...but it got there in the end. And it's worth savouring as one of the most elegant things shot for television slowly heads to its denouement.
I've written about 'Mad Men' here, so I'm only going to add on here with additional thoughts I've had about the series.
Here's the obligatory spoiler warning.
It's Grown On Me Even More
Of all these TV series I've been binge-wtching lately, the most emotionally compelling has turned out to be 'Mad Men'. Considering how long I avoided it, it strikes me as odd just how much the show has crawled under my skin and nested itself there. There are many reasons for this, but principle amongst those is that it covers the period in history that gave rise to Gen-X. The character that I find I relate to the most is in fact Sally, mainly because her experiences of that era are the closest to mine, and from there I can navigate the tableau of angst-ridden behaviour and existential malaise that is central to that show. It contrasts greatly with something like 'Orange Is The New Black' where Piper is most definitely a Gen-X figure who emerges from the absentee fathers of that era and lands herself in prison, blaming everybody but herself. This is not surprising because right now, the most active creatives working in film & TV are Gen-X.
The curse of being Gen-X of course is that we grew up soaked in consumerism. Demographically speaking - that is, with the broadest of generalisation brushes - we're very brand-sensitive and status-sensitive in a way that locks us in to civilisation, more or less. In the absence of the kind of materialism presented by Karl Marx and Marxist criticism, we were activated by the kind materialism that was manufactured by the image-makers - the Don Drapers of this world - and so we grew up cynical. Indeed, the cynicism prevalent in the 1980s stemmed from the fact that the big Leftist push lost steam, and instead market capitalism exploded across the globe. The poor kids in Eastern Europe were envious of our Nikes and Nintendos, our Walkmans and whatever else that came branded, packaged, marketed and distributed through convenient retail outlets. And knowing it filled us with a kind of self-loathing; at least I know it filled me with self-loathing.
This is not to rag on East Europe under the communist regimes (that would be too easy). I was thinking that on a more personal level, our minds have been beset by value judgment, and these value judgments remake of others as well as those inflicted upon us are reflective of the hierarchy of prestige that emerges from branding. That, in some subtle way, all of our perceptions have been infected with the kind of hierarchical ordering of branding, and that even the individuation we think we possess ("we're all individuals!" as per Monty Python's 'Life of Brian'), we are in fact the product of a world made of marketing.
Yearning For The Lost World Of The Sixties
'Mad Men' would ultimately make no sense to us if we did not yearn for the Sixties. As much as it tries to tell salacious stories and demonstrate the horrible sexism and racism that once stood in the middle ground like some ugly monument to a fallen dictator, the show really goes in hard for the passive beauty and the elegant mood in this imagined Sixties. It gets so close and yet it is ironic in its manifestly being a construct, a product of the 21st Century.
The most ironic stance is taken when Don Draper goes in search of meaning as his yearning takes him away. He is in search of himself in the way America went looking for itself in the Sixties, but by now we understand why. Having been nothing more than an attractive pitchman for the burgeoning consumerist society, Don Draper asks what the future holds. He asks for something more than the material wealth extant, even though he is entirely of the kind of historic materialism that even Karl Marx would acknowledge and understand.
The funny thing is that Don's realisation of his yearning for a future vision comes in line with our yearning for his world. There is a cycle of people - us the audience yearning for his world, and he in his world yearning right back at us, the future. Our nostalgia crests as the decade closes out, while Don's realisation peaks at the sublime moment it all comes to an end. Whereas he starts off as the face of the monolithic White-Male dominance in culture at the beginning of the series, Don evolves into the face of plurality and eventually opens the door to diversity. He gives up being Don Draper the alpha male and finds something else.
The nostalgia tells us that the classical world was interesting but it came with the baggage we would not want to have back. There's a certain irony that the US Presidential candidate trying to "Make America Great Again" is called Donald. What he's really asking for is a world of white-male privilege like the one enjoyed by Don Draper. history has moved on sufficiently that it would place "the Donald" at the table of contention but it won't be enough on its own to be elected president.
Dick Whitman, Dharma Bum
The final three episodes of the entire show feels rushed. This story hurtles along to its destination without assembling the cast. It ends as frayed strands of a tapestry that cannot hold together. Don's journey out west is born of spontaneous rejection of his life at McCann Ericsson. He cannot articulate the why and wherefore of that rejection, but he ventures out west on the road, divesting himself of the trappings of being Don Draper, Creative Director. He gradually comes back to being Dick Whitman - and then he arrives at a 'spiritual retreat' in California.
It is as if he is walking in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, hoping to find something in Big Sur. It is quite a classic bit of image making. As Don Draper sheds his suit and becomes in appearance like the Americans in the midwest and then the west coast, we see Dick Whitman in his stead. Dick Whitman, it turns out is somebody on a spiritual quest. It is harder to understand this development without the help of Kerouac's writing. It is no coincidence Dick arrives at a retreat in Big Sur. If we are to understand the images, then we should have known Dick, inside the skin of Don Draper, was destined to reach this place.
There at the retreat, Dick experiences an anxiety attack. He then encounters Leonard, a man who articulates his exact anxiety about love and loneliness. We understand that inside Don Draper was the repressed Dick Whitman, and when Dick finally surfaces he is racked with guilt and shame for what he has done in the name of Don Draper. It's interesting how once out of his grey suits, Dick resembles photos of Jack Kerouac more as he stands by the Big Sur with the rocks and waves in the back ground. In a matter of three episodes, Don becomes Dick and Dick becomes a Dharma Bum. It is the last piece of the puzzle that fills in the picture of yearning; a shorthand cipher in to understanding Dick's wayward wanderlust, and the unquenchable thirst of his libido.
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| Dick Whitman at Big Sur |
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| Jack Kerouac |
It is no coincidence that the show arrives at the year 1970 and the particular brand of the nostalgia and epoch-making ends. You can mark 1970 as the year onwards from which Post-Modernism takes hold. The 1960s represents the very last grasp of classical history coming to an end. After 1970, there is an explosion of images, sounds, text, meaning and life.
In 1970, the German education board determined that the classical syllabus could no longer be taught in full. As of 1970, there have been more hours lived by the sum total of humanity than before. The Big Now starts in 1970. That is not to say as of 1970 there was more racism or sexism or gender discrimination; but what happened as of 1970 was that the old constraints on society that existed because of history got washed away in the flood of consumerism. Things didn't necessarily get better immediately. The politics surrounding race and gender became more pronounced an as a consequence the old order of mannered aesthetics had to be destroyed. In retrospect Avant-garde, Pop Art, Rock music and the Counterculture followed by Punk, all came and stomped all over the niceties of the old order so that we could see ourselves more freely.
The changes that followed 1970 are in fact drastic. If you look peasant life in say, 1460 and 1480 it wouldn't have been that different. If you took life even in 1860 and 1880, it wasn't all that different. The Twentieth Century was characterised by the acceleration of the rate of social change and at 1970 it reached a tipping point from which onwards everything was possible, everybody was capable of inventing themselves and creating their own narrative.
Recovering One's Humanity
Betty suffers greatly in this entire show, season after season. She suffers from ennui, and then a catastrophic divorce. Her self-belief is shaken more than once, while she slowly evolves to a better understanding of herself. It is then very revealing that she crosses path with Glen Bishop one last time. It harks back to the episode in season 1 where she found the only soul she could confide in was the young boy living in the neighbourhood.
Glen Bishop offers Betty insight into a love the is neither romantic nor filial or an extension of friendship. It is a kinship in an existential loneliness that both recognise in one another. It is symbolic then that the person with the greatest sympathy for guns in the series takes away the toy gun from her own son in the wake of finding out Glen is enlisting to fight in Vietnam. Her acknowledgement that her care for Glen is deep and unbinding shows us something about Betty that runs very deep into her humanity. It is one of the most beautiful moments in the entire series.
The stoicism she displays in trying to keep up appearances even in the face of her death is at once admirable and tragic. It is more than mere symbolism that Betty dies with the 1960s closing at the end of the show. She perishes as a memory of the bygone age and with her die the values, prejudices and culture that formed the age. Considering Betty Draper was a late addition to the group characters in Season 1, she has turned out to offer the most poignant counterpoint to the 1960s. I do wonder if January Jones will ever find a role as profound as Betty Draper ever again.
Expressions Of Love
One of the most unlikely - and maybe politically incorrect - notions to emerge from 'Mad Men' is that love itself is very polymorphous and takes many shapes. The funniest expression of this is in Season 6 when Sally catches Don having an affair with Sylvia. Sally asks "what were you doing?" and Don replies testily and embarrassed, "I was comforting her." It is bizarre and hilarious an exchange as you are ever likely to see. Yet Sally loves her father, and finds a strange acceptance of Don as this philandering father. In this season Sally expresses a disgust with both Don and Betty saying they are just too good-looking and so they ooze their sexuality to glide through life. Don for his part says Sally too is beautiful but must do more than to simply rest on her inherited beauty. It too is a curious but revealing exchange.
The love that exists between the many characters in the agency that become apparent when the agency is absorbed is just as telling as Betty's stoic acceptance other fate, and her love for her children, her husband and even Don. Peggy and Stan reach a point where they recognise they are "in love". Roger marries Megan's mother Marie not out of any deep-seated romance but actually because of a deep-seated sense of responsibility to another human being. He also sets up to bequeath his estate to his bastard son by Joan. Joan discovers that her love is actually for work, and that no man bound by the culture the late 60s or early 70s can accommodate her vision. Pete discovers he truly does love Trudy and wants to give his marriage another shot. In a rush to tie up the series, the show moves through these stories in rapid succession.
Yet what is most compelling is the positive regard these characters possess for the casual encounters in their lives. Don does not want to destroy lives when he enters into relationships. He's simply looking for a life affirming connection. Others around him have been showering him with positive regard and love for so many years he has become blind to it. Betty points out that he has always done as he liked and Sally tells him that she will make decisions for the family in his absence. They make these statements not out of disrespect but out of love for Don. Stephanie takes Dick up to the retreat in the Big Sur because she can see what he needs is some kind of explanation for his waywardness and wanderlust. Peggy tells Dick all he needs to do is 'come home' - come home to being Don. The love and acceptance for the man is all around him, if only he cared to look.
Thus Dick's own acceptance that comes at the end is quite ambivalent partly because perhaps Dick returns to being Don and continues as a successful ad executive. Or perhaps he stays out in California and the world continues on without him, ever banal and consumed in its own consumerism. It's actually an ambiguous ending.
In years to come I think 'Mad Men' will be understood as the moment we formally bid the Sixties a proper and fitting farewell. Whatever the Sixties are to people, it is now firmly history cut off from the present and no longer the immediate precursor-to-the-present.
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