Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
It's simple, really, and the writers at Mad Men are by a long shot not the first to put it to words. War can't go on forever, and neither can peace, and the great balancing act is a peace that doesn't soften too much, but has mellowed well enough -- ripened -- so as to be round and full, not bitter and hard. Because this is still a show (at least in part) about men, I can't resist putting the paradox of peace into masculine terms. How does a man fight well? What does it mean to fight well? Not in a battle or even an army, but as a man who must earn a living, a man who is (or was, at least) a head of household? What is the peace dividend? Retirement? That can't be right.
It isn't the same question as happiness, which is a state of mind. Peace is I suppose something susceptible of being called a state of mind, too, but peace is physical in a way happiness isn't. Peace is not the absence of war, but if the absence of war or violence and turmoil isn't sufficient for peace, it sure seems necessary. One can be happy at war or at peace. One can be bored at war or at peace. The paradox of peace is that you want your peace to outlast you, even though, when it becomes someone else's, it has to stop being yours alone. Historical memory -- the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, 9/11, on and on -- is a great and powerful thing. But the physical facts of peace make the gravity of war unreal. Last year I walked down a hallway by the food court in Georgetown and Undergrad A said to Undergrad B "I don't even know why we celebrate Armistice Day. World War One was like a million years ago." (+1 for knowing what Armistice Day means, -1 for saying 'celebrate'.) It's like macaroni salad: how long can it keep in the sun? How can a catastrophe live on in a culture as a potted plant?
Teaching the facts is important, but teaching the facts won't do. There must be a deep, deep fabric woven from wartime past out and into peacetime, person to person, generation to generation, even when those who knew firsthand and so didn't have to remember feel very much like not sharing. But maybe above all a culture has to reserve in peaceful times a poetic sense of war. Eyes must light up when these things are told, even in spite of the horror. The imagination must be seized. Tonight, as the rival exec spontaneously performed the motorcycle ad he pitched his colleagues, we saw the way advertising had come to seize imaginations: commerce became our muse, and products our window onto poetry. How can a peace be a -- well, manly peace, if war stories fail to catch that same sparkle and gleam?
Yet we don't want to be bloodthirsty, and we're not a nation of aggressors. And man by man we still incline more toward fatherhood as the house of manliness than combative bachelorhood. Which is why fighting for freedom helps, a bit, to unravel the paradox of peace. What keeps the gleam in the American eye is not that we fight but why.
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Aug '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
For those of you who didn't see last night's episode of Mad Men -- which seems to have replaced The Sopranos as the most talked-about show on TV -- there's an episode synopsis at the Wall Street Journal.
The plot point to which Mr. Poulos refers is that the ad agency is seeking to land the Honda account, but senior partner Roger Sterling -- a World War II veteran -- tries to torpedo the deal because he can't forgive the Japanese.
In general, Americans have viewed magnanimity toward the conquered as noble and manly -- U.S. Grant at Appomattox being the great example -- and Sterling's bitterness toward the Japanese thus marked him as, if not a villain, then certainly a weak personality.
One wonders if Mad Men's writers weren't trying to make a comment on a certain situation in Lower Manhattan that I've sworn will not monopolize my guest week here.
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
I don't go to Mad Men for social meaning. I go there because of Christina Hendricks.
Call me shallow if you will...
May '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
I think my mother would have disowned me if I had ever driven a Honda into the driveway. For her, the war remained very personal. As a teenager she witnessed the Western Union boys delivering the messages, of mothers collapsing and grown men weeping at the loss of their sons. In my own youth I remember picking up her high school annual and having the yellowed newspaper clippings fall to my feet. I picked them up, one by one and read the headlines, "Local Boy lost on Iwo Jima," "Local Sailor lost on Indianapolis."
Since my parents met after the war, I never knew just how personal any of these losses were for her.
We have a unique history in that our first wars were civil wars. (Technically speaking, the Revolutionary War was a civil war among British subjects.) Afterwards we essentially sought and afforded forgiveness among ourselves.
But the war in the Pacific was unparalleled in its brutality. (We see a lot of similarities between the Japanese and al Qaeda, of which the willingness to act as a human bomb delivery system the most paramount.) Much was done there that remains unforgivable to this very day.
May '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
Yes, indeed, "noble and manly", but I don't know that anyone expects it to be easy. I remember that, at the time depicted, not only resentment against Japan but also Germany was still apparent. Jewish people would not buy a Volkswagen, as I recall, and were vocal about it. I don't remember this attitude being seen as "weak", since many of these men had proven their strength in real combat. Of course it looks different today.
The lingering hard-feelings were certainly inconvenient for those eager to do business with the old enemy, like these agency men. There was a touch of shame associated with these partnerships. Obviously it was not a barrier, and people got over it.
(Full disclosure: My dad was a "mad man" of that era, and his agency handled Toyota for many years.)
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
I recently watched a documentary about the Rape of Nanking.
Several aged Japanese soldiers who participated in actual war crimes were interviewed. What gave me the creeps was that while recounting horrific atrocities, these men expressed no remorse and actually smiled as though they were waxing nostalgic.
It's also disturbing that the Japanese maintain a shrine where the ashes of Japanese officers who were executed for their war crimes are interred. There is a very large pilgrimage to that shrine each year.
May '10
Re: Mad Men #5: The Paradox of Peace
I'd like to thank whatever that Federal law is that kept the camera above the young lady's waist while she was "playing with herself." I mean, what the hell was that? If Hitchcock didn't need to show rivers of blood, why do I need to see a little girl bite her lower lip while she watches The (still alive and starring in NCIS) Man from UNCLE.
And where are the Christians on this? Join my atheist self in grouching about this scene - you could cut it and not lose anything. I'd hate to be that actress going to school the next day.