Mad Men
If you have been watching Mad Men, as I have, the ick factor from Thursday night’s episode with Roger Sterling was truly, umm, icky.
I mean it was more than icky. And, with that said, it was also one of the most fascinating hours of television. Because as disgusting as Sterling (John Slattery) was, you also understood him because fear is fear. And our own inner struggle to understand mortality, something we have no control over.
People can relate to the human emotion.
For whatever reason, I’m smitten with this show. I was born in 1965, so the only real association that I’ve have with this time frame are two very different windows, neither one an accurate entity but you work with what you have.
1.) Movies from this period of time (and what good-hearted American didn’t have a crush on Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn and Rock Hudson or James Dean.)
2.) Stories my mother told me. Now, she didn’t grow up in Manhattan, but she was a product of the late-fifties, early sixties. She was smitten with Elvis Presley, Paul Anka (I know, so odd) and it involved into her love-affair with not only President John F. Kennedy, but with his wife, Jackie O as well. It was the time of her childhood and her political awakening. And as a child, I was smitten with these tales. And she would spin tales about how all of this evolved into what she accredited to the introduction of the Beatles, when she was a young wife pregnant with her first child. My mom credited major portions of her life to the music of the time. She was a musician, but I think most people do this as well.
So, I watch this show and see how there is always levels of darkness underneath the glamor. How women were treated as objects. How they knew it and how some of the women were already unifying, although they didn’t recognize it, into fighting back. And some do it with intelligence while others are just stumbling along, which is normal I would think in a time of transition. Then there are the other women who feel they are expected only to be an extension of their husband’s lives, their friends.
I cannot imagine living in a world where I was expected to dress pretty and sit back, saying nothing. It’s just not imaginable to me.
And now on to the men, Pete is a jerk. He is, but he’s also the one who is forward thinking, that sees that the world is changing, but is not enough to be his own man (Daddy issues) to approach it honestly. Instead, he backstabs, cheats and lies to get ahead. He revels in Don Draper’s missteps, because he sees it as victory for himself, because he’s got some reverse ego going on.
And as you watch it, you realize he’s not acting out of character.
And Don Draper, you are not the marrying kind, but I’m also a product of my generation. I realize that the mystery is intriguing. But, our suave, smoking-drinking establishment yet anti-establishment hero is still just seeking validation.
And someone who will keep the monsters away, the ones grabbing at his ankles underneath the bed he chooses to sleep in that particular evening. The mother he never had perhaps.
Psychologically, the show walks a thread of showing that although things are slick on the surface, you can slide off into the abyss anytime.
