They shouldn't have been in facebook in the first place.
This reinforces my determination not to include a photo of myself on my facebook account (well, there's one there, but it's from first grade).
My Mad Men avatar is a decent resemblance.
I think it works best for white males.
You know, I wouldn't mind at all. It's a cute picture. If I'm going to die horrifically and have it on the evening news, I might as well look good.
I'm going to put a picture of my bestest, cleanest underwear on Facebook.
And I just realized that it is way better than the other public domain photo of me, on the department website, which I detest as it is about 5 years out of date. And god forbid they use my drivers license photo - that's 10 years old!
Where do they usually take photos from for newscasts? They're usually quite horrible, I've noticed, but it can't really just be yearbooks or everyone would be perpetually 17.
Speaking of final shots, are we having a meet-up with B-Wo or not? And if yes, where and when? Otherwise, enquiring minds are going to dine out at Tender Greens in WeHo tomorrow evening and say the hell with it.
7: I eagerly await the liveblogging of the meetup:
DominEditrix:
We're waiting for Nosflow.
k-sky:
Ah! (Pause. Despairing.) What'll we do, what'll we do!
DominEditrix:
There's nothing we can do.
k-sky:
But I can't go on like this!
DominEditrix:
Would you like a radish?
k-sky:
Is that all there is?
Und so weiter.
Stalking of parenthetical complete!
Eh? Just peruse the website and find the worst picture of a girl?
No, I had already perused the website and on the basis of a clue let slip earlier formed a hypothesis. But I hadn't thought to use facebook until now and now the hypothesis has been confirmed.
Ah, yes, we have a friend in common.
Good grief, you haven't gotten a room yet?
In Soviet Russia, you don't become jealousy!
Names are required before rooms are gotten, parsimon.
Um...that was me. Though I kind of like Fi.
Well, my apologies. It didn't seem like such a thing.
I was just teasing back, parsimon - don't worry!
Is this a good thread for me to express my extreme discomfort with the misogyny of Mad Men? I mean, I get that it's conscious, and that the creator gets what he's doing, but, Jesus.
I'm only 3 episodes in; I gather that things develop somewhat?
A big part of my discomfort is that I have trouble believing that none of the show's considerable popularity comes from unironic/unreflective enjoyment of the misogyny. But either way, it's kind of freaking me out.
The misogyny thread is two posts down, JRoth.
Personally, I think that as the show develops and the characters evolve, the misogyny becomes more complicated, less caricatured. Not sure if that helps or not, though.
25: But, like Peggy doesn't just blow up at everyone in Episode 6 and everyone else apologizes and stops it? Because I'm starting to have wish fulfillment along those lines.
The answer that society will gradually improve until, by the time these characters are dying off, a woman can become Secretary of State and get called a Mad Bitch by national journalists is not an answer that will please me.
26: Without giving it all away, I think the lesson of Peggy's character arc so far is that if you play the game and put up with the shit, you'll get ahead - with some major personal tragedies* to deal with, but you'll get ahead.
*Too strong of a word but the right one isn't coming to me.
17: I was teasing you, parsimon! Sorry I wasn't clear!
by the time these characters are dying off, a woman can become Secretary of State and get called a Mad Bitch by national journalists
Hillary Clinton, born 1947
Peggy Olsen, born 1941 I think
Madeleine Albright, born 1937
FWIW.
Either ari and paren are really bad at teasing or parsimon is really bad at being teased.
Are you teasing when you say that?
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I am so less than pleased at having to get up at 4:15 am in order to get to the airport in time. Don't these people understand that I'm incapable of falling asleep before 1:00 am, and they have thus doomed me to moving through today like a zombie?
(I had a choice of arriving in Ohio at 3 pm or midnight. I would have gone with the latter, but since I assumed at the time that I booked my flight that some elderly relative had to come and get me I wanted to be polite. Now I get to drive 2 hours on approximately 3 hours of sleep. If you never hear from me again, now you know why.)
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Although, morbidly semi-on topic.
Rachel Maddow's segment here on how crazy the craziness has gotten is spot on. But she might have seen fit to point out and criticize Chris Matthews and her own channel for having the New Hampshire gun guy (with the Timothy McVeigh-evoking "water the tree of liberty" sign) *on* his show. (Has IOKIYAAR ever been more in evidence than the differeing media treatment of how public events have been handled now vs. Bush-era? Holy Arrested For Wearing the Wrong T-Shirt, Batman!) If there had been cable news in 1963: "Well Lee, I'm still can't figure out whether you're *for* Castro and Communism or against them, but it sounds like you're passionate about it, and I know want to get up and see the motorcade, so thanks for being on the show."
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33: There are televised hours to fill, and in this day and age -- when publicly announcing one's political position is nothing more than an invitation to have one's life and past dug through by obsessive busybodies until every last C-minus and depressed teenage poem has been held up for ridicule and/or sent to one's boss -- the only people willing to fill them are (i) the professionals and (ii) the insane.
MSNBC also gave Craig Miller, the guy who was thrown out of Specter's meeting, time to speak. The video is sad: Miller mumbles vaguely for five minutes about government lies and how Obama's broken his oath of office and how he has a list of "31 things" that he never gets to. It's like watching one of my crazier relatives try to perform an episode of The X-Files while everyone else is eating Thanksgiving dinner.
I haven't watched much Mad Men, just a few minutes here and there, but the WSJ recently did a piece about the writing and production staff. Seven of the nine writers are women and five of the previous season's thirteen episodes were directed by women. The show creator is a man, but the piece makes it sound like the misogyny is a deliberate part of the show and a catalyst for the development of female characters rather than a "Hey, boys, isn't it great getting paid to have a dick," kind of thing.
And, FWIW, the biggest Mad Men fan I know is a woman with a successful career and a strong sense of self and feminism, none of which is to say that the misogyny the characters exhibit isn't extremely bothersome. The few minutes I've seen turned me off on the male characters as a bunch of assholes with whom I didn't care to spend an hour. My friend's love of the show is making me more willing to give it another chance.
The apparently universal blog-fever for Mad Men has put me off it. Sort of like The Wire: if Bill Simmons and Timothy Noah think something is the best thing since sliced thing, I will make do without it.
I worried about the fact that Mad Men could be watched by a lot of people without the sense of irony required to understand that misogyny is being represented to show that (a) in certain ways, things are better now, and that (b) in other ways, some of this still persists. In those early episodes especially, the fun of being sexist looked pretty cool. As I understand it, the show has moved pretty far from that now, as misogyny more and more often makes all the characters miserable, not just the women, and the men are, under that surface, living lives of isolation, secrecy, and self-loathing. And the women seem to be confronting the double-standards of sexism more head-on, with not just Peggy, but also even the sexy fembot office manager suffering pretty brutally, despite her complicity and amenability. I.e., the first few episodes sort of seemed like, "Hey ladies, if you knew your place, you wouldn't be treated badly." But now it's showing more of how there is no level of complicity that doesn't result in abuse.
I have trouble believing that none of the show's considerable popularity comes from unironic/unreflective enjoyment of the misogyny.
I have no trouble believing this. What I like about the show is that it presents the misogyny of the 60s as a concentrated, unmediated precursor to the misogyny of the 00s, and depicts -- in very sympathetic lights -- the female characters' attempts to negotiate a happy life or a successful career in a world that is openly hostile to them.
It's not like, for example, a show like Dollhouse, which derives its pleasure by presenting sexual exploitation (which it purports to critique) in a titillating way.
33-35: And now the crazies are being rewarded not only by the media but also by the Senate Finance Committee, which is reportedly shelving the end-of-life consultation provision undr pressure from the "death panel" whackos. Want to learn about living wills and hospice care? Figure it out for yourself, grandma. Christ, that frosts my balls.
38:We do have something in common.
Seven of the nine writers are women and five of the previous season's thirteen episodes were directed by women.
Jeez
.e., the first few episodes sort of seemed like, "Hey ladies, if you knew your place, you wouldn't be treated badly." But now it's showing more of how there is no level of complicity that doesn't result in abuse.
Can someone who's seen it talk about Dollhouse, which I am too creeped out to even watch a trailer of?
with not just Peggy, but also even the sexy fembot office manager suffering pretty brutally, despite her complicity and amenability.
In fact, I think that that's one of the major themes of the show: watch out, ladies, those assholes are not your friends. The show presents women who deploy different strategies for making it in a man's world -- you have Joan, the man's woman, who is always sexually available, always perfectly coiffed, and always uncomplaining; Peggy, the striver who wants success on the same terms as the men; and Betty, the pretty, passive-aggressive doll.
What's remarkable about the show is how generous it is to Joan and Betty, whose strategies and ambitions I think are pretty despicable. And it's not generous because it approves of their methods -- to the contrary, the show is pretty clear about how misguided it thinks they are -- but because the show is sympathetic about what women had to do to get through life in the 60s.
(because 'profiting by showing tragic babes' is a level of complicity that is eventually going to get Whedon, who I do agree does originally Get It.)
Christ, that frosts my balls.
Unfortunately, treatment for that has also been dropped from the Finance Committee bill.
43:Dollhouse is challenging, rather than tickling a comfort zone. Don't watch it.
Next the story of the abortion movement, written by 7 retired Catholic Cardinals. Or the history of the gay rights movemnt, produced by Focus on the Family.
I knew something felt really wrong about Mad Men Now a whole generation will think it knows what the sixties were like.
Is This the kind of thinking that informs Mad Men? ..via Yglesias
60s long hair on men was homoerotic misogyny? Or sumpin, she's all over the place.
So far the show's still in 1960-62. We've seen beatniks but no hippies yet as I recall.
To appreciate what is going on with gender politics and Dollhouse, you have to watch the full season story arc. When all is shown, it becaomes very clear that Whedon is not just titilating you by presenting sexual expoitation. The unaired 13th episode (available on the DVD) really cinches it.
The initial ambiguity comes because the people who run the dollhouse are doing somethign that is obviously evil, yet they have all sorts of elaborate rationalization swhich let them feel like they are really the good guys. The rationalizations are treated with some sympathy, so that the audience wonders where the writers' sympatheis really lie. This exacerbated by the fact that the BS rationalizations given by the poeple in the show who run the Dollhouse are really similar to the BS rationalizations people in Hollywood give for the kids of exploitation they engage in. By the end of the season, however, it is clear that these rationalizations are coming apart, and in the 13th episdoe have completely explosed.
It is not, by the way, a coincidence that the rationalizations the people in the Dollhouse give for their behavior match the rationalizations people in Hollywood give for theirs. Dollhouse is, first and foremost, a critique of the entertainment industry. It functions on many other levels, including a meditation on personal identity, but really The Dollhouse = Hollywood.
Next the story of the abortion movement, written by 7 retired Catholic Cardinals
At long last, I grasp the analogy ban.
Can someone who's seen it talk about Dollhouse
I can't. I'm still traumatized by the awfulness.
If Dollhouse seems too exploitative as it is initially presented, the DVDs offer you a different way into the show. You can watch the original pilot, which essentially compresses the first six episodes into one show, and then pick up the series at episode seven. That way, you don't linger as long over the state of the exploited dolls and go directly to the unraveling.
To appreciate what is going on with gender politics and Dollhouse, you have to watch the full season story arc.
Stuff White People Like: Pop Culture That Resembles Homework.
47; Well, my generation knows what the 50s were like from Happy Days.
#53. I may give that a try. I like Whedon and there were bits here and there of Dollhouse that I found appealing, but between the exploitative vibe and the cliche-ridden writing it never managed to add up to anything I cared to spend my time on.
Dollhouse isn't as thought-provoking as bob gives it credit for, but it's still good. For a "show about rape," which I think bob has called it, there's a conspicuous lack of "wow, these are horrible people" moments, or "wow, that's a metaphor for this horrible real-life thing". But, on the other hand, I didn't have any "I feel sick and guilty watching this" moments either. Characters who need to be sympathetic for the show to be enjoyable generally are, even if it means plot contrivances or schmaltzy scenes. There is enough scheming and ominous hints of a purpose to it all to keep you interested. The casting is inspired.
Analogy time: Dollhouse is to violations of womens' rights as Cincerella is to social justice in a monarchy.
Also, I wish I hadn't bothered looking this stuff up. Wikipedia has all kinds of stuff about that epilogue episode that never aired mingled in with stuff about the regular show, but I haven't seen the epilogue episode yet, and now it's mostly spoiled for me. Damn.
Dollhouse is, first and foremost, a critique of the entertainment industry
I think this is right, but I don't think the show is smart enough to pull this off in a way that isn't, ultimately, grossly exploitative itself. I used to love Joss Whedon, and I think he was smart enough to make shows about silly things that dealt with serious issues, but it turns out that he's not smart enough to make a show about serious things that deals with serious issues. I gave the show every benefit of the doubt, but the end of it for me was a little throwaway about Sierra, how she was kidnapped into the service by a guy she had sexually rejected, and now he could buy her compliance whenever he wanted. It's so fucking gross, and the way it's presented -- with Sierra depicted as a beautiful, fragile waiflike thing -- is even grosser.
I'm sorry, that episode really made me angry. My hands are shaking now. I'm going to stop talking or thinking about this.
One of the nice things about the show is that it is not just about prostitition and the exploitation of women. It is about the absurd lengths capitalist society goes to in order to please the caprice of the grotesquely wealthy. Whedon has always done class well, I think. As well as he does gender and certainly much better than he does race.
Also, if Dollhouse is meant to be a satire of Hollywood exploitation, then the satire was awfully thin, at least in the first three episodes that I watched. A Hollywood TV show about hot women who get used n' abused in every episode isn't much of a satire on the ways that women are exploited by Hollywood/society.
(In other words, pwned by jms.)
As a counter point to concerns about early episodes, and to recap the entire internet for the last year, apparently Fox asserted control over the show and forced episodes to come out in ways that ran counter to the creative staff's intentions before easing off so that the "real" show could start to show through. Of course, all that could just be happy entertainment press talk meant to mirror the arc of the season overall.
62: The same thing happened to Firefly. Fox apparently hates Joss Whedon, although I wonder why they keep on hiring him. Either that or they've decided that pandering to fans of his with a martyr complex is a good marketing strategy.
A third possibility is that that kind of thing goes on all the time, but only Joss Whedon complains vocally about it or it gets executed seamlessly or something.
I would imagine it's behind Door #3, personally. The man loves to talk about how he's treated. I love his work for the most part so I don't mind so much but were he someone whose work I don't enjoy - say, Tarantino - I'd probably have a reaction along the lines of, "Yes, it must just suck terribly to have his every pitch picked up for a season and I bet all the writers who've never sold a script really bleed from their fucking eyes in sympathy for him."
At any rate, my uninformed reaction to learning Mad Men is mostly written by women who vote down the two men on important character development points (as noted in the WSJ article) is to become much more interested in the show.
#3 is extremely likely, especially since he has personal experience now with how succesful you can be working outside the network system.
I shouldn't get as fanboyish about Whedon as I tend to, because it is quite clear at this point in his career that even if he has good intentions, he consistently falls back on themes and tropes that undermine his stated politics. Outside of Buffy, I can't think of anything that he has doesn't have something in it that makes you go "ick, why are you doing that?" Is suppose if you throw in season six of Buffy, even that show is problematic. Yet I keep being drawn to his stuff.
ok, I will stop commenting now and go to work.
I wasn't aware of the extra episode, and just read the Wiki entry. No real surprises, it is where I was expecting the show to go. Disappointed about the lower budget. IIRC Buffy last season filmed on a tight budget, and Whedon is very good, but it shows.
...little throwaway about Sierra, how she was kidnapped into the service...
IIRC, Sierra was shown with a soldier imprint in the very first episode. I called it a "show about rape", but I don't think the episodes with Echo or the cross-apt neighbour or Olivia's boytoy adequately communicated the horror and evil of the setup. Sierra (twice) got that job. I think it was necessary.
he's not smart enough to make a show about serious things that deals with serious issues.
It's insanely ambitious. The last few episodes made the inner dynamics even more complicated.
64.2:If it was clearly labelled as allegory, or in a SF framework like Dollhouse, it would be more acceptable. Wonder Years and Happy Days were comedies, and not to be taken seriously.
But i think Mad Men is considered social history by its viewers.
I also wonder about the ages of the writers, and the sexual orientation of the males on the staff.
...he consistently falls back on themes and tropes that undermine his stated politics
Not that I really understand this, but Whedon's commercial.
And escaping the tropes is hard. I read three Marxist reviews of Hurt Locker this week that show HL is just another war movie, reinforcing the cliches while claiming to deconstruct them. Which is the usual pattern in even the most "enlightened" work.
Someone may be abusing the '60s on TV!
69:Well. I think those ancient battles between the Old Left, New Left, and nascent multicultural/anti-colonial Left are not merely relevant.
The Old Left is gone, si we'll get an insurance bailout instead of healthcare.
The New Left is irrelevant, so we are getting more war in Afghanistan.
The multicultural left put one of their own corporate plutocrat whores into the White House, and is now saying that Obama is the victim. See Yggles and EK.
So the framing of the sixties as a way to spread propaganda is important. That the 60s was all about Jerry Rubin asking Bernadine Dohrn to make the coffee one morning is not merely wrong.
I mean, look at Obama, ya know what I mean? How could be possibly be anything but one of the oppressed?
bob, are you still talking about Mad Men?
The multicultural left put one of their own corporate plutocrat whores into the White House, and is now saying that Obama is the victim.
First they put Toni Morrison on the syllabus, and I said nothing. . .
70.last: But of course what they are covering is literally years away from that in time, and even further culturally. If anything, it helps set the context. One of the common thoughts I have had during some "60s" discussions is that what is often lacking is an appreciation of the contrast (or lack thereof) with mainstream culture immediately preceding or during the "counterculture" phenomenon under discussion. For instance, look at the "long hair" Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964.
72: I assumed yes. Bob can speak up, but I think he is saying that Mad Men is potentially another brick in the wall of a revisionist history of the 60s that has helped to stifle progressive initiatives in today's world. And the overall subtext relevant to the gender of the writers is that in the focus on making this a country where you can get blacks and women into positions of power' economic and foreign policy progressivism have been ditched, so that--sure enough--you get blacks and women into power and they are corporatist, militaristic drones. Progress!
That is my read. I may be wrong. If I am, bob should correct, and if not, I am sure he can make the argument in a more poetic and elliptical manner.
75:Something like that. The "identity politics' fights seem to me to be ubiquitous, but maybe I'm looking for it.
I'm giving MM another chance. I've only seen three episodes, I think. One of them was Don & Roger in LA with Don feeling anomie or something. Im readong about Matthew Weiner at AMC right now (I was looking for downloadable episodes). Umm, Matt Weiner?
What turned me off MM? The extreme underacting? The cliched and innaccurate set design? (Maybe not, but very few houses had the modernist look with primary colous. We had a flowered cloth couch)
I had always really really liked Kartheiser, and my instant reaction was that they made Pete such an irredeemable asshole in order to make studly asshole Don a little redeemable.
Part of my problem is with episodic TV, creating meaning with anecdote, narrative, "character"
I think he's saying, broadly speaking, that the old left focused on issues of class, the new left on the anti-war movement, and the multicultural left on issues of multiculturalism. The first left was the best, I think he means, but the second left, which supplanted it, still had some important things to say, because Vietnam was not only a clusterfuck but also an emblem of the class war, and the third left is just intellectually bankrupt, as it's concerned with, above all else, making sure that historically underrepresented people get access to positions of power, no matter how corporatist those people's politics might be. So class, which is the mainspring of any trenchant political analysis, in his view, is pretty much off the table these days. Which is bad.
What I don't get is if that means the revolution is coming sooner or later or if it's going to be televised or not. And if so, will Joss Whedon direct, having delegated the writing to a woman?
I want to hear more about jms's finding Betty's and Joan's "strategies and ambitions … despicable".
Ah, I see that a missing comma in 75.1 caused me not to realize that JP pwned me as well. Even though I was responding to him. Well done, ari!
What turned me off MM? The extreme underacting? The cliched and innaccurate set design? (Maybe not, but very few houses had the modernist look with primary colous. We had a flowered cloth couch)
Was your family in the ad industry?
81: seconded. I was about to ask a wordier version of that question.
Also, I'm not sure anyone besides bob thinks that Mad Men purports to be Teh One True Version of The Sixties. I mean, I sure don't.
80: Punctuation matters! You said what I meant, only better (and not just due to the missing comma).
I haven't really watched MM, but I have a highly critical eye towards period pieces from the 1950's on, in terms of fashion and interior design. As much as I loved Freaks and Geeks, their clothes have millions of anachronistic items when it would have been so easy to raid a thrift store and get more accurate pieces. For example. Or we were watching Almost Famous recently - good movie, but the inaccuracies in the wardrobe drove me crazy. Or rather, drove Jammies crazy because it drove me to point out every pair of blue jeans that fit like a 90's pair instead of a 70's pair.
I live with someone who enjoys MM as social history. She likes the decor and fashion a lot. We both like the way the show suggests that rigid sex roles are miserable for all involved. To state the obvious, MM also suggests that rigid class roles are just as unsatisfying.
I have a friend (who likes the show) who has started calling me "Mr Draper." I would have expected that character to have some resonance with the well-educated from relatively humble backrounds group here.
Mr. Draper isn't particularly well educated.
86: SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS, BEYOTCH.
Whatever, I just want to get some of Jon Hamm's John Ham
I would have expected that character to have some resonance with the well-educated from relatively humble backrounds living secretively under an assumed name, and or cheating on your spouse group here.
but I haven't seen much of the show, so what do I know.
He reads Frank O'Hara and the old testament.
To be fair, 89 does identify a large portion of our commenters.
cheating on your spouse group
Unfogged taboo.
84: I, on the other hand, sometimes get annoyed at how monolithic and stereotypical many movies and shows make the clothing, furnishings, cars, etc. The cars are probably my biggest pet peeve; a typical movie with "middle class" '50s teens has half of them driving immaculate late model convertibles to school. The street scenes are often worse. Totally off-putting.
84, 93: After an early misstep, MM is at least getting the drinks right.
77.1 is very good, though I do have a much more nianced or questioning position than those bald assertions would imply.
Did the Old & New Left drive the rest away? Was in an inevitable consequence of the prosperity of the 60s, or the rise of mass media? I do notice there isn't much feminism on my OldMarxist blogs. A lot about race and colonialism, though. Is the socialism a sexism?
81:Was your family in the ad industry?
Well yeah, I also might have a class problem with the show.
Short story:Somewhere around 1965 I am walking thru my richer best friend's house, and his mother has two black-and-blue eyes. Like a raccoon. Took me around twenty years before I understood what had happened. Very unusual in 1965 Midwest small town.
I want to hear more about jms's finding Betty's and Joan's "strategies and ambitions ... despicable".
"Despicable" is probably too strong a word. But they're not nice people. Betty, the bored, rich housewife of an asshole Manhattan professional, acts out by cattily humiliating other women in her social group. Joan - who aspires to be the bored, rich housewife of an asshole Manhattan professional - is the top girl at S.C., and in her position as such, enforces the rigid gender norms that keeps the girls subservient to the men (and is openly offended when Peggy leaves the secretarial pool to become a copywriter). Neither Betty nor Joan are likeable on paper, but what's great about the show is how it elicits sympathy for these women. It's clear that the show doesn't condemn them. To the contrary, they're doing the best they can for themselves under the thumb of The Patriarchy.
I suppose what I was wondering about is what you identify as their strategies and ambitions—Joan's ambition is to become a bored, rich housewife; is that despicable, given the broader context? Is her enforcement of the roles part of the her strategy for realizing her ambition, something naturally concomitant to someone who has that ambition, or ... ?
Nobody answered my question about Matt Weiner, who comments at LGM more than here.
If you told me:"completely different guy" or "same guy" I'm not sure I'd believe you.
If you told me:"completely different guy" or "same guy" I'm not sure I'd believe you.
So... different guy, but with striking similarities?
Joan's ambition is to become a bored, rich housewife; is that despicable, given the broader context?
It's normally something I would consider pretty gross, but again, in the broader context of the show, where it's clear that her horizons have always been limited by her social place, it's presented as sympathetic.
But the guy from the show pronounces it "whiner."
it's presented as sympathetic.
I think the question is, given how her horizons have always been limited by her social place, is it sympathetic.
103: that's just to throw people off.
I don't know what you're asking, neb. If you're asking if I personally sympathize with them, I'd say yes, but they're fictional characters who have been invented and then presented to me by television people who clearly want me to like them.
One can recognize that they're presented in a way that's supposed to make one like them and still think that they're not sympathetic, because, say, their goals are so callow. You don't, I assume, always like characters whose creators want you to like them, simply for that reason.
Hm, I didn't feel like the writers of Mad Men were all that intent on making their characters likable. They certainly haven't been trying very hard with Betty, at any rate. I feel sorry for her but I really don't like her.
I guess likability is a red herring—one can be sympathetic without being likable.
Ob30RockQuote: "It's 'wiener-slave.'"
Okay, so I tried two more episodes of Mad Men. 201 & 202. I did get drawn into the characters of Betty, Roger, and especially Peggy.
Don's mistress (?) is a little different, and that reflects well on Draper, I suppose. Pete's desperate neediness and insecurity is just a bore.
But the show just swins in contempt for it's subjects and the times. It's constant. I suppose you could say the men and times might deserve contempt but that is always a matter of what parts you choose to look at and that is a creative decision in a fictional show. I was expecting the analyst to be a Freudian because Freudians are icky. The show just wallows in the judgementalism and shallow righteousness of it's writers and audience. That's the whole show:Look at the animals in this zoo we have created for you.
It also, idiosyncratically not me. I do not do pile ons. Sonething about the thread a little below where everybody attacked MacArdle or threads where we make fun of Palin as a communal activity...I just don't enjoy it. It is not compassion for the victims or subjects...I cant stand Palin or MacArdle or the sexist monsters of Mad Men. Something in me just rebels at being told what values and feelings I need to share in order to be part of the team. Or when the feeling are negative. Sometimes. But the little gorl in the dryc cleaning bag or the kids without car seats or Pete's analyzing Peggy's figure just made me cringe at the writers, not with them.
I am not sure I understand it myself, but I don't like these public stonings. I am not Jesus, to judge the stoners or to save the victim. It's the communal part of communal cruelty I think disturbs me. Some things are better enjoyed in private.
I do recognize that the feminist messages might be better communicated this way, with exaggeration in a superficially alien milieu. "I am not that bad" becomes "I could be better myself now."
Finaly, I don't think Joan wears a girdle. And Dennis Perrin says that Don Draper's big secret is that he is gay, partle based oon the relationship with Pete, and partly because he doesn't go after Joan. Just think about it.
Don Draper's big secret is that he is gay
Is gayness part of that new multicultural Left you're proposing? Honest question, bob.
Oh. And the article I read says the Matt Weiner's watch the show but won't comment on it. Apparently the show is in part based on his parents.
He wants their approval for this public burning. Fuck him. The show may not be needlessly cruel, but it is cruel nonetheless.
111:I don't understand the "proposing" there. Did you mean postulating?
It was Dennis Perrin's joke.
I do think the interaction between Don and Pete is weird. One of the last lines of 201 was Pete telling Don that Don's pesentation had left Pete "tingling" and Don gives Pete a look.
Could just be homicidal office competition.
113.3 isn't right. Don does give Pete some sincere advice, and Pete seems to take it well. Pete is not just envious of Don, but admires him and wants his approval, maybe a little more than is healthy.
What have they done to Kartheiser?
I don't understand the "proposing" there. Did you mean postulating?
You seemed to be formulating a definition of the Newest Left back in comment #70, and I was wondering where The Gays fit in.
It was Dennis Perrin's joke.
I request a link.
I request a link.
Perrin's a self-appointed asshole, and not as funny as IOZ. But he has some good stuff. Tore apart John Hughes as a suburban conservative so well that I won't watch hm anymore.
Perrin shares the blog with his wife, who works in advertising. Here is her take on MM.
But the little gorl in the dryc cleaning bag or the kids without car seats or Pete's analyzing Peggy's figure just made me cringe at the writers, not with them.
I'm actually 100% with Bob on this one.
I'm willing to give it, probably, an entire season's worth, because I'm willing to buy the writers' good faith that they're heading someplace interesting and insightful, not merely smug. But I'm seeing a lot more red flags than positive signs.
I've also been trying to work out my different reaction to the repulsiveness of these characters vs. the repulsive characters of Sopranos. Thing 1 is clearly that Sopranos was working harder at the outset to make its characters likable in order to draw you in to their seaminess. But Thing 2 is the whole Mob Movie context. Sopranos had a bit of a Euripides feel, a late-phase artist playing with a well-worn form. The less charitable take is that I'm willing to turn a blind eye to misogyny (and racism and misanthropy) in that context because it excuses my sins*.
* Not that I'm a mobster.**
** As far as you know.
