suggests that people did know. And that is not surprising because they did.
New York, 1960
We open the action with lovely shot that could have come out of an Edward Hopper painting. Everything in it is just perfect.
Except for one thing. Adam Whitman—for it is the hotel where he is living—commits suicide. Why?
No explanation is ever given. Are we to imagine he kills himself because Don won't let him into his life? Is that believable.
No it isn't. The whole scene, in fact Adam's character, exists only to introduce a box. A box in plain brown paper marked personal. This recalls a similar box sent by Jim Hobart in an earlier episode.
Peggy
From a virtue ethics perspective, the really interesting character this episode is Peggy Olson. her special abilities were first noticed by Freddy Rumsen and it is again he who suggests her to write copy for the weight loss belt that turns out to be a masturbatory aid just like the WaterPik and the massage unit in the old Sears catalogue.
The first thing about this plot line is that her character shows moral development in an absolutely convincing way. She changes without ceasing to be who she is. And that is fascinating because Elizabeth Moss is not anything resembling a great actor. She is a mediocre player in a good part. She never shows great courage or power and that is good because she would be timid in real life. But, just as is possible in real life, she maanges to develop real virtue over the course of the show.
Given her weight gain, for example, the moment when she is offered the chance to produce copy about this product is potentially deeply humiliating. With a room full of men watching her, she demonstrates how you can be strong despite being shy and uncertain.
We also see an interesting development of her relationship with Don. She and Pete both have related to Don a little like children up until now. Peggy continues to develop under his tutelage. He makes a stern father figure, cutting her no slack. When she is uncertain about making her presentation, he simply says, "This the way it's done." And she flourishes under that.
This brings up one of the interesting paradoxes we see in the show. Women seem to do better in the supposedly irredeemable sexist atmosphere of this past era than they ought to be able to do. It isn't unique to the show. A similar phenomenon appeared in the film Pleasantville where Jennifer, played by Reese Witherspoon, chooses to stay in the past precisely because it offered more opportunity for personal growth than the present.
The problem with both that earlier film and Mad Men is that there is no problem. That is to say, in both cases this is absolutely convincing. One on-line publication—I think it was Slate—actually ran an article worrying about why the women on Mad Men seemed so much more convincingly liberated than they ought to. It's a good question.
It gets even trickier when you consider women like my mother who successfully managed to live exactly the independent womanhood that was supposed to be impossible at the time. Managed to do that and raise four children.
None of which is to say that there weren't lots of things that needed to be changed about how women were viewed and treated in society back then. But I think one of the reasons why this characterization is convincing is that liberation was more a matter of women changing themselves than changing the society around them.
(And I won't harp on it again because I've had my say elsewhere, but we can see lots of women cheerfully throwing it all away in 2010.)
Desperate housewife
But we cannot leave Peggy and her development aside without talking about Betty. her relationship with Don is just as much a dependency as Peggy's. Only everything is different. With every episode she gets more helpless and more childlike. There is an odd interaction with a door-to-door salesman in this episode that is supposed to suggest the beginning of rebellion on her part.
The first thing about it is that Betty answers the door in her nightie. The day is well-started and she still hasn't gotten dressed. We get no explanation of the kids are out. Betty tries to act tough. She tells the salesman that her husband is a salesman and tries to make it clear to him that she is immune to his appeal. It has the exact oposite effect.
Apparently unbeknown to the salesman, Betty is interested. She just is interested in air conditioners. She leads him upstairs towards teh bedroom and it is pretty clear from her facial expression what she wants.
And then she changes her mind abruptly.
And then she gets even more perverse. For no reason at all, she lets Don know the guy was in the house. He reacts in a way we might treat as Neanderthal if we didn't know that his fear was justified.
Okay but Don is cheating on her you say. True but what does that change about her behaviour? Virtue isn't about what other people also do.
And then we get an old Joan Rivers' joke brought to life. Betty gets off while pushing the washing machine back into place when it began to shake off its stand during the spin cycle. She pushes herself against it and then we get to see her fantasy acted out. (I'm told the dryer is better for this particular ah "functionality" than washers for whatever that is worth.) Again, this is Joan Rivers joke from the 1980s passing as deep insight into the plight of women in the 1960s.
The take away lesson, however, is that Betty is an immature little brat and she is getting worse.
(Oh yeah, speaking of things out of place: As Betty's sexual fantasy plays out, we hear Astrud Gilberto singing Agua de Beber. When she, um, "finishes" we still hear the song only with the sound quality changed so it is clear that it the sound is coming out of the radio in her kitchen. That is a pretty neat trick for a cut that won't be recorded until 1965.)
A conversation
There is a ice, terse little scene between Peggy and some boy from the old neighbourhod. Their mothers have set them up for this and they have a little fight about staying in your place (his view) versus breaking out (her view).
At one point this guy makes the perfectly valid point that Peggy isn't like the Manhattan types she talks about so much. And it is true but she wants to be like them. And here is how she justifies it:
Finishing thought, again and again, I find myself wondering if the creators of this show realize just how subversive they are being. The foundations of all post 1960s liberalism are crumbling here. "Advertising is good, people never think it works."
If you are joining me here, this series starts here.
The next post in the series is here.
Indian Summer
There is a beautifully filmed bit at 38:40 of this episode. A shot right out of film noir. We see whisky pouring into an old-fashioned glass. The room is lit as it would be for evening. A hand picks up the glass and we see the man drinking is Donald Draper. His face is darkly lit. Then the here is knock at the door and we cut to another camera angle to see Don turning to face the person about to enter.
The problem is that he has been staring out into bright Manhattan afternoon. The whole beautiful noirish shot before doesn't fit here.
This whole episode has that quality. Nothing here fits.
Why just turn on the shower
I mentioned Stephanie in a story I wrote a while ago. She—unlike others in my stories—is based on a very real person and I have very fond memories of her.
Anyway, when I was teenager, the WaterPik massaging shower head was introduced to the world. I was intrigued. We didn't get one because my parents never got any of the new things. We visited a relatives place in P-town one summer, though, and they had one. The next morning I climbed in, twisted the dial to one of the massage settings and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Flash forward a few years to my first meeting with Stephanie. A bunch of us were sitting around the Café Alternative. Somehow WaterPik came up in conversation. I mentioned how unimpressed I was with it. Stephanie, whom I did not yet know laughed at me and said, "That's because you're not a girl."
And suddenly it all made sense. WaterPik's slogan originally was "Why just turn on the water when the water can turn you on."
Everyone, even slow types like me, eventually figures out that these shower heads are really for women to masturbate with and not to massage your neck but there is some sort of tacit agreement that no one ever says it in so many words. There still at it, the latest ads say:
The Perfect shower changes the way you feeland
Experience the power, where you need it, when you need it
There is even a setting so you can save more water while you take care of the little things.If you ever see an old Sears catalogue from the 1950s or 1960s, take a moment to find the electric massager. It was a little plug in device that came in a case with a bunch of different heads. Again, the text offered all sorts of relief and relaxation. The actual device was only good for one kind of relief. Actually, those old devices were much better than the battery powered options today's supposedly better off women have foisted upon them (and no, I will not explain how I know that).
In any case, the theme running through this issue is the quiet world of women's sexuality that was supposedly completely unknown before the 1960s. The problem, of course, is that the very device the writers use to introduce the theme suggests that people did know. And that is not surprising because they did.
New York, 1960
We open the action with lovely shot that could have come out of an Edward Hopper painting. Everything in it is just perfect.
Except for one thing. Adam Whitman—for it is the hotel where he is living—commits suicide. Why?
No explanation is ever given. Are we to imagine he kills himself because Don won't let him into his life? Is that believable.
No it isn't. The whole scene, in fact Adam's character, exists only to introduce a box. A box in plain brown paper marked personal. This recalls a similar box sent by Jim Hobart in an earlier episode.
Peggy
From a virtue ethics perspective, the really interesting character this episode is Peggy Olson. her special abilities were first noticed by Freddy Rumsen and it is again he who suggests her to write copy for the weight loss belt that turns out to be a masturbatory aid just like the WaterPik and the massage unit in the old Sears catalogue.
The first thing about this plot line is that her character shows moral development in an absolutely convincing way. She changes without ceasing to be who she is. And that is fascinating because Elizabeth Moss is not anything resembling a great actor. She is a mediocre player in a good part. She never shows great courage or power and that is good because she would be timid in real life. But, just as is possible in real life, she maanges to develop real virtue over the course of the show.
Given her weight gain, for example, the moment when she is offered the chance to produce copy about this product is potentially deeply humiliating. With a room full of men watching her, she demonstrates how you can be strong despite being shy and uncertain.
We also see an interesting development of her relationship with Don. She and Pete both have related to Don a little like children up until now. Peggy continues to develop under his tutelage. He makes a stern father figure, cutting her no slack. When she is uncertain about making her presentation, he simply says, "This the way it's done." And she flourishes under that.
This brings up one of the interesting paradoxes we see in the show. Women seem to do better in the supposedly irredeemable sexist atmosphere of this past era than they ought to be able to do. It isn't unique to the show. A similar phenomenon appeared in the film Pleasantville where Jennifer, played by Reese Witherspoon, chooses to stay in the past precisely because it offered more opportunity for personal growth than the present.
The problem with both that earlier film and Mad Men is that there is no problem. That is to say, in both cases this is absolutely convincing. One on-line publication—I think it was Slate—actually ran an article worrying about why the women on Mad Men seemed so much more convincingly liberated than they ought to. It's a good question.
It gets even trickier when you consider women like my mother who successfully managed to live exactly the independent womanhood that was supposed to be impossible at the time. Managed to do that and raise four children.
None of which is to say that there weren't lots of things that needed to be changed about how women were viewed and treated in society back then. But I think one of the reasons why this characterization is convincing is that liberation was more a matter of women changing themselves than changing the society around them.
(And I won't harp on it again because I've had my say elsewhere, but we can see lots of women cheerfully throwing it all away in 2010.)
Desperate housewife
But we cannot leave Peggy and her development aside without talking about Betty. her relationship with Don is just as much a dependency as Peggy's. Only everything is different. With every episode she gets more helpless and more childlike. There is an odd interaction with a door-to-door salesman in this episode that is supposed to suggest the beginning of rebellion on her part.
The first thing about it is that Betty answers the door in her nightie. The day is well-started and she still hasn't gotten dressed. We get no explanation of the kids are out. Betty tries to act tough. She tells the salesman that her husband is a salesman and tries to make it clear to him that she is immune to his appeal. It has the exact oposite effect.
Apparently unbeknown to the salesman, Betty is interested. She just is interested in air conditioners. She leads him upstairs towards teh bedroom and it is pretty clear from her facial expression what she wants.
And then she changes her mind abruptly.
And then she gets even more perverse. For no reason at all, she lets Don know the guy was in the house. He reacts in a way we might treat as Neanderthal if we didn't know that his fear was justified.
Okay but Don is cheating on her you say. True but what does that change about her behaviour? Virtue isn't about what other people also do.
And then we get an old Joan Rivers' joke brought to life. Betty gets off while pushing the washing machine back into place when it began to shake off its stand during the spin cycle. She pushes herself against it and then we get to see her fantasy acted out. (I'm told the dryer is better for this particular ah "functionality" than washers for whatever that is worth.) Again, this is Joan Rivers joke from the 1980s passing as deep insight into the plight of women in the 1960s.
The take away lesson, however, is that Betty is an immature little brat and she is getting worse.
(Oh yeah, speaking of things out of place: As Betty's sexual fantasy plays out, we hear Astrud Gilberto singing Agua de Beber. When she, um, "finishes" we still hear the song only with the sound quality changed so it is clear that it the sound is coming out of the radio in her kitchen. That is a pretty neat trick for a cut that won't be recorded until 1965.)
A conversation
There is a ice, terse little scene between Peggy and some boy from the old neighbourhod. Their mothers have set them up for this and they have a little fight about staying in your place (his view) versus breaking out (her view).
At one point this guy makes the perfectly valid point that Peggy isn't like the Manhattan types she talks about so much. And it is true but she wants to be like them. And here is how she justifies it:
Him: Advertising doesn't work on me, it's just a lot of people screaming at you from the walls and the TV.And what are we to make of that. Take Peggy's side here and you are taking more than one side of a petty argument at a restaurant.
Peggy: Advertising is good, people never think it works.
Him: How do they know it does. Did they ever prove that?
Peggy: Why are you insulting what I do?
Him: (repeating something she said earlier) "So you drive a truck?"
Peggy: You do.
Him: I'm my own boss, you know. You get off the train every day at Grand Central and they spray you with gold? Let me tell you, you can act like you're from Manhattan but you don't look like those girls.
Peggy gets up to leave.
Him: hey hold on. That wasn't nice.
Peggy: I feel sorry for you.
Him: I said I'm sorry.
Peggy: Those people? In Manhattan? They aren't better than us. It's that they want things they haven't seen.
And she leaves.
Finishing thought, again and again, I find myself wondering if the creators of this show realize just how subversive they are being. The foundations of all post 1960s liberalism are crumbling here. "Advertising is good, people never think it works."
If you are joining me here, this series starts here.
The next post in the series is here.
"liberation was more a matter of women changing themselves than changing the society around them."
ReplyDeleteI took a graduate level course in Liberation Theology in the mid-80s, and by the end of the course I had reached the same conclusion, that liberation--no matter who you are--comes from within, and that is the Good News. When I presented this to the professor, she reluctantly agreed.