Mad Men, Season Four, Episode One, "Public Relations"
The main client we see in this episode is a nice "family company" that produces two-piece bathing suits, not to be confused with bikinis, which are too immodest and lead to ads that, according to one of the company's reps, look like they belong in "girlie magazines." They come to Don Draper to help them keep up their market share without revealing too much. While Don complains to Roger that the men from this company are just "prudes," it turns out that he has the same problem himself: his new partners expect him not just to be the creative guy he's always been, but to reveal himself in interviews with newspaper reporters as part of the new firm's attempt to sell itself. He's as reluctant to talk about himself on the pages of Ad Age as the bathing suit guys are to show too much flesh in a two-piece ad. The struggle over how much to reveal, the changing nature of (both bathing suits and) identity, and resultant punishment are just three of the themes in this overly-busy episode.
Ever since we first met him three years ago, Don Draper has been the consummate crafter of image, a talented creator of desire--for clients' products and for himself. Until late last season, he's always been able to focus attention away from his identity (or lack thereof) and cast a spotlight elsewhere. But, now things have shifted. His identity--always in flux--has changed: from creative director to partner in a fledgling firm; from philandering husband, never at a loss for the company of women he desires, to divorced man attending an arranged date with a woman who tells him 'no' and paying a prostitute to bed him. He wants to continue creating ad campaigns and keep the lid on himself: "My job is to write ads, not talk about who I am." But, his new job--and new partners--won't allow that. When he refused to reveal much to the Ad Age reporter interviewing him, all hell broke loose over the Draper the writer constructed in his article. Don tells Bert Cooper: "Who gives a crap what I say anyway? My work speaks for me." Cooper sets him straight: turning his creative work into new business for SCDP "is your work."
And Don's creative self is doing quite fine work. His TV ad for Glo-Coat floor polish is--we're told--revolutionary for not even seeming to be an ad at first. He wanted to make it "indistinguishable from the movies." And it does look like the beginning of a film with a focus on what appear to be jail bars, bars with a young boy behind them. But, as the camera pans out, we see that the boy is just playing jail under the kitchen table with an upside down chair in front of him. Don's becoming a film maker and, as so many film makers, we can see something of himself in his creation. Who is this boy? Is it Don as a child? Bobby? Is he reflecting his trapped childhood? Is he worried about Bobby, trapped with Betty? An image of a child being punished reflects another theme here. There's a lot of punishing going on here: the child in jail, Don's prostitute slapping him at his demand, Betty's passive-aggressive jabs at Don (staying out past the time she told him to bring the kids home, having the baby gone when he comes to pick the kids up). The punishments that relate to Don seem to offer us a glimpse into his feelings about all of the changes wrought in his life in the last year. Thinking about the ways he's let his kids down can lead to guilt.
As his personal life offers its challenges, he lets some of that spill out at the office. Which leads to a resolution of sorts: in the final meeting with the bathing suit guys, Don presents them a provocative visual ad he had to know they wouldn't care for. But, he knows it could work. "You'll get them [customers] into the store. Isn't that the point?" When the gentlemen express their doubts, Don pushes them: "You need to decide what kind of a company you want to be. Comfortable and dead or risky and possibly rich." He storms out of his office and as Pete is trying to patch things over, Don heads back in and kicks the would-be clients out. He's decided what kind of ad man he wants to be: creative and risky. We next see him at an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter, regaling the man with stories of how he got out of Sterling Cooper and got the new company founded. He's recognized that professionally he will have to sell himself as well as ad campaigns. He's donned the bikini.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Great Divide--or the Problem with No Name
Mad Men, Season One, Episode Two, "Ladies Room"
"There's something to remember, something to forget. As long as we remember, there's something to regret...." The closing song of this episode is called "The Great Divide" and is by a Swedish band, The Cardigans. Unlike most of the MM closing credit music, this song--first recorded in 1996--was created long after the 1960s; the real life Dons, Bettys, Rogers, and Joans would not have known it. It feels more directed to the new show's 21st century audience, reminding us that we can choose to remember or forget what life was like fifty years ago. Obviously, Weiner and his compatriots hope we'll opt for the former--and watch their show as a means of interpreting that era. And, if we do remember, we're exhorted to realize that there is "something to regret" in this time period. This show isn't about romanticizing the 1950s, which is basically where we still are at the beginning of the series. (Well, maybe we can romanticize the cool clothes.) The death knell for the '50s has rung out; these folks are on the cusp of the new decade; but, the attitudes are still decidedly those the Beat poets and civil rights protesters were struggling against. The chauvanism of the era--male chauvanism, white chauvanism, upper class chauvanism--is heartily on display in this series so we can remember, reflect, and compare.
In this episode, the "Great Divide" is clearly that between men and women. "Ladies Room" actually does such a fine job of dramatizing what Betty Friedan called "The Problem with No Name" that I've used this episode in my 1960s themed composition course to help prepare students to read that chapter of The Feminine Mystique. And, the students REALLY get it. In ways they didn't in semesters before I used MM, they understand what made the Second Wave women's movement so necessary. They are horrified at all the instances of what they're able to name as 'sexual harrassment,' most not realizing that phrase wasn't coined and didn't have any legal standing until many years later. They give the same "No Way!" gasp of shock that I always experience when realizing it's Betty's psychiatrist that Don is phoning from the dark study after the late evening dinner in Manhattan.
Friedan realized ways that mainstream social expectations of American women were toxic to white, middle and upper class women. It would take other writers to highlight the injustices against other women. But, Friedan, who had studied psychology at Smith, understood the way that ideology can enter the psyche, constructing identities that conform to it. And, human psychology then works to perpetuate the ideology--which is why such a 'problem' can be so difficult to free onesself from. Friedan's book devotes a lot of space to the role psychiatrists--and the valium they prescribed--played in the lives of those American women who could afford them as they struggled to discover why they weren't as happy as everything and everyone around them asserted they should be. At this point in the series, it's intimated that Betty is suffering from this affluent women's malaise--a malaise hard to identify, accept, and claw one's way out of when all women heard were statements like what Don says to Betty: "I always thought people see a psychiatrist when they're unhappy. But I look at you, and this, and them...and I think, 'Are you unhappy?'" What can Betty do but respond, "Of course I'm happy"? Was she really one of the many housewives suffering from deep dissatisfaction with the cultural script she was handed? Or, as Season Three suggests, was she unhappy with a husband whom she--at some level--knew was unknown (and unknowable) to her? I don't know that this question has been settled yet. My posts from last season reveal an increasing frustration with--and anger at--Betty. But, in Season One, I have to sympathize with her.
What this episode also does such a good job with is suggesting the extent to which the great divide between men and women was based upon--and perpetuated--a lack of knowledge men had about women (those oppressed--women here--always have to understand their oppressers more than they are understood by them). This lack of understanding is pathetically blatant among the Sterling Cooper men--Kinsey admits to having "stopped trying to figure out what they think" and Roger responds to Don's "What do women want?" question with "Who cares?" Don, though, clueless as he is, does try to discern answers to the question. While he puts Betty on the spot with the question I quoted above, he also tries to puzzle Midge out as well: "I can't decide if you have everything or nothing." Unlike Betty, the beatnik Midge doesn't feel compelled to give Don an answer that will make him happy, instead offering the Zen koan-type response "Nothing is everything."
The theme of lack of knowledge of the other is also highlighted in Betty's puzzling over the identity of Don: in bed one night, she whispers to the sleeping Don, "Who's in there?" This both serves to further the theme of Don as hero with a mysterious past, an identity that is quite complex and perhaps false, and highlight the chasm between men and women--and Don and Betty specifically. Reflections on more great divides will follow in Mad Men, but this episode was a quite fruitful early introduction to them.
"There's something to remember, something to forget. As long as we remember, there's something to regret...." The closing song of this episode is called "The Great Divide" and is by a Swedish band, The Cardigans. Unlike most of the MM closing credit music, this song--first recorded in 1996--was created long after the 1960s; the real life Dons, Bettys, Rogers, and Joans would not have known it. It feels more directed to the new show's 21st century audience, reminding us that we can choose to remember or forget what life was like fifty years ago. Obviously, Weiner and his compatriots hope we'll opt for the former--and watch their show as a means of interpreting that era. And, if we do remember, we're exhorted to realize that there is "something to regret" in this time period. This show isn't about romanticizing the 1950s, which is basically where we still are at the beginning of the series. (Well, maybe we can romanticize the cool clothes.) The death knell for the '50s has rung out; these folks are on the cusp of the new decade; but, the attitudes are still decidedly those the Beat poets and civil rights protesters were struggling against. The chauvanism of the era--male chauvanism, white chauvanism, upper class chauvanism--is heartily on display in this series so we can remember, reflect, and compare.
In this episode, the "Great Divide" is clearly that between men and women. "Ladies Room" actually does such a fine job of dramatizing what Betty Friedan called "The Problem with No Name" that I've used this episode in my 1960s themed composition course to help prepare students to read that chapter of The Feminine Mystique. And, the students REALLY get it. In ways they didn't in semesters before I used MM, they understand what made the Second Wave women's movement so necessary. They are horrified at all the instances of what they're able to name as 'sexual harrassment,' most not realizing that phrase wasn't coined and didn't have any legal standing until many years later. They give the same "No Way!" gasp of shock that I always experience when realizing it's Betty's psychiatrist that Don is phoning from the dark study after the late evening dinner in Manhattan.
Friedan realized ways that mainstream social expectations of American women were toxic to white, middle and upper class women. It would take other writers to highlight the injustices against other women. But, Friedan, who had studied psychology at Smith, understood the way that ideology can enter the psyche, constructing identities that conform to it. And, human psychology then works to perpetuate the ideology--which is why such a 'problem' can be so difficult to free onesself from. Friedan's book devotes a lot of space to the role psychiatrists--and the valium they prescribed--played in the lives of those American women who could afford them as they struggled to discover why they weren't as happy as everything and everyone around them asserted they should be. At this point in the series, it's intimated that Betty is suffering from this affluent women's malaise--a malaise hard to identify, accept, and claw one's way out of when all women heard were statements like what Don says to Betty: "I always thought people see a psychiatrist when they're unhappy. But I look at you, and this, and them...and I think, 'Are you unhappy?'" What can Betty do but respond, "Of course I'm happy"? Was she really one of the many housewives suffering from deep dissatisfaction with the cultural script she was handed? Or, as Season Three suggests, was she unhappy with a husband whom she--at some level--knew was unknown (and unknowable) to her? I don't know that this question has been settled yet. My posts from last season reveal an increasing frustration with--and anger at--Betty. But, in Season One, I have to sympathize with her.
What this episode also does such a good job with is suggesting the extent to which the great divide between men and women was based upon--and perpetuated--a lack of knowledge men had about women (those oppressed--women here--always have to understand their oppressers more than they are understood by them). This lack of understanding is pathetically blatant among the Sterling Cooper men--Kinsey admits to having "stopped trying to figure out what they think" and Roger responds to Don's "What do women want?" question with "Who cares?" Don, though, clueless as he is, does try to discern answers to the question. While he puts Betty on the spot with the question I quoted above, he also tries to puzzle Midge out as well: "I can't decide if you have everything or nothing." Unlike Betty, the beatnik Midge doesn't feel compelled to give Don an answer that will make him happy, instead offering the Zen koan-type response "Nothing is everything."
The theme of lack of knowledge of the other is also highlighted in Betty's puzzling over the identity of Don: in bed one night, she whispers to the sleeping Don, "Who's in there?" This both serves to further the theme of Don as hero with a mysterious past, an identity that is quite complex and perhaps false, and highlight the chasm between men and women--and Don and Betty specifically. Reflections on more great divides will follow in Mad Men, but this episode was a quite fruitful early introduction to them.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Smoke Gets in OUR Eyes--Back to Season One
Mad Men, Season One, Episode One, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"
I've decided, in this hiatus between Seasons Three and Four, to watch Seasons One and Two again and see what they look like from this vantage point--knowing what we now know. And, it's so interesting. I'll periodically file reports from the land of the earlier seasons.
The pilot, fittingly enough, dives right into an early '60s controversy with its focus on the attempts of cigarette companies and their "mad men" to blow smoke in the eyes of a public that was finally being informed of the negative consequences of smoking. Roger, Don, and their cohorts are introduced to us as image crafters, manipulators, and--to put Don's more positive spin on their work--happiness purveyors. As he tells his colleagues and the Lucky Strikes execs: "Advertising is based on one thing--happiness. . . . It's a billboard screaming on the side of a road that whatever you're doing is okay. You're okay." But, we're not to be fooled. They all know that this is B.S. At one point in the meeting with the cigarette execs, Roger disingenuously blames "manipulation of the mass media" for the public's "impression" that cigarettes are the cause of some fatal diseases. Garner--of Lucky Strikes--barks, "Manipulation of the media--that's what I pay you for."
But what couldn't be clear when we viewed the pilot as our first ever "Mad Men" episode--but is now from a distance of thirty-eight additional episodes--is the extent to which Matt Weiner and Company were also blowing smoke in our eyes, presenting mere images as characters, images that would gradually be peeled away over the course of three seasons to allow insight into what have turned out to be characters of incredible and fascinating substance. I am not in the least bit being critical of Weiner and his colleagues when I claim they've been blowing smoke too. I think it's genius. We get to participate in the construction of these characters out of images in ways that are much more meaningful than in your run-of-the-mill show. While it's probably obvious to anyone, even in this first episode, that Sal is gay (Woman they pick up at the strip club: "I love this place. It's hot, loud, and full of men." Sal: "I know what you mean."), the trajectory of the other characters is so less clear. Joan is glorying in her role as the Marilyn-shaped sex object who functions as the madam of the office, sending Peggy off to the gynecologist for the new birth control pill, the better to perform her job. Peggy--mousy and insecure--obliges, having sex with the soon-to-be-wed Pete her first day on the job. She's so surprised to discover that he wants her. Her "me?" after his clumsy seduction is sad now that I know the outcome. I could never have predicted what feminist role models the illusions of Joan and Peggy were masking.
And Don: we aren't even let in on the fact that Don has a wife and children until the very end of the episode. He sleeps at Midge's apartment, flirts with Rachel, never mentions or hears mention of his family. What a surprise it must have been the first time watching to see him walk into that house to a beautiful, smiling, warm-looking Betty. As Julie wrote in a comment here recently, Don really is a dick in this season. But, wait--we aren't to find out about Dick for a number of episodes yet. And Betty? Warm and smiling? How many times in my posts on third season episodes did I refer to her as "cold?" So much is to be revealed about the two of them too. The only one who has pretty much stayed the same is Pete. When he knocks on Peggy's apartment door after his bachelor party and drunkenly says to her, "You must think I'm a creep," I said, "Yep." And three seasons later, I still say "Yep" to that. Oh, well, there has to be some anchor here in this realm of illusion. Or maybe the pulling back of the image that is Pete is what we have in store in Season Four.
I've decided, in this hiatus between Seasons Three and Four, to watch Seasons One and Two again and see what they look like from this vantage point--knowing what we now know. And, it's so interesting. I'll periodically file reports from the land of the earlier seasons.
The pilot, fittingly enough, dives right into an early '60s controversy with its focus on the attempts of cigarette companies and their "mad men" to blow smoke in the eyes of a public that was finally being informed of the negative consequences of smoking. Roger, Don, and their cohorts are introduced to us as image crafters, manipulators, and--to put Don's more positive spin on their work--happiness purveyors. As he tells his colleagues and the Lucky Strikes execs: "Advertising is based on one thing--happiness. . . . It's a billboard screaming on the side of a road that whatever you're doing is okay. You're okay." But, we're not to be fooled. They all know that this is B.S. At one point in the meeting with the cigarette execs, Roger disingenuously blames "manipulation of the mass media" for the public's "impression" that cigarettes are the cause of some fatal diseases. Garner--of Lucky Strikes--barks, "Manipulation of the media--that's what I pay you for."
But what couldn't be clear when we viewed the pilot as our first ever "Mad Men" episode--but is now from a distance of thirty-eight additional episodes--is the extent to which Matt Weiner and Company were also blowing smoke in our eyes, presenting mere images as characters, images that would gradually be peeled away over the course of three seasons to allow insight into what have turned out to be characters of incredible and fascinating substance. I am not in the least bit being critical of Weiner and his colleagues when I claim they've been blowing smoke too. I think it's genius. We get to participate in the construction of these characters out of images in ways that are much more meaningful than in your run-of-the-mill show. While it's probably obvious to anyone, even in this first episode, that Sal is gay (Woman they pick up at the strip club: "I love this place. It's hot, loud, and full of men." Sal: "I know what you mean."), the trajectory of the other characters is so less clear. Joan is glorying in her role as the Marilyn-shaped sex object who functions as the madam of the office, sending Peggy off to the gynecologist for the new birth control pill, the better to perform her job. Peggy--mousy and insecure--obliges, having sex with the soon-to-be-wed Pete her first day on the job. She's so surprised to discover that he wants her. Her "me?" after his clumsy seduction is sad now that I know the outcome. I could never have predicted what feminist role models the illusions of Joan and Peggy were masking.
And Don: we aren't even let in on the fact that Don has a wife and children until the very end of the episode. He sleeps at Midge's apartment, flirts with Rachel, never mentions or hears mention of his family. What a surprise it must have been the first time watching to see him walk into that house to a beautiful, smiling, warm-looking Betty. As Julie wrote in a comment here recently, Don really is a dick in this season. But, wait--we aren't to find out about Dick for a number of episodes yet. And Betty? Warm and smiling? How many times in my posts on third season episodes did I refer to her as "cold?" So much is to be revealed about the two of them too. The only one who has pretty much stayed the same is Pete. When he knocks on Peggy's apartment door after his bachelor party and drunkenly says to her, "You must think I'm a creep," I said, "Yep." And three seasons later, I still say "Yep" to that. Oh, well, there has to be some anchor here in this realm of illusion. Or maybe the pulling back of the image that is Pete is what we have in store in Season Four.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Moving On
Mad Men, Season Three, Episode Thirteen, "Shut the Door. Have a Seat."
The last episode was called "The Grown-Ups," but it's in this one that we see Don finally becoming one. When he berates Conrad Hilton for just wanting to "kick [him] down to size" and connects that with Hilton calling him "Son," Don reveals that he still sees himself as the victimized son of his own father--and continually acts from that position. But something makes him start to rise out of the battered boy role. Is it Hilton's challenge to Don when he tells him that he didn't expect Don to be one of those whiny people, always complaining about what they don't get handed to them? Is it Bert Cooper telling him that he doesn't think Don has what it takes to start his own business? Is it the threat of divorce and the loss of his children that pushes Don to start to behave more like a father--an agent in the world--rather than a down-trodden son who is always acted upon? Whatever it is, we see some changes in how Don relates to those around him, in how he takes charge of his own destiny.
And, unlike what he did in Korea to change his life situation, this time he does it in concert with others. He's part of a team. As his nuclear family is breaking up, his work family is becoming closer. He comes to recognize that his relationship with Betty is irreparable. But--or perhaps because of that--he seeks to fix other relationships that are important to him: with Roger, with Peggy, with Pete. Roger tells him, "You're not good at relationships because you don't value them." That's only partly true. Don hasn't fully valued his relationships. But, it's more because he hasn't valued himself. He's seen himself as his father saw him. Now, instead of looking at the world through his father's eyes, he looks at his father differently. His reactions to the sale of Sterling/Cooper are interspersed with memories of his father dealing with declining crop prices during the Depression. He's recognizing that his father had problems too--as well as caused problems for Don. And as he remembers the horse kicking his drunk father to the ground and his young self running to him--unconscious, bloodied--he recalls crying out, "Daddy!" A much more affectionate name, the name Bobby calls him. His fear (?) at his father perhaps being lost to him is mirrored by Bobby's fear over news of the divorce. "Is it because I lost your cuff links?" has to be the saddest line of the evening. And as Don struggles to explain to his son that his and Betty's actions aren't due to anything Bobby has done, perhaps he's also realizing that his father's actions didn't always have to do with young Dick. And so, he's able to separate somewhat from them.
This growing up on the part of Don manifests itself in continued open, emotional conversations with others. Don is learning to state his needs and ask for things. While his open and emotional confession to Betty did not pay off as he'd hoped, his expression of feeling to Peggy does: "I don't know if I can do it alone. Will you help me?" could be seen as just saying what he needs to say to persuade Peggy to join the new firm, but I think he's sincere. He's been a loner for so long, even in the midst of his marriage and family. That didn't work for him. This seems to be much more effective. When he comes out of the bedroom of the new office suite after severing his ties with Betty, he smiles at the crowd of people there. They've pulled off this coup together; they'll be working in cramped corners together; they'll be tackling multiple jobs (Don types!) together.
And what a team! Joan's back! Yeay! Peggy's back on board with a new confidence (to Don: "Beg me? You didn't even ask me!" And I loved it when Roger asked her if she'd get him some coffee and she just said, "No."). Roger's back in the fold. Lane's on board. Even Pete, whom I don't like, despite last week's reprieve, is a strong addition to this group. We have to have someone to hate from time to time.
Which reminds me to talk about Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. At least this episode seems finally to resolve the question of whether she's named 'Betty' after Betty Friedan. Not. Yes, she's been discontented with her lot, but she has apparently decided that the discontent comes just from being married to Don, not from being in a traditional 1960s marriage. Apparently, the kept woman thing is what she wants. Or all she has the stomach or imagination to go after. So, she's trading one husband whom she realizes she never knew for another husband she doesn't know. And, he doesn't know her. But, as my husband observed, they know what roles they'll play in each other's lives. And that might be enough. A rather pathetic way to live, say I judgmentally, from my more enlightened world. Especially when seen in contrast with what all those in the new ad agency are opting for. But, in 1963, a woman's options were much more limited, especially an affluent married woman with no marketable job skills. Even in today's America, divorce typically leaves a woman in much reduced economic circumstances, while elevating those of the man. And given how she's lived her life to this point, I can't imagine Betty opting for divorce without the "life raft" Don accuses her (justly so) of building. As a single divorced woman, she would have to work at some relatively menial job for not much money; she'd have to do her own housework, not being able to afford a maid--and that after a long day's work; she'd have to give up the horse and that whole lifestyle; and what would happen to the baby while she's working? Her range of choices is extremely constrained, but I still don't like her--as much for how she does what she does as for what she actually does.
But, there is this nagging question that I've seen raised in other online forums, which I hearken back to after watching this episode: is the show's depiction of Betty sexist? I've seen this asked in the context of reflections on how she'll show, for awhile, signs of a woman emerging into raised consciousness, but then revert back to being a stereotypical housewife. Why, I've read, do they show her symptoms of shakiness, etc., have her visit the psychiatrist, only to have that all dropped? Is she just the classic neurotic woman? It's a question I've wondered about too, but I don't see her characterization as sexist. Betty is cold, emotionally unconnected from her children and most people in her life. She's not a good mother, only the latest evidence of this offered tonight as she leaves her two older children for six weeks to fly to Reno to get an easier divorce. This after they've just received the devastating news that their father is moving away from them. She's a horrible person, but some women are like that. Some men are like that.
If this were the only depiction of women on the show, there might be some merit to the charge of sexism, but not when we look at the trajectories that Peggy and Joan have traveled. Peggy has moved from mousy secretary to strong-willed, independent, professional woman who demands better treatment for herself from the men for whom she works--and gets it. Don openly respects her now. And, while we don't see Roger get up to get his own coffee, he accepts her refusal to do it for him.
Joan has moved from the sex object of the office--and one who encouraged that construction of herself--to being the indispensable runner of the show. Roger truly holds her in high regard now, doesn't only lust after her. She's been shown time and time again to be smarter, more capable, more witty, and more cool in the face of trouble than most of the men around her.
Peggy and Joan represent the women who were forging new paths in the '60s. Betty represents the many who didn't. That's not sexist. It's just realistic. The others--Peggy, Joan, Don, Roger, even Pete and Trudy--are moving on into the post-Camelot future, with all of its promise and struggle, joys and heartaches to come. Betty, for all that she might seem to be moving on--the last shot we see of her, she's on an airplane--is still marching in place, just exchanging one husband who claims to have given her everything she wanted for another who promises to take care of her too. In the meantime, Don and Peggy and Roger and Joan are growing up.
And we have to wait months to see them again. :(
The last episode was called "The Grown-Ups," but it's in this one that we see Don finally becoming one. When he berates Conrad Hilton for just wanting to "kick [him] down to size" and connects that with Hilton calling him "Son," Don reveals that he still sees himself as the victimized son of his own father--and continually acts from that position. But something makes him start to rise out of the battered boy role. Is it Hilton's challenge to Don when he tells him that he didn't expect Don to be one of those whiny people, always complaining about what they don't get handed to them? Is it Bert Cooper telling him that he doesn't think Don has what it takes to start his own business? Is it the threat of divorce and the loss of his children that pushes Don to start to behave more like a father--an agent in the world--rather than a down-trodden son who is always acted upon? Whatever it is, we see some changes in how Don relates to those around him, in how he takes charge of his own destiny.
And, unlike what he did in Korea to change his life situation, this time he does it in concert with others. He's part of a team. As his nuclear family is breaking up, his work family is becoming closer. He comes to recognize that his relationship with Betty is irreparable. But--or perhaps because of that--he seeks to fix other relationships that are important to him: with Roger, with Peggy, with Pete. Roger tells him, "You're not good at relationships because you don't value them." That's only partly true. Don hasn't fully valued his relationships. But, it's more because he hasn't valued himself. He's seen himself as his father saw him. Now, instead of looking at the world through his father's eyes, he looks at his father differently. His reactions to the sale of Sterling/Cooper are interspersed with memories of his father dealing with declining crop prices during the Depression. He's recognizing that his father had problems too--as well as caused problems for Don. And as he remembers the horse kicking his drunk father to the ground and his young self running to him--unconscious, bloodied--he recalls crying out, "Daddy!" A much more affectionate name, the name Bobby calls him. His fear (?) at his father perhaps being lost to him is mirrored by Bobby's fear over news of the divorce. "Is it because I lost your cuff links?" has to be the saddest line of the evening. And as Don struggles to explain to his son that his and Betty's actions aren't due to anything Bobby has done, perhaps he's also realizing that his father's actions didn't always have to do with young Dick. And so, he's able to separate somewhat from them.
This growing up on the part of Don manifests itself in continued open, emotional conversations with others. Don is learning to state his needs and ask for things. While his open and emotional confession to Betty did not pay off as he'd hoped, his expression of feeling to Peggy does: "I don't know if I can do it alone. Will you help me?" could be seen as just saying what he needs to say to persuade Peggy to join the new firm, but I think he's sincere. He's been a loner for so long, even in the midst of his marriage and family. That didn't work for him. This seems to be much more effective. When he comes out of the bedroom of the new office suite after severing his ties with Betty, he smiles at the crowd of people there. They've pulled off this coup together; they'll be working in cramped corners together; they'll be tackling multiple jobs (Don types!) together.
And what a team! Joan's back! Yeay! Peggy's back on board with a new confidence (to Don: "Beg me? You didn't even ask me!" And I loved it when Roger asked her if she'd get him some coffee and she just said, "No."). Roger's back in the fold. Lane's on board. Even Pete, whom I don't like, despite last week's reprieve, is a strong addition to this group. We have to have someone to hate from time to time.
Which reminds me to talk about Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. At least this episode seems finally to resolve the question of whether she's named 'Betty' after Betty Friedan. Not. Yes, she's been discontented with her lot, but she has apparently decided that the discontent comes just from being married to Don, not from being in a traditional 1960s marriage. Apparently, the kept woman thing is what she wants. Or all she has the stomach or imagination to go after. So, she's trading one husband whom she realizes she never knew for another husband she doesn't know. And, he doesn't know her. But, as my husband observed, they know what roles they'll play in each other's lives. And that might be enough. A rather pathetic way to live, say I judgmentally, from my more enlightened world. Especially when seen in contrast with what all those in the new ad agency are opting for. But, in 1963, a woman's options were much more limited, especially an affluent married woman with no marketable job skills. Even in today's America, divorce typically leaves a woman in much reduced economic circumstances, while elevating those of the man. And given how she's lived her life to this point, I can't imagine Betty opting for divorce without the "life raft" Don accuses her (justly so) of building. As a single divorced woman, she would have to work at some relatively menial job for not much money; she'd have to do her own housework, not being able to afford a maid--and that after a long day's work; she'd have to give up the horse and that whole lifestyle; and what would happen to the baby while she's working? Her range of choices is extremely constrained, but I still don't like her--as much for how she does what she does as for what she actually does.
But, there is this nagging question that I've seen raised in other online forums, which I hearken back to after watching this episode: is the show's depiction of Betty sexist? I've seen this asked in the context of reflections on how she'll show, for awhile, signs of a woman emerging into raised consciousness, but then revert back to being a stereotypical housewife. Why, I've read, do they show her symptoms of shakiness, etc., have her visit the psychiatrist, only to have that all dropped? Is she just the classic neurotic woman? It's a question I've wondered about too, but I don't see her characterization as sexist. Betty is cold, emotionally unconnected from her children and most people in her life. She's not a good mother, only the latest evidence of this offered tonight as she leaves her two older children for six weeks to fly to Reno to get an easier divorce. This after they've just received the devastating news that their father is moving away from them. She's a horrible person, but some women are like that. Some men are like that.
If this were the only depiction of women on the show, there might be some merit to the charge of sexism, but not when we look at the trajectories that Peggy and Joan have traveled. Peggy has moved from mousy secretary to strong-willed, independent, professional woman who demands better treatment for herself from the men for whom she works--and gets it. Don openly respects her now. And, while we don't see Roger get up to get his own coffee, he accepts her refusal to do it for him.
Joan has moved from the sex object of the office--and one who encouraged that construction of herself--to being the indispensable runner of the show. Roger truly holds her in high regard now, doesn't only lust after her. She's been shown time and time again to be smarter, more capable, more witty, and more cool in the face of trouble than most of the men around her.
Peggy and Joan represent the women who were forging new paths in the '60s. Betty represents the many who didn't. That's not sexist. It's just realistic. The others--Peggy, Joan, Don, Roger, even Pete and Trudy--are moving on into the post-Camelot future, with all of its promise and struggle, joys and heartaches to come. Betty, for all that she might seem to be moving on--the last shot we see of her, she's on an airplane--is still marching in place, just exchanging one husband who claims to have given her everything she wanted for another who promises to take care of her too. In the meantime, Don and Peggy and Roger and Joan are growing up.
And we have to wait months to see them again. :(
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The World a Mirror
Mad Men, Season Three, Episode Twelve, "The Grown Ups"
Another wow this week! I was only two-and-a-half when President Kennedy was shot, so have no memory of it. But this episode really threw me right into the middle of what it must have felt like to need to sit in front of the television for hours--for days. It was a way to connect with others in the country. A way to process what was going on. I've never liked Pete and Trudy, but as he refused to go to the Sterling wedding ("It's one thing to go there and pretend I don't hate them. It's another to go there and pretend the president hasn't been murdered." Great line.) and we see them curled together on the couch two days in a row talking things over with each other, I liked them. They seemed--at least for a short time--to be maturing into "the grown ups" of the title.
And the assassination seemed to make equals of Betty and Carla--for at least a short period of time. When the two sat on the couch together, crying, and Carla lit up a cigarette (we've never seen her smoke) as Betty had, they were united. Just two women together, watching a tragic event reported.
But it's the way the show pulled off the merging of personal and national tragedies so effortlessly that was stunning. When Betty jumps up in shock after viewing Lee Harvey Oswald's murder live on TV and cries out, "What is going on?!" she's railing at the chaos and disintegration not only of the country's life, but of her own life and marriage. As my husband noted, a national illusion was shattered when "Camelot" was destroyed and the illusion of Betty's marriage was shattered with the discovery of the box. She tells Don, when he comes home on the 22nd, that she "can't stop crying." Perhaps the assassination was an event on just such a scale that allowed Betty--who's often so cold--to access a depth of emotion usually unavailable to her. As she sat captive to the television set, no make up, dressed only in a bathrobe well into the middle of the day, she seemed to feel things for the dead President that then morphed into feelings about Don's betrayals that she'd not been able to express before. The question is: has she finally become a grown up too, using this event to acquire insight into the reality of her feelings for Don and her marriage and what she must do with her life? Or is she making the mistake of crafting a huge decision at such a traumatic and emotional time? (Please don't jump into a marriage with Henry Francis! In past episodes, he's seemed more grown up about his and Betty's relationship--such as it is--but tonight not so much, declaring his desire to marry a woman he barely knows. Come on!)
Neither Betty nor Don has been happy in their marriage. So, being honest about that and telling Don, "I don't love you" is a huge step for this woman who for so long kept her head buried in the sand. Part of me applauded her--though her timing was lousy. Yet Don looked so stricken as he walked into their bedroom that my heart ached for him. We've seen a lot of genuine emotion from Don in the past few weeks. His first scene tonight: holding baby Gene in the rocker in the dark, looking down at him tenderly was such a vulnerable moment. He's the better parent. What would a divorce do to him and his affection for his children? What what it do to the children? But, Don needs something to pull his head out of the sand. It was classic Don to tell Betty, "Everything's going to be fine." It wasn't classic Betty to challenge him: "How do you know that?" Indeed. He wanted the children not to be watching coverage of the assassination and when Betty seemed upset, suggested she "take a pill and lie down." But Betty seems unwilling to "take these pills" anymore. What will Don do with Betty's new clarity and unwillingness to hide? And what is the nature of his caring? Last year, while he was living in the hotel after Betty found out about the affair with Bobbie, Don told Roger that he wasn't unhappy about it--and seemed to mean it. But, then he begged Betty to take him back in that beautifully written letter. Does Don, after years of uncomfortably being both Dick Whitman and Don Draper, have a "split personality": Dick, who needs the security and love of home and family that he never got as a child, so clings to Betty for that; and Don, who must constantly re-create himself and not put down roots, who needs to roam from woman to woman so his identity will never be discovered? What does he feel for his marriage? Can he really believe--as the ending song conveys--that "it's the end of the world" that Betty no longer loves him? Will this confrontation finally force him to become a grown up?
Other observations: Roger seems to be growing up as well. He and Mona can be civil to each other and his phone call to Joan was adult-to-adult not lecherous older man to sexy young woman. They're truly friends. For him to need to talk to her at this time was touching. "No one else is saying the right thing about this." I wonder what he would think was the right thing. It was interesting, too, that Joan offered the explicit reflection on how the rest of the world did go on--and the tragedy in Dallas was just one of many that day. That hospital in Dallas, she knows, wasn't the only one to which people were brought in emergencies, in which people died, in which relatives mourned. It was a large-scale reflection of what goes on all over. And, sadly, just a precursor of more assassinations and deaths in war and chaos to come as the decade grinds on. And this show is such a truly wonderful way to have it all reinterpreted for us.
Another wow this week! I was only two-and-a-half when President Kennedy was shot, so have no memory of it. But this episode really threw me right into the middle of what it must have felt like to need to sit in front of the television for hours--for days. It was a way to connect with others in the country. A way to process what was going on. I've never liked Pete and Trudy, but as he refused to go to the Sterling wedding ("It's one thing to go there and pretend I don't hate them. It's another to go there and pretend the president hasn't been murdered." Great line.) and we see them curled together on the couch two days in a row talking things over with each other, I liked them. They seemed--at least for a short time--to be maturing into "the grown ups" of the title.
And the assassination seemed to make equals of Betty and Carla--for at least a short period of time. When the two sat on the couch together, crying, and Carla lit up a cigarette (we've never seen her smoke) as Betty had, they were united. Just two women together, watching a tragic event reported.
But it's the way the show pulled off the merging of personal and national tragedies so effortlessly that was stunning. When Betty jumps up in shock after viewing Lee Harvey Oswald's murder live on TV and cries out, "What is going on?!" she's railing at the chaos and disintegration not only of the country's life, but of her own life and marriage. As my husband noted, a national illusion was shattered when "Camelot" was destroyed and the illusion of Betty's marriage was shattered with the discovery of the box. She tells Don, when he comes home on the 22nd, that she "can't stop crying." Perhaps the assassination was an event on just such a scale that allowed Betty--who's often so cold--to access a depth of emotion usually unavailable to her. As she sat captive to the television set, no make up, dressed only in a bathrobe well into the middle of the day, she seemed to feel things for the dead President that then morphed into feelings about Don's betrayals that she'd not been able to express before. The question is: has she finally become a grown up too, using this event to acquire insight into the reality of her feelings for Don and her marriage and what she must do with her life? Or is she making the mistake of crafting a huge decision at such a traumatic and emotional time? (Please don't jump into a marriage with Henry Francis! In past episodes, he's seemed more grown up about his and Betty's relationship--such as it is--but tonight not so much, declaring his desire to marry a woman he barely knows. Come on!)
Neither Betty nor Don has been happy in their marriage. So, being honest about that and telling Don, "I don't love you" is a huge step for this woman who for so long kept her head buried in the sand. Part of me applauded her--though her timing was lousy. Yet Don looked so stricken as he walked into their bedroom that my heart ached for him. We've seen a lot of genuine emotion from Don in the past few weeks. His first scene tonight: holding baby Gene in the rocker in the dark, looking down at him tenderly was such a vulnerable moment. He's the better parent. What would a divorce do to him and his affection for his children? What what it do to the children? But, Don needs something to pull his head out of the sand. It was classic Don to tell Betty, "Everything's going to be fine." It wasn't classic Betty to challenge him: "How do you know that?" Indeed. He wanted the children not to be watching coverage of the assassination and when Betty seemed upset, suggested she "take a pill and lie down." But Betty seems unwilling to "take these pills" anymore. What will Don do with Betty's new clarity and unwillingness to hide? And what is the nature of his caring? Last year, while he was living in the hotel after Betty found out about the affair with Bobbie, Don told Roger that he wasn't unhappy about it--and seemed to mean it. But, then he begged Betty to take him back in that beautifully written letter. Does Don, after years of uncomfortably being both Dick Whitman and Don Draper, have a "split personality": Dick, who needs the security and love of home and family that he never got as a child, so clings to Betty for that; and Don, who must constantly re-create himself and not put down roots, who needs to roam from woman to woman so his identity will never be discovered? What does he feel for his marriage? Can he really believe--as the ending song conveys--that "it's the end of the world" that Betty no longer loves him? Will this confrontation finally force him to become a grown up?
Other observations: Roger seems to be growing up as well. He and Mona can be civil to each other and his phone call to Joan was adult-to-adult not lecherous older man to sexy young woman. They're truly friends. For him to need to talk to her at this time was touching. "No one else is saying the right thing about this." I wonder what he would think was the right thing. It was interesting, too, that Joan offered the explicit reflection on how the rest of the world did go on--and the tragedy in Dallas was just one of many that day. That hospital in Dallas, she knows, wasn't the only one to which people were brought in emergencies, in which people died, in which relatives mourned. It was a large-scale reflection of what goes on all over. And, sadly, just a precursor of more assassinations and deaths in war and chaos to come as the decade grinds on. And this show is such a truly wonderful way to have it all reinterpreted for us.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
"Trick or Treat"
Mad Men, Season Three, Episode Eleven, "The Gypsy and the Hobo"
Wow! This season just doesn't stop packing the punches--one powerful episode after another. At Halloween--that time of year when spirits move between worlds and revelers "don" (pun not initially intended, but since it offered itself to me, I'll take it )different identities--Don Draper is unmasked. By an empowered Betty, who is tough and strong in her refusal to take the lawyer's advice to "just go home and try to make it work." I was impressed. She looked him straight in the eye, while he averted his; she was steady and adamant as he shook so much he couldn't get a cigarette out of its pack; and when she told him, "We're not done," as she went to tend to the crying baby, he didn't leave, though he looked wistfully at the door for a moment. The scene in their bedroom was poignant and moving as he showed her his photos, straight with her for the first time. He reveals all, honestly, and cries over his brother's death. She faced the truth she found in the box, when I wondered if she might just go back into an easy denial. And when confronted with Don's story, she faced that too, not wanting to be moved, but feeling for him nonetheless. It was sad watching him cry while she sat next to him, ramrod straight, stiffly rubbing his back. It's not clear--to us or to her--where she's going to go with this--but Betty took a huge step tonight. As did Don.
Yet, at the same time that Don is revealing--openly and painfully--his one secret life, his other secret life is waiting in the car. And while I have to hand it to Suzanne for not banging on the door and calling him out as I thought she might after last week's episode on the train, Don isn't willing to give her up yet. He only tells her that they can't see each other "right now." He's not done with secrets.
Knowing the title from the beginning, I kept wondering who was supposed to be the gypsy and who the hobo. I remember the episode from last season (I think it was last season) where the hobo left the sign on the Whitmans' gate that Dick's father was not an honest man. Now we have Betty revealing Don to be a dishonest man. Is she the hobo? And is Don--the perpetual wanderer--the gypsy? When the children's costumes were revealed, the literal gypsy and hobo were shown, but I still like the image on that porch with the gypsy and hobo and their trick-or-treat bags with the figurative gypsy and hobo behind them--disguised just as much, if not more so, as the neighbor somehow knew: "And who are you supposed to be?" While the orphan boy sings, "Where is love?" Too perfect. What will Don answer to those questions? What will Betty answer to them?
A few other thoughts:
--While Don--in Oliver's boyish soprano asks, "Where is love?"--it's interesting that Roger seems to have figured that one out. What a surprise to see a Sterling Cooper man turn down sex with an attractive woman who's throwing herself at him. And how interesting to hear some of his backstory before the war and Mona. I like him again. Toughest line of the night: Lady from the past: "You were the one." Roger: "You weren't." Ouch.
--Most intriguing line of the night: Don--"People change their names, Bets. You did." So, he's comparing a woman getting married and taking her husband's name to his stealing of another man's name and identity. That's a downright feminist critique of marriage and the alien roles women have to adopt. Robin Morgan would be proud of him!
--Poor Joan, having to listen to Dr. Creep tell her that she doesn't know what it's like to "want something your whole life and to plan on it and count on it and not get it." I'm glad she threw the damn vase at him. What will she do now with his latest change of identity to Army doctor?
What do you think? Let's get some conversation going.
Wow! This season just doesn't stop packing the punches--one powerful episode after another. At Halloween--that time of year when spirits move between worlds and revelers "don" (pun not initially intended, but since it offered itself to me, I'll take it )different identities--Don Draper is unmasked. By an empowered Betty, who is tough and strong in her refusal to take the lawyer's advice to "just go home and try to make it work." I was impressed. She looked him straight in the eye, while he averted his; she was steady and adamant as he shook so much he couldn't get a cigarette out of its pack; and when she told him, "We're not done," as she went to tend to the crying baby, he didn't leave, though he looked wistfully at the door for a moment. The scene in their bedroom was poignant and moving as he showed her his photos, straight with her for the first time. He reveals all, honestly, and cries over his brother's death. She faced the truth she found in the box, when I wondered if she might just go back into an easy denial. And when confronted with Don's story, she faced that too, not wanting to be moved, but feeling for him nonetheless. It was sad watching him cry while she sat next to him, ramrod straight, stiffly rubbing his back. It's not clear--to us or to her--where she's going to go with this--but Betty took a huge step tonight. As did Don.
Yet, at the same time that Don is revealing--openly and painfully--his one secret life, his other secret life is waiting in the car. And while I have to hand it to Suzanne for not banging on the door and calling him out as I thought she might after last week's episode on the train, Don isn't willing to give her up yet. He only tells her that they can't see each other "right now." He's not done with secrets.
Knowing the title from the beginning, I kept wondering who was supposed to be the gypsy and who the hobo. I remember the episode from last season (I think it was last season) where the hobo left the sign on the Whitmans' gate that Dick's father was not an honest man. Now we have Betty revealing Don to be a dishonest man. Is she the hobo? And is Don--the perpetual wanderer--the gypsy? When the children's costumes were revealed, the literal gypsy and hobo were shown, but I still like the image on that porch with the gypsy and hobo and their trick-or-treat bags with the figurative gypsy and hobo behind them--disguised just as much, if not more so, as the neighbor somehow knew: "And who are you supposed to be?" While the orphan boy sings, "Where is love?" Too perfect. What will Don answer to those questions? What will Betty answer to them?
A few other thoughts:
--While Don--in Oliver's boyish soprano asks, "Where is love?"--it's interesting that Roger seems to have figured that one out. What a surprise to see a Sterling Cooper man turn down sex with an attractive woman who's throwing herself at him. And how interesting to hear some of his backstory before the war and Mona. I like him again. Toughest line of the night: Lady from the past: "You were the one." Roger: "You weren't." Ouch.
--Most intriguing line of the night: Don--"People change their names, Bets. You did." So, he's comparing a woman getting married and taking her husband's name to his stealing of another man's name and identity. That's a downright feminist critique of marriage and the alien roles women have to adopt. Robin Morgan would be proud of him!
--Poor Joan, having to listen to Dr. Creep tell her that she doesn't know what it's like to "want something your whole life and to plan on it and count on it and not get it." I'm glad she threw the damn vase at him. What will she do now with his latest change of identity to Army doctor?
What do you think? Let's get some conversation going.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Memories and Ink
Mad Men, Season Three, Episode Ten, "The Color Blue"
Perhaps it's because I also saw "Cats" this weekend and "Memories--all alone in the moonlight" keeps flitting through my brain, but Paul's Chinese memories and faint ink proverb seems to me an even richer lens through which to view Episode 10 than "the color blue" of the title. Yes, the various characters' divergent perspectives on events was certainly important. And what a glimpse into the workings of Don's mind to hear his response to the wise ponderings of Miss Farrell's student. ("People may see things differently, but they don't want to"? Statistics on exactly what percentage of the population sees the same color when looking at the same object?) Of course we can never be sure that the blue we see is the same blue anyone else sees, just like Suzanne can never be sure that the affair she sees is the same one Don is having. The husband Betty thinks she has--with all the flaws she grants him--will never be the same husband stored away in that box in the newly unlocked drawer. The Peggy Paul views as he's yelling at her following their first meeting with Don is not the same Peggy he gazes wonderingly at after she's pulled a positively brilliant campaign idea out of the wreckage of his drunken memory lapse. (Go, Peggy! My girl is back!) Lane and his wife see different New Yorks when they look out the window of their traffic-bound car with blue neon lights reflected off the window and, while Roger looks at Jane in their car and sees his wife, his very funny mother sees a woman who must be his daughter. ("Does Mona know?" The episode didn't offer much in the way of laughs, but old Mrs. Sterling is a hoot!)
So, yes, the eight-year-old's question about perceiving blue points me into one set of observations. But, I really like Paul's conjuring up the proverb about the faintest ink being stronger than a memory. As snobby and pretentious as he is, he can be very insightful when he wants to be. While Paul may think that he's fragile memory's victim of the week, I have to give that prize to Betty. She's stored up ten years of memories of her marriage--good and bad: memories she's used to construct this relationship and the image of the husband around whom she's built her life for a decade. Now she finds out that those memories mean less than the ink on the papers and photographs she's found. The box's contents provide her with something more solid than memories. But, what will she do with this knowledge? How will she use it to reconstruct her life? Is this the opportunity she's been waiting for? (And I've been wanting for her.) What will she do with it? Until she figures that out, though, she's stuck with Don's construction of their marriage and with his construction of her as nothing more than a showpiece: "I want to show you off, Bets" and, to the kids, "Look how pretty Mommy is." Don, who thinks he can quantify the world and people's perceptions of it, but who is so trapped in his own set of illusions, he can't see the train wreck that seems to be looming in his future: an affair with a woman so close to home who does not know how to be a discreet mistress; a newly-forged alliance with Suzanne's unstable brother (I take it that Don's compensating for not helping his own brother when that brother so desperately reached out to him); another Sterling Cooper sale. Don keeps obsessively going back to his box--a tacit recognition that if we haven't captured something on paper that it's gone--whether that be our ideas or our identities?
Memories, perceptions, illusions: they were all captured so well in Roger's set of lies as he introduced Don at the anniversary dinner: "loyal, charming, quiet but not modest" indeed. Don accepted, smiling broadly, aiming for--but missing--modesty, Betty's eyes shooting darts at him from her end of the table . He might think that everyone wants to see things the same way he does--but he's wrong.
Perhaps it's because I also saw "Cats" this weekend and "Memories--all alone in the moonlight" keeps flitting through my brain, but Paul's Chinese memories and faint ink proverb seems to me an even richer lens through which to view Episode 10 than "the color blue" of the title. Yes, the various characters' divergent perspectives on events was certainly important. And what a glimpse into the workings of Don's mind to hear his response to the wise ponderings of Miss Farrell's student. ("People may see things differently, but they don't want to"? Statistics on exactly what percentage of the population sees the same color when looking at the same object?) Of course we can never be sure that the blue we see is the same blue anyone else sees, just like Suzanne can never be sure that the affair she sees is the same one Don is having. The husband Betty thinks she has--with all the flaws she grants him--will never be the same husband stored away in that box in the newly unlocked drawer. The Peggy Paul views as he's yelling at her following their first meeting with Don is not the same Peggy he gazes wonderingly at after she's pulled a positively brilliant campaign idea out of the wreckage of his drunken memory lapse. (Go, Peggy! My girl is back!) Lane and his wife see different New Yorks when they look out the window of their traffic-bound car with blue neon lights reflected off the window and, while Roger looks at Jane in their car and sees his wife, his very funny mother sees a woman who must be his daughter. ("Does Mona know?" The episode didn't offer much in the way of laughs, but old Mrs. Sterling is a hoot!)
So, yes, the eight-year-old's question about perceiving blue points me into one set of observations. But, I really like Paul's conjuring up the proverb about the faintest ink being stronger than a memory. As snobby and pretentious as he is, he can be very insightful when he wants to be. While Paul may think that he's fragile memory's victim of the week, I have to give that prize to Betty. She's stored up ten years of memories of her marriage--good and bad: memories she's used to construct this relationship and the image of the husband around whom she's built her life for a decade. Now she finds out that those memories mean less than the ink on the papers and photographs she's found. The box's contents provide her with something more solid than memories. But, what will she do with this knowledge? How will she use it to reconstruct her life? Is this the opportunity she's been waiting for? (And I've been wanting for her.) What will she do with it? Until she figures that out, though, she's stuck with Don's construction of their marriage and with his construction of her as nothing more than a showpiece: "I want to show you off, Bets" and, to the kids, "Look how pretty Mommy is." Don, who thinks he can quantify the world and people's perceptions of it, but who is so trapped in his own set of illusions, he can't see the train wreck that seems to be looming in his future: an affair with a woman so close to home who does not know how to be a discreet mistress; a newly-forged alliance with Suzanne's unstable brother (I take it that Don's compensating for not helping his own brother when that brother so desperately reached out to him); another Sterling Cooper sale. Don keeps obsessively going back to his box--a tacit recognition that if we haven't captured something on paper that it's gone--whether that be our ideas or our identities?
Memories, perceptions, illusions: they were all captured so well in Roger's set of lies as he introduced Don at the anniversary dinner: "loyal, charming, quiet but not modest" indeed. Don accepted, smiling broadly, aiming for--but missing--modesty, Betty's eyes shooting darts at him from her end of the table . He might think that everyone wants to see things the same way he does--but he's wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)