Mad Men #3: Misery and Dignity
There is a strange relationship between misery and dignity. I have to say that I thought of Hitchens as tonight's cancer-themed episode played out. But there was very little stoicism on offer tonight. Don's dignified choice to say nothing about the cancer made him miserable, but he made himself much less miserable of a figure by sleeping with a prostitute in his own home than by putting the moves on a college girl wearing his blazer in the front seat. Price's undignified display with the steak was a momentarily successful attempt to reclaim his dignity and escape the misery of being a man who sadly can't blame anyone but himself for the way his family life's turned out.
More complicated is Don's reliance on a hired hookup, which can't help but fill the viewer with relief. Sometimes the contractual approach to sex seems to leave both parties less miserable and more dignified than they'd be otherwise if they tried to satisfy their respective desires on their own. There's no doubt that we're all taking our dignity down a peg by arguing that prostitution makes matters better insofar as it softens the blows of some of life's real miseries. But the relief I'm talking about, which I think it pretty palpable, comes from the realization that Don is escaping another tryst where at least one person involved is being exploited in a rawer, more consequential way than the call girl seems to be. Of course, we don't to get as close to her as, say, Don's secretary. So the deck is dramatically stacked against people who want to be reassured that prostitution in practice is always worse for everyone than the alternative.
Still, the big upside for Don is that spending a night with a prostitute means not having to try to treat a girl who isn't one like she is. The question is how insistent we are that real dignity is to be found in bearing one's misery alone. The dying stoic might answer yes. But how well can the dying stoic speak for the rest of us?
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May '10
Re: Mad Men #3: Misery and Dignity
No time for anything more than my Quote of the Episode: "But nobody knows what's wrong with themselves, and everyone else can see it right away." (at 15:40 on the Amazon video on demand)
May '10
Re: Mad Men #3: Misery and Dignity
Aside from dislike for Mad Men because of assumptions about its politics, which I think are mistaken, there are sound reasons for not loving the show. There's an interesting essay by Jason Mittel, who just can't like Mad Men. He basically says that he really doesn't like any of the characters and that he's right to not like them. He says that the remaining appeal of the show concerns the nostalgic and asmug we-know-better-now quality.
My own love for the show can't counter his points. The characters are pretty unlikeable. I find them a means to an end: the show helps to point out how our circumstances, the times we're brought up in and the up-bringing itself - shape us, and how very hard it is to break free from the ruts our personalities love to follow.
This contravenes the conservative line that, in the United States, anyone can grow up to be president or Bill Gates or whatever. Mad Men may, in effect, be an argument either against free will itself, or at least against the practical value of the very limited form of it that we posses.
May '10
Re: Mad Men #3: Misery and Dignity
From the essay I discussed above: "While watching the first season, friends assured me that the final episode contains a masterful scene that transforms the season and Don’s character in a highly rewarding way. I certainly appreciated the craft of the carousel pitch scene, completely selling me both on the ad campaign and that Don would believe his own rhetoric. But I found the thematic discussion of nostalgia and imagery to deepen my suspicion of the show, rather than transform it. The speech somewhat functions as the show’s mission statement, highlighting how the series works as a time machine to take us back to another moment in our cultural memory, and how such nostalgia is tinged with pain. Yet it’s a journey to a place I don’t want to be, transporting us into a past world that I’m happy to be rid of, not a place of comfort."
Re: Mad Men #3: Misery and Dignity
John M. Webb: The characters are pretty unlikeable. I find them a means to an end: the show helps to point out how our circumstances, the times we're brought up in and the up-bringing itself - shape us, and how very hard it is to break free from the ruts our personalities love to follow.
This contravenes the conservative line that, in the United States, anyone can grow up to be president or Bill Gates or whatever. Mad Men may, in effect, be an argument either against free will itself, or at least against the practical value of the very limited form of it that we posses.
This is fascinating, John. Two points. First, in addition your conservative line about individual empowerment, we should add the longstanding conservative line about the importance of tradition in shaping and grounding individual identity. Your ruts of our personalities remind me of last week's discussion about types. People who are mere types are neither individually empowered nor deeply rooted in a meaningful tradition. That seems pretty consonant with conservative insight to me.
Second I find many of MM's characters likable...but not lovable.