Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
That's the key line from tonight's episode. It's not the houndstooth dress or the Medicare reference that tells you we're deep into the '60s -- it's the debut of professional psychology in the workplace. At first, the impression created by the test Don wouldn't take looked a lot like what we take for granted in democratic life: everyone's equal and equally different. You take the test that everyone takes and everyone -- or, at least, the test administrator -- knows exactly who you, and only you, are. Snowflakes all, meaning unique snowflakes all. The painful tension between society and the individual? Resolved!
But it's not so easy. Cornered in his office, Don's on the receiving end of a backhanded consolation: you'll be married within a year, yes, because you're that type. And not as, say, the culture of Playboy meant it in the '60s -- where the color of a girl's hair captured, in a way impervious to analysis because it called for no analysis, her personality. Tonight, we saw those superficial types on familiar display: fiery Joan, ice queen Betty, another tempting and dark brunette. But as it penetrated the workplace and the home, psychology told us that every type had a deeper meaning -- and that you couldn't understand the type at all unless you knew it.
From one angle, that's an invitation to some tiresome Freudian question-and-answer. From a better vantage, it's a reminder that we seek refuge in types at our peril. Out here in LA, it really is true that you walk into a casting call and you discover that there are dozens, and by implication hundreds, of people who really are just your type -- same look, same demeanor, same attitude. Your precious individuality? An illusion. Life after Web 2.0 has opened this experience to everybody. Want to find your niche? Start browsing. Want to find a niche? Ditto. We are positively glutted with niches and types. Setting yourself up as a type offers the promise of sanctuary from the exhausting back and forth between being just one of the crowd and being an irreplicable, irreplaceable individual. You pick a part and you stick with it. Where once vocation or location played that foundational, grounding role, now you orient yourself by the identity you role play. Now, everyone wants to know they're a type.
Alas, as tonight's show revealed, no matter how carefully you pick a part or how assiduously you play it, your type -- and, much more importantly, you -- can get picked apart and played. People are starting to ask now whether we have to admit that Don is a creep, and that we'd have admitted this long ago if he weren't so handsome. But this begs the question. Is the real Don starting to destroy his polished, alluring, unflappable type, or are his obligations to his type beginning to destroy him? One way to vault yourself out of this line of questioning has been put front and center tonight -- in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, a not quite psychological kind of therapy that involves a much more radical kind of surrender than surrender to type. But already that seems impossible for Don. His escape, and his survival, has to be of a much different kind. The questions driving the drama, now, are simple. What is it? And can he find it in time?
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May '10
Re: Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
The first two episodes did have types and "old/new fashioned" as a theme. As encouraging as the season three finale was, our cast do seem to be stuck with their types. Roger, in spite of having an office that looks like the set of a contemporary children's science fiction show, is back to Uncle Tomming for the vile Lee. (Well, at least if he asks Joan to dress up in red, he can do the same when asked.) Don, the one man who's an island, may soon be unable to get from the taxi to his apartment -- he's in such bad shape, he's grabbing at women he'll be forced to see afterward, day after day.
Jon Hamm, who plays Draper, has said about this season (I think only referencing his own character, but perhaps not), that it's about the fact that people don't really change. I hope that's not true, either in real life or on the show.
I was very happy to see Freddie Rumsen and Glen Whatever back!
May '10
Re: Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
Not a lot of Ricochet viewers, huh.
Their loss.
May '10
Re: Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
I haven't seen the first show of this season yet. I will tonight. But looking at the second show it appears that the plot line is taking us down the stereotypical line of thinking that no person can escape their past and that eventually it will catch up to us and if it's something bad morally than the guilt of it will destroy us. Why does it have to be that way? Why couldn't Don looked at Betty in S 3 and said. Yay that's me, I didn't tell you because I figured you wouldn't understand, but hay I am a live, you have a great life so be happy, and if you can't well don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out and oh by the way I am keeping the kids. I just hope that the story line doesn't turn into the "better than thow psycho lady falling for the so in need of someone solid in his life, brooding, excessively good looking guy who needs her to help him make ammends for his terrible past guy."
May '10
Re: Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
I also want to say that I find this show fascinating and addicting but I think it's certainly taking us down the road of types.The show is all about types.The older man leaving his wife for a Woman/Child.The successfull Business man turned recluse and just hanging around.The Office Manager that is the oil of the place, who knows how to work q one and q angle and of course super sexy. Pete the petulant man/child who is constantly in need of acknowlegement from everyone around him & pouts if he doesn't get it until his wife/mom cuddles him.And then there is Don.Every man wants to be him,every woman wants to be w/him and deep down he wishes he wasn't him because his dark past is eating him alive.It's taking us down the overly predictable road.S 3 through us for a loop with the escaping the war thing.It was fresh and unpredictable.I sure hope they throw us for another one.Say Don wakes up and realizes his life is great despite... and says hay I am Don Drapper, that's right.
May '10
Re: Mad Men #2: No One Wants to Know They're a Type
Good quote from Libertas ( http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/ )
"The picture Mad Men paints of 60s-style sexual 'freedom' is anything but free – it’s people using other people, people using sex as a way to escape their loneliness, sex as product and economic transaction. The empty look Peggy has on her face after she sleeps with Mark; the cold, emotionless face Don puts on after his night with Allison; the humiliated, disgusted look on Roger’s face after he’s “sold” himself to Lee Garner Jr. all suggest that these acts have not made anyone happier or freer. Sex, when it’s divorced from love, simply doesn’t work. It’s all just a form of prostitution."